Museum Essay #1

Art has been around for a long time. The cool thing about art is that it can be expressed in different forms.  Walking around the Metropolitan Museum of Art was fun and interesting. I saw art in ways I never though of. It was kind of hard trying to get two works of art 500 years apart. They have few differences and few similarities.

The first work of art I decided to choose is “Summer Afternoon” 1865 by Asher. B Durand (1796-1886). The medium of this work of art is “oil on canvas”. To start off this work of art is 2D since it’s a painting. This painting has a horizontal line which makes me feel a peaceful emotion. It’s not a sunset but you can see the sun above the horizon. This painting contains organic shapes because the trees are not exactly a certain shape.  There is implied light because of the sun. Notice the reflection of the trees in the water and on the ground.  The color green is used in a monochromatic form. You can’t really see it in the picture but the green on the trees is darker and the green on the grass is lighter. If you were to apply the rule of thirds, the interesting lines fall right where the sun is and where the biggest tree is. The only repetition I see is the usage of trees over and over in this painting. The rule of odds is also implied in the painting because it has 5 cows. The unity is strong because the view it’s all nature, the trees the animals and the sun. The balance in this painting is asymmetrical because if it was to be cut in half the two sides do not correspond to one another. There are more trees in one side, there is also water on one side and land on the other, and one side has the sun. The focal point and emphasis is where the sun is. The first thing that captured my attention was the sun and underneath the sun you can still see the landscape getting smaller and further away. I guess you can see the viewpoint is on eyelevel. In this painting the scale are cows since they are drawn really small in comparison to the ones real life.

My second work of art “Wall Painting” artist is Unknown, Date: (650–750), Medium: Lime plaster, paint. This work of art is 2D and kind of different from the first painting. This painting has a lot of lines everywhere. It was zig-zag straight and curvy lines that form patterns. This has both geometric and organic shapes. The lines are triangles and trapezoid. It also has circles, twist and curves. The overall shape of the painting is nota certain shape because it’s not a circle, trapezoid or a rectangle it’s actually a combination. There is a lot of negative space, the background that is all the red, and the big circle/rectangle shape is the positive space. The colors are primary and a bit of secondary, basically warm colors. The red is monochromatic since there is dark red in the outside and lighter red in the inside.  This painting has patterns and repetition allover. The repetition of the colors red and orange and shapes such as triangles, circles and rectangles. In addition to some design that look like flowers. I noticed that the circles and rectangles together almost form the letter i or j. If the painting was to be divided in half it would have a symmetrical balance because the shape and size are correspond to each other. The painting is on eyelevel and the focal point is the center of the painting. The center looks like it has two eyes and two hands creating like a face.

Although the paintings have differences they also have similarities. For instance they both are 2D and both seem to use one color overall. They both contain organic shapes and are on eye level. I chose these two painting because I just love the view the first painting had, the view looks so real. The second one captured my attention with all the different patterns it has, when I first looked at it, it looked like a big monster. Since these paintings are from different eras it was cool to see how artists have different feelings and views. I loved the trip, I plan to go back and I look forward to our next trip.