Art - Collection of various Critiques

Art Critique

Girl Before a Mirror by Pablo Picasso

This is a very abstract painting. It takes a moment before the shapes and colors start to form ideas that can be understood by the viewer. The most noticeable is the girl’s face. It looks nothing like a human face, but the viewer understands that it is clearly the face of a girl. This is something I find wonderful about human beings. We can make out the concepts that are supposed to represent a broader idea. When looking further, this girl is putting her hand up to a mirror where she is being reflected. There’s a significant use of repetition to create harmony throughout this piece. Whether this be the harlequin pattern in the background, the stripes, or the use of circles throughout. Picasso used all the colors he had at his disposal in this piece quite equally and harmoniously at that. No color is used more than the other. When it comes to interpreting this piece, I personally view it as a reflection of how she thinks others perceive her. The person in the mirror is dark and gloomy with sunken eyes and a tear coming from her cheek. Her boobs are small and her hips aren’t as full and voluptuous. She is sickly skinny. Which is a stark contrast to the beautiful full figure that is the girl looking in the mirror. What she sees in the mirror is not truly her.

American Gothic by Grant Wood

This painting is of a man and a woman with a typical American house in the background. They seem to be farmers. The man is wearing a white under shit, perhaps long johns, overalls, and a cardigan. He is holding a three-pronged pitchfork and is staring directly at the viewer. His wife is looking at him. She is wearing a collared shirt, a broach, and a simple pinafore. Her hair is tied back. Every detail about this painting is unremarkable. It is plain and simplistic. Yet it is still an incredible painting. Grant Wood was amazing at using repetition throughout this piece to create a complex painting despite the seemingly simplistic nature. The lines of the pitchfork are repeated in the man’s shirt, the house, and the barn. The woman's dress pattern is repeated in the window, the eyeglasses, and the trees in the background. These small anecdotes pull the piece together. The painting is famous for being parodied. Oftentimes, when someone sees the painting, they think of their favorite parody of it that they have seen. Even I do this, when I think of American Gothic, I think of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Now this painting has not only recently in the past fifty years become a joke, but has been ever since its creation. After it was painted, the couple was referred to as the boobougie couple. Grant Wood has always jumped between painting parodies of himself and more serious country boy pieces. This painting is a blend of the two. It is a painting of his dentist and his sister in front of a random house in Iowa. It is eerie, and that is what Grant thought was so funny about it. This was all in the time when Americans were fighting over City vs Country. The city folk thought it was a painting mocking the country folk. The Country folk thought it was the ideal couple. 

Julie Daydreaming by Berthe Morisot

Julie Daydreaming is a painting of a girl with long auburn hair, wearing a loose and drapey white dress. She is sitting, resting her hand on her cheek. She is staring slightly behind the viewer, as if her eyes are not focused on anything at all. The painting uses a complementary color palette. The majority of the painting is a muted green. She has red hair, pink lips, and hints of red peaking through her skin. This creates unity throughout the piece. The painting is simplistic but implies a vivid imagination about to burst at the seams. This was incredibly developed in how the pupils are drawn, the soft pout on the lips, and the relaxed curling of her arm. It is wistful and nostalgic. 

Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

Persistence of Memory is a painting of a shore with still waters in the background. The sun is setting. There is a large flat surface on the far left and a rocky surface on the far right. In the foreground, there is a large block with the only clock not melted being eaten by ants, a branch with a melting clock draped over it, and another melting clock. In the middle ground, there’s an off-drape-like structure with another melting clock on top. On closer inspection, the figure seems to be a face with long golden eyelashes, curly eyebrows, and a big tongue. This surrealist painting is intended to explore the alternate dimensions unlocked within our dreams. The main concepts being explored here are memory and time. How they intertwine and coexist with each other. As well as how, in dreams, they can be forgotten. Time and memory become flexible in dreams. We do not remember details from our waking life, but remember other aspects that are not true at all. We believe lies without any hesitation because we do not remember a reality where the truth would make sense. The distorted face is believed to be a self-portrait of Dali. This painting is a transition of Dali’s admiration of Freud to Heisenberg.  

Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet

This is a painting of boats floating on water in the morning as the sun rises. It is an impressionist painting with minimal detail in form. The primary focus of this painting was on light and color. Monet was obsessed with how we perceived hues in different lights. The best way to do this was with quick paintings. He would forgo the artist's temptation of intricate detail and just paint what colors he saw. He painted how the light of the sun reflected in the water. This was revolutionary for its time and, along with a few other artists, started an entirely new movement with its own art exhibit.  The painting is primarily various shades of muted blue, shifting slightly in shade to create depth. The sun is bright orange and is reflected in the water with quick blotches of paint. It is reflected smother in the clouds above. This painting represents a memory someone would have of seeing the painting. It does not try to capture the aspects that everyday people don’t notice, but what stood out to him.

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

This painting showed a diner at night from the outside on the street. The other shops and buildings are empty. There are no lights on other than the diner. The diner, Phillies, has a large glass window displaying almost the set on a stage. There are four people. One man in uniform working, a man sitting on his own, perhaps reading something, and then there is the couple. A man and a woman. The man is smoking a cigarette, and the woman is looking at something in her hand. This interaction, or lack thereof, between the two is the focus of the painting. Their loneliness and loveless relationship is reflected in the empty streets. They are together only in bodies, but not in spirit. Each character is unaware or uncaring of the other. The woman in this painting is modeled by the artist’s wife. He was extremely possessive of and hated it when she gained recognition for any of her many talents. He would always be little to her, even though she was a more successful artist than him. It was she who told the art curators about him and got him work. It was her.