Analysis of Onement 1

Barnett Newman, Onement 1, 1948, Oil on Canvas.

This painting helped influence Pollock's Bluepoles as well as being a watershed moment in the career of Barnett Newman establishing him as one of the foremost in Colorfield painting. It became an expression for Newman's own personal philosophy. The composition is flat and atmospheric but not gestural except for the zip, the line straight down the middle of the canvas. The symmetry of the central zip stands for perfection of man's oneness with all of God.

Newman was a Jewish intellectual and even designed a synogogue. The word Onement is used because it is a component of atonement which is marked by the holiday Yom Kippur, the most important Jewish holiday, when Jews plea to god for forgiveness for their sins. Jewish philosphers regard this holiday as a day to ponder the mystery of God's creation. Inspired by the sublime, Newman paints the fullness of God's creation through the use of a solid color field. Looking first to cubism for inspiration Newman finds it to be a stylized representation of reality and since he wanted to depict the sublime, he had to pioneer a new style of painting.

Onement symbolizes Genesis. Newman paints and act of creation or separation. The zip down the middle symbolizes the separation of light and darkness. The background is the color of the Earth, of which God used to create Adam. The zip also becomes a highly abstracted vertical humanoid figure, reminiscent of Giacometti's figures, despite being heavily modeled are fragile, suggesting the fleeting nature of existence. Giacometti's sculptures were being displayed in New York for the first time in 1948 and influenced the zip in Newman's work. Rusticated edges of the zip give it a sensual human characteristic and separates chaos. The zip also goes back to the idea of the primitive; the first act of human kind was screaming into the void.

Onement is the genetic moment of which adam and eve become one. Adam only becomes complete when he is joined with Eve. Onement is highly influenced by Talmudic and Kabbalistic thought and he painted seven "onement" paintings over half a decade.

--Peesh

Soooo Sexy

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, Marble, 1622-25.

--Peesh

People in glass houses...

Philip Johnson, Glass House, International Style, 1949, New Canaan, Connecticut, USA.

--Peesh

I Gotta Pee

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, Urinal.

Duchamp had arrived to the United States less than two years before the creation of Fountain, and had become involved with the avant-garde movement Dada, an anti-rational, anti-cultural movement based in New York City. Duchamp created the term Readymades of which he slightly alters found objects and turns them into art through a mental process of the artist.

Work on this sculpture began when Duchamp purchased a standard Bedfordshire style urinal from the J.L. Mott Iron Works company in NYC. He takes it back to his studio, turns it 90 degrees from its normal position and wrote the words "R. Mutt 1917" on the side. Hence, the name "R. Mutt" comes most likely from a play on the company that made the urinal. Other interpretations have suggested the name comes from the popular cartoon at the time, Mutt and Jeff.

Duchamp was the president of the Society of Independent Artists, and submitted the piece under the pseudonym R. Mutt, to hide his involvement with the piece, for the 1917 exhibition. The Society claimed it would "exhibit all works submitted." After much debate from the board members (many of whom did not know Duchamp submitted it) about whether the piece was art or not, the Fountain was hidden from public view during the show. Shortly after, Duchamp resigned from the society out of anger. Duchamp describes this piece as shifting the focus of art from a physical craft to an intellectual interpretation.

The isolation of a readymade object from the real world and into the world of a museum transforms the piece into a work of art. Duchamp argues that an artist's intellectual assessment is enough to create art even though he may not have created the physical object itself. But by taking a urinal out of the bathroom, turning it 90 degrees and signing it, the object becomes devoid of its functionality and focus is paid to its form and aesthetics instead, a purely artistic concept.

In 2004, Duchamp's Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 selected British artworld professionals. Indeed, Duchamp's readymades have influenced the likes of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jeff Koons, to name a few.

--Peesh

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!!!

Vik Muniz, Action, 1997, Chocolate.

--Peesh

Just Some Flowers

Jan Brueghel, Bouquet in a Clay Vase, after 1599 probably 1607, Oil on Oakwood.

Jan Brueghel, son of Pieter Brueghel, was a Flemish painter known mostly for his technical finesse as a flower painter, the most highly-praised genre of still-lifes. The painting is a vanitas, a painting meant to portray the fleeting nature of life and the worthlessness of material objects. The still life also serves the purpose to flaunt Brueghel's masterful technique in rendering flowers, hard to paint objects. Painting on a wood backing was strickly a Northern tradition.

At first glance the still life may appear to just be a brilliant representation of flowers, however, this painting is an encyclopedia of blooms that occurred at different times of the year, and would never have been arranged at the same time. Hence, it represents the power of the painter to defeat time. The flowers are lifesize. Over 100 different varieties are shown here including a snowdrop and a yellow crocus, several kinds of narcissi, two rare white tulips whose petals are tinged with pink and blue, a wild rose, a marigold, forget-me-nots, flax flowers, three cyclamen and their distinctive heart-shaped leaves, and a tiny pansy.

The coins on the table suggest that flowers were very expensive luxaries. Shells relate to collecting practices stemming from the practice of keeping a cabinet of curiosities. This particular one is a wunder bouquet meaning a collector's bouquet. Brueghel meant his work to provide an uplifting spirit in winter.

Even though this still life appears to be a pure representation of reality on a closer look the painter uses genre painting as a mode to remind christians of the power of God and the fleeting nature of life.

--Peesh

This was at LACMA a while back when i was a kid

Henri Matisse, Gold Fish, 1911, Oil on Canvas

--Peesh

Examination of Elegy to the Spanish Republic

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, No. 110, 1971, Oil and Plastic on Canvas

Robert Motherwell was an abstract expressionist painter very much associated with the New York School.

The execution of Spanish poet, Garcia Lorca, by the fascists in the Spanish Civil War of the thirties became a symbol of injustice. For artists, this embodied the modernist confrontation with established cultural values. Motherwell said, "the theme of an elegy is the insistence that a terrible death happened and should not be forgotton." Lorca's poem concerns a heroic bullfighter who is gorged in the ring. The three symbolic colors in the poem are red, the blood, the bleaching white light of the sun, and the blackness of death and shadows.

Motherwell's Elegy to the Spanish Republic is painted on a monumental scale honoring Lorca's death. This painting is the beginning of Motherwell's series paintings. He worked by composing the major forms and than later filling them in. Contours and drips were done at the end of the process and carry the most intense expressive content in the compositions.

The black horizontal lines punctuated with large black oblong forms are reminiscent to the castrated phallus of a bull. Bold brush strokes become symbols. A penis shape is overlapping on an inorganic shape. The color gets reduced and there is a bold black and white contrast much like the symbolic colors of Lorca's poem. Motherwell balances the forms quite nicely with three circular shapes flanking three horizontal black strokes. He fills in the countours of the black shapes with white paint symbolizing white blinding light.

Motherwell moves away from the themes of love in his Je T'aime series (1955), which are characterized by the french phrase "I Love You" written on every canvas. Motherwell had bouts of depression and by 1962 it was evident that his personal life was being painted on canvases. In the Elegy series, Motherwell mourns for the world and since the Spanish Civil War is known as the trial run for WWII, he expresses his sadness and grief for a post-WWII world.

Motherwell's greatest contribution to the history of art was conveying to the viewer the mental and physical engagement of the artist with the canvas.

--Peesh

Alien Baby From Space

Hades flew a dove out gently,
the poor bird absolutely frigid from heat.
Gaps in its silent beak,
snaps melancholy teeth.
Risen angels flaunt spiritual boundaries.

-snicklefritZ

An in depth examination of Burial at Ornans

Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans, 1850 (salon of 1850-51), Oil on Canvas.

The political climate of France in 1850 was very stormy, due in part to the instability of the French regime and the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848. The yearly salon, of which Courbet gained automatic submittal due to receiving a second-place medal for his After Dinner at Ornans. This allowed Courbet to have extra time for the exhibit. And he produced this monumental painting called the Burial at Ornans which lined the gallery walls from floor to ceiling. It is deemed a historical painting due to it's sheer size. He portrays a funeral in his home town of Ornan in the region of Franche-Compté. Courbet depicts a crowd of visitors gathered around a grave. The cemetary is a new cemetary, built to accommodate Napoleon's decree to move bodies outside the church yard. A priest is leading a procession around a grave, the composition is anything but static. However, none of the participants are paying attention to the priest albeit being too busy circumambulating the grave. The composition seems additive of which Courbet added figures one by one. Courbet handles the paint with course brush strokes, and he brings the composition close to the picture plane, which invites the viewer to become part of the family and even enter the grave itself. Look how realistically the dog watches the movement of the procession. Courbet mocks the ritual of the church by protraying the cardinals dressed in red, with flushed faces and red noses, as if they are drunk; they are certainly not paying attention to the events. The family is dressed in bourgeoise uniforms with coats down to their knees, sporting all black attire. This painting is done in the memory of Courbet's father of which Courbet couldn't attend his funeral. For Champfleury (1820-1889) , an art critic, he saw this picture as showing the parisian stereotypes of the bourgeoise, however, knowledge of Courbet will uncover that he was anti-bourgeoise, and favored the middle class hard worker, although dressed in bourgeoise garb.

The composition contains approximately 50 figures and all remarkably life-sized. To the far left is Courbet's grandfather Oudot, a personal homage a man he loved. Which disproves this painting as a candid snapshot of reality. The corpulent mayor, Claude-Helen-Prosper Teste, is prominent in the forground just above the grave surrounded by a prestigious local lawyer and friends of Oudot. The Abbe Benjamin Bonnet presides over this funeral, accompanied by an aide who carries the cross. Courbet includes the viewer into the painting by the movement of the procession which will eventually sweep into the viewers space. The hole is too small to contain the entire coffin and therefore juts out into the viewer which physically imposes the idea of mortality upon him.

The priest looks like a man accustomed to his role as a meaning-giver. The gravedigger is the only figure ambivalent to the Abbe's sense of power. This diverse group is linked only by time, as the figures posed separately for their portraits.

In the burial we come face to face with the blunt reality of death without a sense of purpose.

--Peesh