Opinion of Video

Two mondays ago, we watched a video in class that explained the lawsuit between a young girl whose photo was shown without her consent in a cell phone ad that was widely displayed. As the young girl and her family argued that it wasn't right to display the photograph without her consent, the cell phone company brought up the risk of the internet. I agree with the girl and her family. If my face is going to be plastered all over town, I want a say in what the picture looks like, where it is being shown and how much I would get paid for it. I definitely think the girl should have been paid, because in that case, she potentially could have been a large part of their sales revenue. Also, the girl was religious, and the ad was not exactly G rated. Although it was not offensive, it almost had a sexual air about it, since the cell phone company was Virgin Mobile. That being said, I think that if any company wants to use a picture that someone else has ownership over, the right thing to do is to ask permission of that person, because they have every right to their own privacy.

PMA Week 6

This week, our assignment was to go back to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and find a piece to do ten sketches on. Since I couldn't make it to the PMA last week, I made sure I found time to go this week. My Tuesday 3D class was canceled because of the 3D Olympics so Tuesday was wide open for me. I took a day trip by myself to the PMA which at first I was a little worried about because I wasn't sure how to get there via subway. But it was a nice afternoon, and though a lot of walking was required from City Hall to the PMA, it was all worth it.

Once I got there, I ventured into the European galleries, that held many works by Mone and Renoir in particular. One piece jumped out at me though, especially, mainly because of its size and color choice. The piece is called "The Large Bathers" (1884-1887). The sculptural rendering of the figures against a sparkling background and the careful application of dry paint reflect the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth century French painting. Renoir labored over this work for three years, making numerous preparatory drawings for individual figures and at least two full-scale multifigure drawings. Faced with criticism of his new style after completing The Large Bathers, an exhausted Renoir never again devoted such painstaking effort to a single work.

Desire by Simon Bull

Over the weekend, I went home to visit friends and family that I had not seen in a long time. Even though I only live 45 minutes away, it’s hard to find time to get home since I am so busy with my work. Once I arrived in Bucks County, my mom and I decided to take a nice day trip together to a place called Peddler’s Village, a moderate sized collection of unique stores and boutiques in Lahaska, Bucks County. Peddler’s Village has a wide range of art galleries, but the one that stands out in my mind was a place called Lighthouse Galleries. A lot of the art there inspired me through color, because they had a lot of work by an artist by the name of Simon Bull. His style really spoke to me because I love flowers and bright colors, and that combination really satisfied me in his work.
Though it was hard to choose which painting to write about, I decided on a floral piece called Desire. When I first set eyes on it, I couldn’t look away for some time. It gave me a feeling of peace because it was easy on my eyes and the color combination was very attractive. Red is one of my favorite colors because of its richness and brightness, and Bull uses the red in a way that satisfied me. The acrylic painting has a good balance of warm and cool colors that work well for the meaning of the piece. I love when an artist uses the whole palate in a way that works for the message of the piece. Since the piece is called Desire, I think that the rich colors really evoke that emotion.
Someone who doesn’t understand art might look at this work and wonder how a flower evokes an emotion such as desire. I know that an emotion can be evoked through much more than the object itself. In this case, the rich deep tones express the feeling much more than the actual flower. I appreciate that, because I just did a project in 2D exploring this technique. We had to use a simple object and evoke an emotion solely through color. I found it to be a good challenge since the object itself was simply a vase, and I was aiming to show loneliness through color only. I used deep blues, purples and greens mixed with blacks and grays. I feel as though it showed some sort of sad emotion, but it was hard to zero in on loneliness specifically. So this is another way that I appreciate Bull’s painting, because I understand how challenging it is to convey an emotion. If this piece was a yellow flower with a warm colored background, it would change the message completely. But since the title is Desire, I see a connection between the meaning of the word itself and the bright, sexy aura that the color red portrays. The use of darks, particularly black and the dark purples, help to portray a yearning feeling.
The more I examine this piece as I’m writing about it I like it even more. I really get an exciting feeling through the combination of colors, that I rarely get from paintings I see every day. It may be because I am partial to bright colors, but I also appreciate the balance of the added blacks and other darks. It really makes the red pop even more. And the orange that is added to the red also makes it more interesting to look at. I notice that Bull uses rainbow in an effective way. He experiments with color and uses them in a good proportion. If all of the colors he uses in his piece were used to an equivalent degree, the painting would read differently. He uses red and/or red-orange in about three quarters of the piece, but balances it out with strokes of greens, yellows, blues, purples and blacks. You can tell this artist is very passionate about his craft because he shows it through color in multiple pieces I saw at the gallery. I am now a fan of Simon Bull, and I have bookmarked his page on my computer. I hope to see more art like his that speaks to me in such a way through color; I’m more than excited that I discovered him.

Illustrator

Giorgio Morandi

Giorgio Morandi

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Pictures week 2