Choose two or three that appeal to you – one should be from the 20th or 21st century and consider what the artists intentions are and the technical and creative solutions they’ve brought to the subject
Arrangement in grey and black number 1 1871
“Art should be independent of all clap-trap—should…appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it…Take the picture of my mother…as an Arrangement in Grey and Black. Now that is what it is…what can or ought the public care about the identity of the portrait?”
—J. M. Whistler, from The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, 1890
Probably the most famous of Whistler’s paintings I think the painting of Whistler’s Mother is interesting because of the symbolic nature of lack of any interior distractions. It is almost an exercise in anti portraiture.The starkness of the room and the muted greys are supposed to almost merely be an exercise in arrangement in colour – but depicting his mother in this way seems to bring out opposite effect and accentuate the piousness of the sitter’s nature. Indeed- Whistler’s mother became a symbol of Victorian motherhood according to the Victorian standards of her day: she was pious, submissive, and her life centered on domestic issues. If he had painted her surrounded by flowers and opulent surroundings I think the interpretation of the sitter would have been entirely different.
“Whistlers Mother high res” by James Abbott McNeill Whistler – Musée d’Orsay. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Whistlers_Mother_high_res.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Whistlers_Mother_high_res.jpg
Adele Bloch-Bauer’s Portrait painted in 1907 has an almost unrecognisable interior with Adele sitting on an ornate chair, covered in precious metals, is Klimt’s expression of decadence, entwined with symbolic meaning -particularly meaningful as Klimt was (supposedly) having an affair with Adele at the time. It is in stark contrast with the previous example and the style and background of the painting creating completely different connotations of the sitter.
“Gustav Klimt 046” by Gustav Klimt – 1. The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.2. Neue Galerie New York. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustav_Klimt_046.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Gustav_Klimt_046.jpg
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