Squares, Pink

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better… See if you can apply our last discussion (https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/the-drama-of-concave-and-convex/) to this painting. This painting is different in three important ways: The square format pushes you into thinking abstractly. There’s no hint of a horizon line. The color contrasts are more subtle. If the pink squares were […]

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Pink

An abstract painting should knock you out, leave you speechless, with only the compulsion to keep looking at it. Here’s such a painting. I just want to look at it. Ok, I’m expected to chat a bit here. Well, it’s pink, to start with. The color pink has endured some bad press, being associated with […]

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Metaphor and Stephen Pinker

“Reclaiming the Symbol,” the exhibit by Edith Altman at the State of Illinois Building drew in a large crowd for the panel discussion.  This was many years ago.  I have been puzzling over it ever since. The panel consisted of professors from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and, most impressively,  Wendy Doniger, […]

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Glowing Prairie Grass and Vermeer

After the horizontal view (discussed in the last post), I turned the camera to the vertical view.   Here there’s even more to draw you in and hold your attention. We still have the horizontal shadows with their variations.  This time, though, the lines pull you to the full view of the glowing prairie grass, the […]

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Attention

NOW WHAT!!  You want us to look at your boring geraniums in your boring kitchen???!!! What caught my attention was how the afternoon light made the stems glow. On the right, see that?  See how the stems are outlined in yellow? How would my camera see that?  As I framed the shot, before I zoomed […]

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Chardin

The previous six drawings were derived from this painting by Chardin.  To help us see composition and form without being charmed by the color,  I had black-white Xerox copies for everybody to work from. We immediately noticed that there was a triangle implied in the arrangement of peaches and cup (green line), giving these random […]

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Titian’s Ariosto

It’s also called “The Man with the Blue Sleeve.” Titian (1488-1576) painted this portrait around 1510. It’s a good example of the High Renaissance’s self-confidence, the assertion of the dignity of humanness.  The power of his ego is not coming at us in a front view, which would look aggressive or defensive. No need for […]

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Green Anyone?

In the early 2000’s green was a fashionable color, meaning it was associated with romantic love.  In Steve Martin’s 2005 movie Shopgirl (he wrote the screenplay) the walls of the shopgirl’s apartment were green. I remember thinking, how odd, I thought green walls were for hospitals. So it goes with color associations.  We talked about […]

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Those Blues

Can you isolate a color from your memory or your culture or art history? Just the word Blues triggers an association in your mind.  “Feelin’ blue”–you hear the music in your head. Our culture and history are loaded (and weighed down) with the symbolism of certain colors.   In 15th century France red was the color […]

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Black

Here we have it in black. What do you think now?  What do you feel? Do you think this is more cerebral, more subdued? Neutral?  And does that go with “less emotional or not emotional at all?”  Even “cold?” Would you consider this friendlier, more accessible, more tuned to emotion than the previous red version? […]

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