Monday

This is the ultimate abstraction – it transcends even Pollock and his somewhat lazy spatters and almost doodling. This is sketching in the void but leaving behind the shell of emptiness that might just crack under the weight of the void itself. It’s a totally different level of opening oneself to the nebulous expanse of the universe.

Sunday

This is color and pattern theory at their finest, most distilled points. You can’t take the pattern away without losing the impact of the layers of the color, but you can’t take the layers of color away from the pattern without destroying the impact of the pattern as a whole. BOOM.

Saturday

I like that this is a study of color over form. It’s vague and nebulous, kind of like a toxic cloud of grim vast grey-ness and gloom and doom, but with hints of other things that break up the dismal bleh.

Tuesday

I’m not convinced that Joan of Arc would’ve looked attentive as she listened to the heavenly voices. Certainly not like this, in a raptly ecstatic state. It’s vaguely pornographic. It’s also vaguely creepy, as she’s portrayed as far more innocent as she was, but that’s definitely the 1880s hypocritical morality coming out to play.

Monday

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why art has no color. It has no color, it has no silence, it is one howling voice in the wilderness. Art doesn’t care what you are, who you are, only that you give your voice to the need within you to create.

Sunday

*twitch* The background of this painting is more interesting than the subject and that’s a travesty, because I’m sure the poor dear was probably very pretty if she wasn’t treated like she wasn’t anything at all.

Saturday

It’s a brown and blue semi-photo-realistic painting of bridges and the River Arno. It’s pretty standard stuff, but the use of direct light v. indirect light (which was more favored at the time) makes it a bit more unique in the way it’s presented. However… it’s still nothing overly groundbreaking. American art of this particular time period is pretty pedestrian – it’s just a few years before the Impressionists really get going.

Wednesday

This might have been one of the things that began my lifelong love affair with New York City. I remember seeing this painting as a tiny thing and marveling at how lovely it was, and then recreating the modern equivalent view on my first visit to Manhattan. (Yes, I am a nerd. No, I will not apologize for it.)