Essays on Artwork

“The Arnolfini Portrait” by Jan van Eyck is a 1434 oil painting on oak panel. It a full length dual portrait, of the Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, in their home in the Flemish city of Bruges. It is one of...

The theory that an artwork could be either true or false is very much an interesting question, one that is almost impossible to answer because of the differing perspectives of the artist and the audience of such artwork. There are also many different contexts and...

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter who lived from 1632-1675. He was known for painting scenes of domestic middle-class lifestyles. He was known for artwork but wasn’t known for painting many paintings in his lifetime. Before going into detail about the Love Letter by JohannesVermeer,...

‘Black Iris’, oil on canvas, 36 x 29 7/8 inches, 1926, The picture ‘Black Iris’ which can be called Black Iris III, is an oil painting in 1962 by artist Georgia O’Keeffe (American, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin 1887–1986 Santa Fe, New Mexico). The size dimensions of...

The use of art to represent different situations or objects in different communities is widely accepted as different communities have various meanings that are associated with specific pictures or paintings. Both the community and the artist play a great role in giving a meaning to...

In Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory, I see the landscape of a dark piece of land. As the dark land continues out to the edge of the island, it becomes a more sand colored terrain, or coastline, where its edge meets surrounding water. The...

The painting Starry Night is one of the most recognizable paintings. It is everywhere, it can be seen on towels, coffee mugs, shirts, etc. It is a sumptuous piece of work. Vincent van Gough painted Starry Night in 1889 while he was a patient at...

Vincent van Gogh was quoted as saying “I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process” (2017). He is often remembered as the artist who cut off his own ear, giving credence to his own assertions....

The piece of work that I have chose is the, Boycott Grapes, Support the United Farm Workers Union by the artist Xavier Viramontes. It is a poster that represents the struggle for Chicano rights. The Aztec warrior demonstrates an angry and fierce face while squeezing...

Upon entering Jen Frost Smith’s gallery page, I was struck by the child-like drawings and crazy colors. I immediately thought “…This is actually in a gallery??” and, no lie, I rolled my eyes. That was until I decided to look through her works. I then...

The Camera degli Sposi (1465-1474) by Andrea Mantegna is a prime model of an artwork that attempts to defeat spatial constrictions through an illusion of depth. The work is an example of trompe-l’oeil painting, which employs realistic imagery to create optical illusions of continuing space...

Homesickness by Rene Magritte was painted in 1940. It is an 80 x 60 cm. oil on canvas, and is currently located in the Galerie Isy Brachot in Brussels. In the painting, there is a man wearing black clothes with wings standing on a bridge...

The Darkness of the Philosophies The Enlightenment era made a very strong impact on art we create today. The Enlightenment era had three philosophies: neoclassical, romanticism, and realism. All three of these ended up tying together in immense ways. A revolution had begun in 1789,...

What we call art in all its forms – painting, sculpture, drawing and engraving – appeared in human groups all over the world in the period known as the Upper Paleolithic, which is roughly from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. In Europe, sophisticated and powerful...

It was the invention of clothes and certainly not nature’s imperative, that made “private parts” private. The things we do not usually see. The Nude: Art from the Tate Collection follows the nude through two hundred years of art and as the title suggests, draws...

Why is the singing posture so important? The right posture is probably the most common trait most singers miss in their early years. If you change your vocal position slightly, your singing voice will immediately improve. A good posture can be defined as the resulting...

Types of drawing Freehand drawings, paintings or sketches – These are good for recording the general visual effect of a building or for making personal statements about how you feel about a place. They can be of any size and in any medium you like....

A day without Internet would feel like we have travelled back to the past, where we are so primitive, we are left with a great void, absence of Information. Technology has developed to a stage where we started feeling Incomplete without it, our engineers strive...

May Day Central Park painting is an oil canvas painting. The background has a green lawn and a few children running around. The features are in three dimensions an effect mostly created by effects of shadow, light and brush strokes. The people in this painting...

For many years very specific creations were considered art. There was a strict rulebook on what an artwork could consist of, including rules on medium, theme and technique. This idea was completely reconstructed with the Contemporary Art Movement in the 1950s. Contemporary Art is a...

In this essay, I would like to discuss how African art has changed and inspire European art. African art is a beautiful and deeply interesting kind of art, full of traditions and spirituality. During the time this art has influenced a lot of artists to...

I have chosen to base my personal study on psychedelic art and music during the 60s and 70s because I am extremely passionate about the art that came out of this time period, in the form of audio and visual work. I have grown up...

“The most interesting thing about artists, is how they live”, quoted by a renowned French artist himself, Marcel Duchamp, whom had made works that of the representation of the unusual and in-understandable. You see artists, are somewhat similar to scientists. They are undermined geniuses whom...

Introduction Slavery is a prominent part of American History and why America has been shaped the way it has been today. Many artists have captured the raw images of slavery in paintings during the time in order for us today to be better understand the...

The Beauty behind Painting Visual analysis is an important aspect of art history. Its main purpose is to help the viewer understand and recognize the artist’s frame work by observing and analyzing different parts of the image, which should give them the basic understanding what...

The artwork “Glenn” (1984) By Jean-Michel Basquiat is an acrylic, oilstick painting with a collage on canvas. In this painting, Basquiat coveys his exploration of the self-identity through experience of black human beings. The drawing is busy with many different pieces to unpack and analyze,...

“Springtime” is the oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Cot. The origins come from Cot’s teacher, Bouguereau and Cabanel along with inspiration from French master Jean Honoré Fragonard’s “The Swing”. This art piece is wonderful and it includes elements such as value from the light shinning down...

What inspired the Cubist style? Cubism was inspired by the late work of an artist named Paul Cézanne. Paul’s artwork started to show a slightly different take on art that people had previously done. Another artist that strongly influenced the cubist style was Pablo Picasso....

Depictions of the ideal male form have been reproduced throughout human history; each conforming to the societal standards of the time. One idea, that crosses cultural boundaries, is that of the man as the provider. There are certain qualities highlighted in the male body to...

The painting is based off the traditional catholic belief that the Virgin Mary was physically crowned the “Queen of Heaven” by her son, Jesus after her assumption, a moment which was popularly painted in 14th century Florence. Yet Tintoretto’s depiction of the coronation, in the...