Special Edition Blog: Art Institute Trip

This is a special edition blog regarding the Art Institute visit on October 14.
We had to choose 3 works that we thought were inspiring and write about their craft, concept, and composion.

Here's the picture of me.

Here's the picture of you.

Mountain Road

Joos de Momper II

1600-1625

Craft

This painting is oil on panel and utilizes brushstroke to bring the foliage into a realist fashion. Although the people and objects in the foreground have dark, noticable outlines and are painted with bright, sharp colors, the trees and landscape blend together with the evident brushstrokes to appear less illustrated and more like actual real life landscape scenery. The further in the background you look the more blending of color and contrast come into play.

Concept

The concept of this painting is striving for realism. As it is a baroque piece, close attention to nature is needed to achieve an accurate and realistic appearence for the landscape and foliage. The painting captures the vastness of nature and stives to accurately dipict real life perspective for the viewer.

Composition

The foreground uses sharper edges, mainly for the people and objects, but uses darker tones and the more defined edges to separate the foreground from the background which is the overlook from the valley. The large tree in the center is heavily illuminated on the backside and the trunk is darkend to show the illusion of natural light. Plus the tree is foreshortened somewhat and leans back into the painting and into the background. The birds flying in the air even like they are part of the middle ground and further give the illusion of space.

Still Life with a Basket of Fruit and a Bunch of Asparagus

Louise Moillon

1630

Craft

This painting is oil on panel and pays close attention to proportion, detail, and realism. Brushstroke is barely evident because this is not a landscape where differnet elements blend together but a still life. The brushstroke is so fine that the elements are separate from one another. There are very gradual changes in color were need be and high contrast with the differenet colors of fruits and black background.

Concept

Again, this painting is striving for realism, but with a still life rather than a vast landscape. The fruit and the leaves are trying to achieve not just looking like fruit and leaves, but showing the qualities and feeling of fruit and leaves. The fruits look ripe and juicy, the asparagus looks like it has been freshly cut, and the leaves look ligth and fragile.

Composition

The composition uses shallow space and dramatic lighting to illuminate every detail of the subject. There is also special attention to how the different shapes of the fruits and leaves react with the lighting.

Quadrangles in Two Planes

Irene Rice Pereira

1945

Craft

There are two levels in this painting that consist of a lower layer of oil on panel and a top layer of oil on glass. The bottem layer uses vibrant colors while the top layer uses mainly black for a high contrast.

Concept

The concept is to create a three dimensional painting with two dimensional geometic shapes that require two layers.

Composition

The vivid colors on the bottom layer contrast with the black on the top layer. This creaets depth and dimension. The colors on the bottom layer are lighter than the black and seem in a way atmospheric.