Thursday, May 4, 2017

Final Project

The artist that I chose to study this semester was Gustav Klimt; two of his works that I focused on were Pine Forest II and The Kiss. For my final art project, I decided to incorporate these two artworks into each other in a contemporary style. From a denotative perspective, I see a background full of vertical lines that vary in texture, width, and color. The majority of the lines are made with paint, but others are gold ribbon and tissue and they create a bit of a chaotic feel. In the foreground, there are two elongated figures painted in pink and red, and one has gold ribbon hair. These figures are the focal point of the image, and break up the background and foreground. Below the figures is a textured white area created with paint. The connotative meaning of this painting appears to be a man and a woman–– the man is on his knees and seems to be begging for the woman's attention, while she stands much taller than him and looks away form him and he is faceless. The lines in the background seem to be a place that the woman and man are in, because the lines do not reach the bottom of the paper in the center, but instead meet what is the ground. The ground looks snowy, or it could be a cloud. Ideologically, this painting is a man and a woman in a forest. The trees in the forest are made up of various textures, mediums, and vary in size–– this is to represent the diversity in the world. The woman is clearly superior to the man in this painting. Her lavish dress, gold hair, and her stance represent the uprising of women in today's time. Her gold hair shows that she can make her own money and treat herself well without the help of the man below her, who she is ignoring. There is a cloud below them that creates a mystical or dreamy aspect. This is because women having this power used to be just a dream, and it still has a type of dreamy aspect to it because it is so surreal. This also creates the idea that the man could fall at any minute, as he is hanging off of the cloud. He no longer has the power that he used to have, and he has lost his identity completely due to his lack of a face.

Over the course of this semester, I have gained so much knowledge about the techniques, culture, and history of art. One skill that I am taking away from this class that is my ability to interpret and analyze a work of art. I now am able to look at an artwork and consider all aspects of it, including who the artist is, the mediums used, and the denotative, connotative, and idealogical meanings using the visual elements. This is a skill that I did not have before taking this course, as I would simply look at an image and only evaluate it by what I could literally see on the surface. This course could be improved by trying to use a wider variety of mediums to create artworks and by doing less photoshop. Overall, as a business student who does not know much about art, this was a great learning experience for me that I greatly enjoy.