Art plays a crucial role in the life of people, formulating the main achievement of humanity. It includes paintings, sculptures, and other types, as the form of art that causes emotion with the help of visual organs. Some works remain valuable artifacts worth millions of dollars for many centuries. This paper aims to observe three works of art, namely paintings, from the Atlanta High Museum of Art.
The first work is a painting Seated Woman with Mandolin, made by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot in 1865, the French artist and engraver. Camille Corot is considered one of the outstanding landscapers whose works had an impact on impressionists. The next painting, Woman Seated at Her Piano by Henri Matisse, was made in 1924. Henri Émile Benoît Matisse, the French painter, and sculptor, was born in 1869 and died in 1954. The artist has been known for the unique manner of expression the emotion through color and shape. The selected work is made in the style of expressionism, flows in the European art of the era of modernism.
The last work is a painting Scene From The Scottish Highlands by John Kane, painted in 1927. The artist’s feature is that John became the first self-taught American artist recognized by museums. This work is performed in oil on canvas, and it is an example of the primitivism style. Therefore, the artist became the first representative of the “outsider art”, after which John Kane became recognized worldwide.
The work by Jean Baptist conforms to romanticism as the purpose of the author was the image of a dreamy and colorful object. For paintings, including the chosen one, the artist often involved various items to portray an allegory or an idea. The picture shows a girl with a mandolin, thus, in this case, the author involved music as a representation of the idea and parable.
Woman Seated at Her Piano by Henri Matisse is a part of similar works made by the author, and music was the prevalent object similar to the first paint. One may notice that the picture is an example of expressionism as written in a non-standard style for those times. As noticeably from the name, the picture shows a girl sitting on the piano, and wrong shapes and angular lines are characteristic of this work. Thus, the author transfers stressful psychological conditions, which are widespread among the expressionists’ works.
The painting by John Kane, Scene From The Scottish Highlands, depicts the observation of the artist on the Scottish festivals, namely two dancing children. In the picture, similar to the previous ones, a musical instrument is depicted, namely the bagpipe. One may notice that the painting conforms to characteristics of primitivism as a part of modernism because of the naive naturalism and simplicity of forms. The main idea of primitivism is that primitively does not mean bad, through bizarre forms, one may notice the truth of the object and similarity to the reality.
My reaction to each work is similar, it formulates the choice of paintings, but not of any other art pieces. It lies in the aesthetic pleasure and appeasement when viewing these paintings and an increased interest in painting. Especially, concern has grown in the selected three directions, namely romanticism, expressionism, and primitivism. The history of the painting of John Kane is exciting, as the author was not a famous artist, embodying the history of success with initial underestimation.
Moreover, it was exciting to observe how trivial things get brighter coloring by expressionists. Through tough brushstrokes and irregular shapes, they made usual things carrying deeper meaning and transformed it into a subject for reflection. Bright colors and contrasting were used to strengthen the audience’s expression, and in some works, the degree of deformation of angles and shapes gets its maximum to amaze viewers.