Museum Project Essays

Museum Project Essays Museum Project Essay Museum Project Essay 10 November 2010 Museum Project Ansel Adams, The Tetons and The Snake River, Grand Teton National Park. 1942. Gelatin Silver Print. Featured at Phoenix Art Museum. Phoenix, Arizona. Ansel Adams (1902-1984) was born in San Francisco, California. Being raised in the shadows of the great Golden Gate Bridge was the motivation for his deep appreciation for nature and his early childhood would become his primary inspiration to pursue photography. Strangely enough the 1906 earthquake made a permanent mark on him as he was thrown to the ground breaking his nose. When he was 17 he gained his early experience and inspiration by working for the Sierra Club at the Clubs LeConte Memorial Lodge, in Yosemite National Park. Ansel eventually became a photographer for the clubs annual outings. He is best known as a visionary figure for natural photography as well as for his passion in preserving the wilderness. In 1980, Ansel received the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts to preserve the wilderness. He played a significant role in the environmental consciousness of the United States and his photography, to this day; continue to inspire both artists and conservationist (Adams 6)(Ansel). The genre is photography. The picture is of mountains in the backdrop, with a river flowing in front of it surrounded by forest. The three characteristics to describe the piece would be; perspective, value and composition. From the William Cronon website we learn of the two different perspectives in this photo. The author states that the first is a vantage-point perspective. This perspective gives us a stunning image of the landscape. The second perspective would be the birds-eye perspective where the viewer is distanced from the actual elements in the picture giving them an overall view of the picture (Hung). The print is Geletin Silver, which provides the very rich blacks and grays. The value that is instilled in each part of the print makes the prints beauty just unfold before your eyes, giving you the feeling of almost being there. It value distinguishes the shapes and objects from one another in the photograph. Mr. Adams composition shows how he framed the photo to center the mountain and the river. The river leads our eyes to the mountain or looking down from the mountain to the river flowing in front of us. According to Ansel Adams, the picture represents bringing information about earth to the alien civilization. The purpose is showing what life on earth is. The picture gives us the raw beauty of the Teton Nation Park (Van-buskirk). His love for landscape and nature show as he literally brings this picture alive. To me it shows us what the National Parks were and should always be, left as nature intended them to be. Having an absolute love for nature and photography this picture captured my eye immediately and literally left me in awe. Alfredo Ramos Martin, La Malinche (Young Girl of Yalala Oaxaca). 1940’s. Oil on Canvas. Featured at The Phoenix Art Museum. Phoenix, Arizona. Alfredo Ramos Martinez (1872 – 1946). He was born on November 12, 1872. His parents were from Monterrey Mexico, in the state of Nuevo Leon. His father was a middle-class storekeeper. His mother was very supportive of his artistic endeavors. He became a true artist very early at the young age of 9 by sending a portrait he painted of the governor of Nuevo Leon to a competition in San Antonio, Texas. This portrait won first place! Ramos caught the eye of American Phoebe Hearst by his work of painted ordinary life scenes, which he mastered after getting fed up with the system while attending the prestigious Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City for 8 years. His life scene work was created while he was still at the Academia. He was bored of the current curriculum and during those times where he would wander off tired of drawing from plaster casts is when he began crafting his style. Phoebe is the person who made arrangements to financially support his studies abroad. So in 1897 he went to Paris where he mastered his trade in the streets by embracing the Post-Impressionists style. This is where Ramos started painting on newsprint (Martinez). The genre of this painting is Latin American. The painting is of a young Aztec Indian woman. Three characteristics to describe the piece would be line, shape and color. Ramos is using diagonal lines in the background to draw you into the beautiful girl. His lines will guide you and lead you to the center of the painting, which is the young girl. It will make you command the attention of her, who is his main focus. Ramos further uses large shapes in his portraits, which again demand your attention, making her bold and beautiful. The shapes are large ad organic from the shape of her face to the shape of her lips, and all that are in between. The colors of browns and blacks make the picture warm and comfortable and also represent the genre it is from. It gives you the feeling of being there in the young woman’s culture as those colors represent the Indian culture. The portrait represents a young woman in the Aztec Indian culture as a heroine. It gives us an inside look at the women of this time and culture. His use of colors and boldness represent the strong women in the culture and their beauty, as the true heroines they are not the harlots some made them out to be. This portrait stopped me literally in my footsteps. I had to take a second and even a third look as the boldness, the strength and pure simplicity of the woman in the picture calls out to you demanding your attention. I fell in love at first site (La Malinche). Sandy Skoglund, Fox Games, 1989. Sculpture in clay. Featured at The Denver Art Museum. Denver, Colorado. Sandy Skoglund was born September 11, 1946. She currently resides in New York City where she has a studio and is a teacher at Rutgers University. Most of her childhood was spent in California, where her later work would get its influence. Sandy earned a B. A. from Smith College, where she studied art history and her M. A. and M. F. A. she received from the University of Iowa. She also studied art history at the Sorbonne and Ecole du Louvre in Paris, France during her junior year of college. It was in the late 70’s that Sandy took a new direction when commercial image making inspired her. Her work normally features Surrealist tableaux composed of bright colors and numerous recurring objects. Sandy Skoglund has had her work has been displayed in numerous museums around the country; such as Dayton Art Institute, Denver Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Some of her most famous work is the Radioactive Cats and Revenge of the Goldfish. Sandy will create an environment like Fox Games and then photograph the piece and then exhibit the piece along with the photograph (The Free Library)(Fantasy). The genre of this sculpture: Fox Games, is Modern/Contemporary. The piece or pieces are of gray foxes in red rooms looking for food and playing amongst each other. Three characteristics to describe the piece would be form, texture and color. The form in this piece is the playful foxes, which are made of clay and are three dimensional and they are the visible elements of the piece. These pieces being of clay sculpture also show the texture of the pieces by touching the rough and smooth surfaces. You can also get the visual feel of the texture just by looking at the pieces. You see the lines and carvings in each piece. You can see where the pieces are smooth and rough in the texture of the clay. One of the most visual aspects of these pieces of art is the color and contrast. She uses the color red to represent the fear (the nightmare) while she uses the contrast of the soft gray foxes to give you more of the feeling of calmness (dreamlike). It leaves you feeling a bit confused by which message she is trying to convey. Sandy’s work represents surrealism and conceptualism as stated by The Nelson-Atkins Museum. The Nelson-Atkins Museum goes on to say that the pieces are humorous and inviting into almost a dreamlike interpretation but at the same time representing your worst nightmare (Nelson-Atkins).