Wadsworth Antheneum 11/21/09

Me and my daughter standing in front of the Wadsworth Antheneum.

This last set of photos are of a picture that showed a mythological woman who had chosent o die in the place of her husband. Hercules, being moved by the woman's love for her husband, struggles with the angle of death.

This piece illustrated a man who was enamored by the women in the house. The detail and color in the painting was fabulous!

Yale Art Gallery 11/17/09

This week I visited the Yale Art Gallery. I have been to this gallery several times, and was shocked to find a piece that was so captivating that I was exhausted after I reflected on it. The piece that I chose to focus on was entitled “Drug Addict” created in 1974 by Duane Hanson. This piece was captivating, and I will focus more closely on it later in the paper.

Duane Hanson was born in 1925 and died in 1996 at the age of 71. He was an American artist, born in Minnesota, but spent the duration of his life in southern Florida. Hanson‘s art career began to gain attention when he started creating figures grouped in tableaux. Many of his pieces featured controversial themes like, police brutality and abortion, and highlighted issues that arose from the riots of 1960. Beginning in the 1960s, Hanson’s sculptures began to be more lifelike. His works, which were cast from actual people, were made of fiberglass and then reinforced with fiber resin. They were then painted to create complexions, blemishes, and other body marks. Hanson’s works were so shockingly lifelike that they received a strong response from critics. His work is grouped in the pop art and hyperrealism genres, and has been compared to 19th century French realists such as Honore Daumier and Jean Francois Millet.

The piece, “Drug Addict” was mesmorizing. The life size creation of a young heroin addict shooting up was shocking real. Only as I moved closer to the figure could I see that the figure before was not flesh. The positioning of the figure added to its realism. The figure was sitting upright leaning against the hard cold cement wall of the gallery and sitting on the black marble floor. The head was cocked upward with a slightly opened mouth. The eyes were closed. In one hand the figure held a syringe. The other hand was empty; however, just above the elbow was a fabric belt that was wrapped around the arm. The figure looked like it had just shot up. To add to the effect, a dirty metal spoon, matches, and a piece of paper laid in between the figures legs on the floor. The man wore real clothes. They were dirty and tattered. The shirt up off the figure in an easy way. The pants and shoes fit. The complexion was pale. The skin was dirty and was not clean shaven. The beginnings of a beard and mustache were taking shape. There were moles on the face and by the mouth. I could see the raised veins in the arms, and noticed track marks on both forearms. The hair looked real and the placing of the eyelashes were so deliberate, not a single one looked out of place.

Since I work with families effected by addiction all day, this piece hit close to home. The expression of false satisfaction was glearingly true. I found myself saddened by what I was witnessing. Many of the children that I advocate for in court see this. They see their parents shooting up, or if their parents are aware enough of their young ones, they hide themselves in the bathroom, and sit on a floor simlar to the one I was standing on. The cement wall and cold black marble added to the reality of this piece. Drugs are cold. The effects of drugs are cold. There is nothing pretty about drugs. There is nothing nice. When looking at the figure, I could appreciate the perfect imperfections. Our skin is not normally airbrushed, like we see in the magazines. It is blotchy and has marks. Furthermore, the positioning of our body is not stiff like a mannequin. The artist did an amazing job by creating the realistic way a person sits. I was floored!

Many of the other pieces in that section in the Yale Art Gallery were great. There were digital creations that were displayed on televisions, videos that were in conjunction with physical pieces, ones built of furniture, and manipulated photography series. The other sections in the gallery highlighted asian and african art, other types of pop art, and european art. The african art section was quite intriguing. The masks, made mostly of wood, were elaborate in their carvings and in the additions of fabric or straw. If I could highlight other pieces in the musuem, I would certainly highlight a mask from that section.

Metropolitan Museum of Art 11/12/09

The piece that I selected to focus on during my trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was one that caught my attention as I was moving from room to room. The sculpture sat in the recesses of an angular foyer. The soft lines of this piece coupled with the shadows that were cast from the ambient lighting allowed me to see its apparent beauty. There was very little displayed as an explanation for this piece entitled, “Latona and Her Children, Apollo and Diana.” The artist is William Henry Rinehart who was born in 1825 and died in 1874. He sculpted this piece in 1874 out of marble; however, another version was done in 1870. Though, the museum did not display much about the piece, I found that it represents the mother love with her children.

There were other sculptures done with Latona and her children as the subjects. The first ones were done in the 1600’s. The first artist to use Latona and her children as subjects was Gaspard Marsay. He was commissioned to create a fountain for the Palace of Versailles by King Louis XIV. Apparently King Louis was enthralled by the mythological story of Latona and found parraleles between her story and his.

Latona, a mythological figure, was said to be the first wife or possibly the mistress of Jupiter, the king of the gods. Jupiter married Juno, and Juno found herself very jealous of Latona and her children. Once Jupiter was married, Latona and her children had to find a place where they could establish for themselves. On their journey, Latona and her children became very thirsty and when they came across a lake, Juno muddied the waters so they could not drink from it. Jupiter found out about this misdeed against his mistress and knew that he could not punish her since she was his wife. In his quest to show honor to his mistress, he turned Juno’s informants into frogs. It’s said that King Louis had a mistress and erected a sculpture of Latona and her children in his palace courtyard, to warn his countrymen of their punishment if they were ever to harm his own mistress.

This particular sculpture of Latona and her children shows the peace and ease of this life. Latona’s facial expression seems pleasant and she seems to delight in her children sleeping close by. The children seem to have no worries, and I can imagine that they did not want for anything as the children of the king of the gods, Jupiter. The structure of the sculpture is made of marble which allows for the smooth lines of this piece. The Grecian draping that is sculpted as clothes are distinct and portrays a lightness of the fabric. Rinehart captured the facial expressions of all three subjects and made the body figures very realistic. The medium lended itself to creating the smoothness of skin.

The most fascinating thing that pulled me into this piece was the positioning of the two children. The children are wrapped in each other in their mother’s lap. They seem so at ease, and the boy who is reclining seems to holding his sister on his own lap. This positioning made me think of my niece and nephew who are close in age. The older one, the boy, is very vigilant with his sister, and my niece depends on him for the security and surety that he provides. The artist does a great job of communicating that to the viewer.