Three Art Analysis: Look and You Will Find

Raquel Barney
February 19, 2010
Three Art Analysis



One of the first pieces of art in The Art Institute that caught my eye was a Pierre-Auguste Renoir piece called Two Sisters. This French 1881 work of art took me back to my childhood. It reminded me of my two sisters and myself as we also had a similar photo taken. Just as the two young girls I the painting, we had a beautiful background with lots of color and we were all dressed in beautiful floral dresses, almost identical to one another. We looked like little sweet innocent porcelain dolls. As in this extraordinary painting of the two girls, who in fact are not related, the artist shows us beauty in the lives of children, in youth and in the spring time as well. The children in this piece possess a peaceful and relaxed mind as they sit along side the river. People for the most part are empathetic. The girls in the painting however, are elevated by their surroundings but at the same time, less involved with them. As I viewed this piece, I am informed of self and its unintentional acts of nature. I can feel the presence of joy not gestured or shown from self.

The woman in this next painting was sympathetically drawn away from the tunes she played with composure. As I often say, she is in her own world. During the mid-19th century, the piano was a popular instrument for domestic music making. The Woman at The Piano, displays an informal yet elegant and extravagant lady possessed by music. Comfortably, Renoirs young Parisinne is playing for an individual, herself and for a community, her family, who are not shown in the painting. She does not play for a formal audience. This 1875 piece shows the various personalities of self. It shows the calm and submissive side of self as well as the outgoing and aggressive side. The artist brings out a unique style of womanhood, as he plays in her casual robe d’interieur, with a confection of white diaphanous fabric over a bluish under-dress. The artist bluntly without words, reveals to us part of who the woman at the piano really is. He introduces us to her self, as shown through this one particular characteristic of her identity. She is without a doubt everything but cruel, unfriendly, vindictive, selfish, hideous or vengeful. She possesses an extreme amount of unexplainable cultural beauty.

When I seen this next piece, I almost wanted to have kept on walking, but the more I looked at it the more it made sense of something to me. Henri Fantin- Latour’s Still Life: Corner of a Table was very intriguing. I actually looked at this piece longer than any other one, because at first I did not notice anything intense about it. This elegant canvas of 1873 was the largest and most famous painting by the decade. As the delicate rhododendron blooms it reflects the influence of the Japanese Prints. With time, I clearly see self with the possession of independence, maturity and adulthood. From the formal place setting to the wine and glasses to the crisp white tablecloth, it reveals elegance, maturity, excitement, romance, responsibility as well as a social life. In which, self is portrayed through these fine characteristics, introducing an identity. The artist of this unique and questioned piece welcomes the emptiness of the mind to openly explore the various aspects within this piece. Because there is a vast openness for the viewers of this piece to expand on their imagination and what they see, the other in this piece is definitely that of whom you are not.