Here's a art analysis paper I've been writing the past few days:
Art Analysis of:
Carlo Crivelli, Max Ernst, Shazhia Sikander
Carlo CrivelliMadonna and Child
Fifteenth century
21 cm x 15,5 cm
Carlo Crivelli’s painting Madonna and Child reflects the aristocratic values and convictions of the culture upon the religious iconography. Through the examination of the painting, the viewer can understand the relationships between the aristocratic class, the peasants and the place of religion in fifteenth century Italy.
Carlo Crivelli was an Italian painter born around 1435 in Venice. Most of his works were commissioned paintings for churches, many of which still remain in their original locations. Crivelli’s painting style was unique for his time, reminiscent of Byzantine or Gothic work. His work was highly detailed, something considered old-fashioned at the time. Crivelli painted in tempera but sometimes used plaster to build up texture onto the surface of his paintings to give dimension to special details, such as a drop of Christ’s blood or a tear of a mourner. Crivelli predominantly painted religious portraiture but is known for adding fruits into his paintings and dressing his subjects in thick expensive tapestries (Marche Voyager).
The painting Madonna and Child by Carlo Crivelli is a portrait of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus in the midst of a green landscape. The painting is done in tempera on panel, measuring 21 x 15.5 cm. The painting utilizes bright, vivid colors and careful detail to depict a common religious subject matter of the Madonna and Christ. Crivelli’s rendition includes ornate fifteenth century fashions and a lush country landscape.
The main focus of the painting is the two forefront figures, Madonna and Christ. Mary is depicted as a fair, beautiful, young, blonde woman. She is dressed in ornate, expensive looking clothing that is gold, deep red and green. She is draped in a gold fabric embroidered or patterned with a deep red floral pattern, the edges of the fabric are trimmed with stones or jewels and the underside of the cloak is bright green. She is wearing a veil while a crown of pearls and red jewels is perched upon her head. Crivelli has also added a jeweled iconic halo around the head of Mary and Jesus. In her right arm, she effortlessly cradles Jesus as a baby, while her left fingers playfully grab his bare toes. Her gaze is directed downward, towards the baby.
Baby Jesus is sitting in Mary’s arms. He looks more like an oddly proportioned miniature person than a convincing baby, but his tiny hands and fingers allude to his young age. It is difficult to determine the age of Jesus in the painting, he may range from a few months to a few years old, but it probably is not crucial in analyzing the work. He is dressed in blue and white flowing clothing with a golden, jeweled collar to match his mother’s. He is also fair and blonde as he gazes out into space, or perhaps more fittingly, he gazes intelligently into heaven. His left arm is down while his right hand is up, as if he was a waiter supporting a tray in a restaurant.
Madonna and the Child stand together behind a marble railing, with a book (presumably the Bible) resting open along the ledge. This is telling the viewer that Crivelli’s version of Mary is educated and literate woman. They stand between the ledge and what can be interpreted as either a brown pillar or a poorly fashioned fake tree. Upon closer examination, it is in fact a piece of cloth hanging, acting as a backdrop, tied up with red string. Three perfect apples and a cucumber hang from the top of the brown backdrop among some leaves. The apples are painted with such care that I am getting hungry looking at them. A little fake brown bird on a stick over Mary’s right shoulder, apparently attached to a stick from the bottom.
In the background, we see a green, lush countryside. A handful of peasants walk along paths in between bushes, trees, and hills. The sky is blue and partly cloudy as flying birds fill the air. It is obvious that Mary and her baby are far removed from the lives of the peasants in the yard. They are placed above and outside of the scene but have the luxury of simply enjoying the landscape. The combination of the figures and the distant background are two separate scenes that are merged together in this painting, to make a statement about the disparity between the aristocratic and peasant life.
The light source comes from two places in this piece. The lighting on Madonna and the Child comes from the front left side of the piece. The light source in the background comes presumably from the sun and is directly overhead for there are few shadows in the landscape. The background sky is confusingly dark at the top as if the sun was setting or a large storm is coming in, yet the light on the ground does not reflect this idea.
The perspective used in the piece as if the viewer is standing directly in front of the main subjects. The distance of the landscape in the background suggests that the viewer is above and far away from the ground, as if safely in a tall tower removed from the hardships of landlessness.
The painting is created with careful attention to detail. Although the human proportions are stylistically nonrealistic, the rest of the painting is realistic. The piece is balanced and is generally symmetrical with a traditional triangular composition extending from Madonna’s face, to her left hand to her right elbow.
This painting was commissioned as an altarpiece for a church in Northern Italy. (The painting remained in the church until the late 1860s when it was moved to a nearby museum.) In the fifteenth century, only wealthy aristocrats could dream of commissioning paintings so we can assume these were the types that wanted Crivelli to paint this scene. As a result, there is a striking resemblance between the Madonna and Child and the aristocrats that would have commissioned the piece. As humans, our theology often assumes God is like us, so it is fitting that these people chose to depict the Virgin Mary and Jesus as wealthy, educated, land owning, blonde, Europeans.
Max Ernst The Master's Bedroom, It's Worth Spending a Night There
1920
Collage, gouache and pencil on paper
16.3 x 22 cm
Max Ernst was a contributor to the Dada movement and had a monumental role in shaping and changing the art world as we know it today. His overall work is broad and somewhat complicated due to a career of constant experimentation and exploration between the real and surreal. Ernst’s piece The Masters Bedroom, It’s Worth Spending a Night There exemplifies this tension between reality fiction.
Ernst was part of a group of artists that championed Dadaism. Dada was a type of “anti-art”, anti-war movement during World War I, peaking between the years 1916 and 1920. The actual world “Dada” is unclear in origin, but it has been theorized as a nonsensical word, such as “blah, blah” (Canfield 53). Dada work consisted of visual art, poetry readings, public gatherings and other types of theatrical performances. These performances were unique in that they sought to create in a way that was outside of the forms of traditional art that was accepted by culture. Dadaists were concerned with protesting the mainstream political, cultural, artistic and social norms of the time, choosing chaos as one of their methods. They were shocking, controversial and obscene, yet created a platform for later art movements such as surrealism.
Ernst was a self- taught German artist. Throughout his career, Ernst experimented extensively with different subject matter and techniques. In 1925, he developed a style of painting called frottage, which involved using graphite rubbings of different objects as a reference for paintings. With the help of Joan Miro in 1926, he engineered two more techniques called grattage, which involves removing dried paint from a canvas and decalcomania, which involved pressing paint between two different surfaces. It is difficult to determine an overall theme or issue characteristic of Ernst; because his work was concerned with defying boundaries and creating a context of discussion individually separate to each piece (Spies).
This portion of the paper will analyze the piece by Max Ernst titled The Master’s Bedroom, It’s Worth Spending a Night There. The piece is collage, gouache and pencil on paper. My first response to the work is a sense of comfort and curiosity. The interior space is rugged, warm and cozy. The presence of the various animals are reminiscent of storybook characters in a home for animals rather that intruders into a human habitat. The work is intriguing, warm, and a little bit ridiculous.
The subject matter and composition of the painting The Master’s Bedroom, It’s Worth Spending a Night There is reasonably straightforward. It is an interior of a plain room with bluish-gray wood floors containing a bed, a table, a wardrobe, a tree, a sheep, a bear, a whale, a bat, a fish, and a snake. It is unclear what the animals are doing inside of this space. The animals and furniture seem to be placed in the room into three groupings forming a triangular composition. The whale, bat, fish, and snake reside in the bottom left; the sheep and bear at the top; and the bed, table and wardrobe at the bottom right. A grayish blur of a picture in a black-drawn frame hangs mysteriously on the wall. All of the objects are relatively unaware of the other objects as each exists individually throughout the composition. The bear is the focal point of the room, it is blue, is looking at the viewer, and is arguably smiling. The colors are muted and the overall surface has a worn or aged look. Each object is outlined and details are marked with fine black lines determining, fur, scales and leaves.
Throughout the composition, there are a variety of scale and perspective shifts, mainly in the furniture and also with the size of the animals. Ernst conveys depth in this piece through the backward slanting lines of the floorboards into the back of the room. Additionally, the scene is viewed from slightly above, as if the viewer is floating near the ceiling instead of standing on the ground inside of the room. The overall scale shifts give the image a dreamlike or surreal quality.
The surface and texture of the painting help explain the tone of the piece. The animals and furniture appear to be collaged onto a gouache painting. This would explain the scale shifts throughout the work, as the original source image was a specific size and Ernst used the images as-is. Although painted on smooth paper, the surface of paint itself looks somewhat rough or textured. The paint is not uniform in color or texture, as if reflecting peeling paint in an old bedroom. The paint also has many layers or hues within the flatness of each wall surface of floorboard. This style of paint application leaves the interior of the room looking worn, lived in and consequentially nostalgic.
The use of color further extends the dream-like quality of the piece. The colors are muted earth tones yet not close enough to be true to life. For example, the walls are tan, the bear is blue and the sheep is pink. The fictional use of color lends itself well to the symbolic imaginative side of this piece. For example, if the subject matter were to be an outdoor landscape, the sky would probably be predictable blue and the grass green.
This painting has no direct or harsh light source, yet the figures cast small shadows to the right, as if the light is coming in from the front left side of the painting. There are no windows or interior lights that clue the viewer into the time of day or source of lighting.
The title of this piece, The Master’s Bedroom, It’s Worth Spending a Night There is somewhat informative about the subject matter of the piece. It explains that we are looking at the Master’s bedroom and that there is something particularly special about it that makes it worth sleeping in. Additional information is given about the piece in the words written along the edges of the piece. The phrase on the top border of the piece is written in German. Translated, it means the same thing as the title, roughly, “it is rewarding to spend the night in the master’s bedroom”. The bottom border has a phrase written in French. Roughly translated this phrase reads “Max Ernst’s bedroom is worth spending a night there”. This line in French is crucial in understanding that Max Ernst is the master, and that the painting is of the artist’s bedroom. However, it is still unclear as to what Ernst is the master of. The painting contains collage elements from a children’s schoolbooks and a fairytale dreamland. Perhaps he is suggesting that he is a schoolmaster or has control over his own fictional dreamland. Whatever the case, and regardless of what makes the master’s room special, it’s worth spending the night.
Following in the often unexpected and confusing tradition of Dada, the piece The Master’s Bedroom, It’s Worth Spending a Night There is a classic example of art that is created in a time of artistic rebellion against traditional rules. The piece has comprehensive formal qualities, but it tends to be scattered or unclear in reference to concise meaning.
Shazhia Sikander Hood’s Red Rider #2
1997
vegetable color, dry pigment, watercolor, tea on handprepared Wasli paper
10 1/8 x 7 1/8 inches
The work of Shazhia Sikander creates visual conversation between the age-old eastern traditions of miniature paintings and that of the contemporary western art world. Through her unique use of her own visual iconography, she is able to explore the relationship between the east and west while telling a story of her history and her past.
Shazhia Sikander is a contemporary artist born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design where she received her MFA in 1995. Sikander specializes in traditional Indian and Persian miniature painting. She strives to combine her Eastern heritage with that of contemporary Western culture. She says that “Such juxtaposing and mixing of Hindu and Muslim iconography is a parallel to the entanglement of histories of India and Pakistan.” Her embodiment of both contemporary and traditional art forms has allowed her to be successful in today’s contemporary art scene. Her work extends beyond the traditional miniaturist painting into installation and mural art (Art: 21).
Sikander’s piece Hood’s Red Rider #2 presents a complex and fascinating visual display. The piece is painted on paper that is 10 1/8 by 7 1/8 inches, similar in size to this sheet of paper. Completed in 1997, the painting is done in vegetable color, dry pigment, watercolor, and tea on handprepared Wasli paper.
Upon first examination, the painting is chaotic yet whimsical. The center of the piece is a figure dressed in white. Surrounding the figure is an array of representational and nonrepresentational figures in a balanced yet chaotic composition. It is difficult to determine subject and meaning of much of this abstracted- surreal piece.
The center figure is a man dressed in a white robe with a white head wrapping, in what appears to be traditional Islamic clothing. He has a sash across his left shoulder wrapping around to his right him. His hands are painted in a circle. Inside the circle the hands are larger and the sleeves are a bluish color. The hands grasp an unidentifiable object resembling an animal that is brown and red, perhaps a dead bird, fish or large insect.
To the right of the white figure, is a flat red silhouette of a woman from the waist to the neck. The red figure has six arms, each are a different shade of red and are holding various objects: a winged horse with a halo, a turtle on a stick, the same unidentifiable object that the white figure is holding, an unidentifiable little black woman-fairy figure in an orb and some red lines that lead into the figure above. The red woman’s torso is sitting in a large green, striped, upside down triangle that could be related to a pocket. This triangular shape has an upside down pentagon on it with an unknown symbol, similar to a stamp or seal. A similar type of pocket-triangle is opposite this one on the left side of the piece.
To the left of the white figure is another striped, green, triangular pocket-like shape. This one has noticeable depth. Inside the pocket is a small, black, silhouetted figure standing on one leg, wrapped in white string. There is a winged horse with string draped on it on a patch on the pocket.
Above this figure is a similar black-silhouetted figure inside of a white circle. The figure is folded in half in an unnatural contortion.
The top-right section of the piece has a particularly odd figure, it is another red-silhouetted woman. Her feet melt into lines held by the hands below. The torso is dressed in white stripes and a white cape that covers the face. From the cape, poke fifteen hands, each holding various swords, axes, knives and other weapons. These red silhouette women with many arms remind me of the pictures I have seen of Hindu gods.
The background of the painting consists of blue, gray, periwinkle, tan, and red washes of paint. Throughout the composition are white, red and black dots. The dots show repetition and variety in the piece. The organic, random quality of the washy background is nicely contrasted to the geometric dots, circles and squares covering the piece. The flat composition is random and chaotic, yet is balanced.
This piece is done in a fantasy style similar to surrealism, and could be related to the dream inspired pieces of Frida Khalo. The piece uses a similar style language to that used in traditional Persian and Indian miniature paintings. The figures and objects in the piece seem to be symbolic and may reference Islamic and Hindu religious traditions. I am unfamiliar with both of these cultural and religious references and it is therefore difficult to decipher without background knowledge. Regardless of my cultural ignorance, the work holds a certain level of narrative ambiguity that is interesting.
In the PBS publication Art: 21, Sikander speaks about the imagery in her work, “It was all coming from my own sort of diary of developing forms and giving meaning to them, and meaning actually emerges by usage...For instance, with 'Hood’s Red Rider,' I did a series with children’s tales such as 'Little Red Riding Hood'..." (Art: 21). This leads me to believe that some of the imagery in her work tends to be more comprehensive as a whole. For example, similar red-silhouetted women are depicted in her 1996 painting Weapons and 2001 silkscreen A Float. As Sikander explains, the title “Hood’s Red Rider” references the children’s fairy tail of “Little Red Riding Hood”. As I look at the painting, with my current understanding of what I see, I cannot interpret a relationship between the painting and the fairy tail.
Sikander creates much of her work and iconography through her own lens that is determined by training, place and personal experience. Sikander’s formal training in Islamic and Persian Miniature paintings allows her to have a rich and intelligent understanding of painting, yet she chooses to use these images in a new way, by presenting them in a contemporary context to a Western audience:
“Sikander uses her training in both of these traditional art forms as a basis for the imaginary worlds that she creates. It is from the miniatures’ vast storehouse of figures, animals, mythological creatures, landscapes, design, and architecture that Sikander selects elements to be filtered through her personal iconography and political views. She often subverts traditional stereotypes and overlays her own figural images and narratives onto the traditional artwork’s subject matter” (absolutearts.com)
By creating work that moves beyond a well-worn, eastern cultural model of miniature painting and into another, opposite western context, Sikander is able to speak a new language of iconography to a fresh audience. Her work challenges stereotypes of women in the third world as well as explores the historical and current tension she feels as a Pakistani and as a Muslim woman in the west (absolutearts.com). By practicing the ancient practice of miniature painting in a contemporary context, Sikander’s work references a sense of religious and geographic cultural history.
Examining the piece, Hood’s Red Rider #2 in the context of the previously mentioned meshing of a personal invention of iconography, the work slowing begins to make sense in a new way. I can understand the background as a topographical map or as a setting for a narrative. The figures in the piece tell a narrative story, although the particular story is still unclear.
In conclusion, I am unable to decipher a clear meaning or message from this painting, yet it remains to be a fascinating display of imagery. The piece is influenced by both eastern and western cultures, yet speaks a type of iconic language unique to the art making of Shahzia Sikander. Sikander’s brilliant combination of different cultures, religions, backgrounds and images has allowed her to be a fascinating contemporary artist.
Works Cited
Absolutearts.com. Indepth Art News: “Shazia Sikander: Flip Flop” San Diego Museum of Art. Accessed November 11, 2008.
Art: 21. “Shazia Sikander Biography” Accessed November 2, 2008.
ArtinthePicture.Com: an Introduction to Art History. “Carlo Crivelli”. Accessed November 3, 2008.
Barnett, Sylvan. A Shirt Guide to Writing About Art. 22-83: 2008.
Camfield, William A. Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism. Houston: Prestel- Verlag, 1993.
Marche Voyager: Art & Architecture. “Carlo Crivelli”. Accessed November 6, 2008
Spies, Werner. Max Ernst: A Retrospective. Artchive. Accessed September 2008.
