Symbolism In Audrey Flack's Painting, Marilyn Monroe

For my term paper I decided to go to the Cantor Museum in Palo Alto, and I chose to focus on two portraits of women from two distinct time periods. First, I decided on the portrait of Margaret Blagge, Wife of Sidney, 1st Earl of Godolphin. This portrait was painted by the artist Matthew Dixon in 1675, in the Baroque period of art. The portrait of Margaret Blagge was done in England, and it was painted as an oil on canvas. The second artwork I chose to compare was the Portrait of Sally Fairchild by John Singer Sargent. This portrait was done from the year 1884 to 1887 during the Realism movement in art. The portrait of Sally Fairchild was painted in the United States of America, and was painted as an oil on canvas. When comparing these two portraits

The background of the painting is very dark and a reflective of the dark times some women were in during this time. The dark background and the subject’s serious persona give the painting a mysterious sensation. Mrs. Richard Skinner’s clothing pieces are very light colors which give a light-hearted ambiance to the painting but the dark background, dim lighting, and the dark table that lay before her completely alter the mood of the painting. The lighting of the painting, therefore, emphasizes Mrs. Richard Skinner even more due to her dark surroundings, which is another example of Copley’s attempt at accentuating her womanhood. Some of the props in this painting elaborate and stress her sexuality even further. The subject is holding a flower in the painting; flowers are symbolic of purity and femininity. The way the subject is holding the flowers is to be noted as well. She is holding

blows her hair is a bit theatrical. Her yellow dress also makes her the eye catcher that draws us to this painting, thus intensifying the overall eroticism of the woman we are

For the second art encounter I visited the Museum of Art at BYU and viewed the Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso print exhibit.There were several other modernist artist on display in the exhibit, such as Lichtenstein and Kalloeitz, however Warhol and Picasso were the artist that are most talked about in this course. Both of these artist are considered to be modernist, however their works look very different. Andy Warhol’s iconic Marilyn Monroe print was on display showing the industrial, pop side of modernist art. Warhol’s art imitates the negative social norms of the time. His lowd use of neon color and choice of subject add to the growing popularity of veneration of celebrities. He also was one of the first artist to mass produce his art, adding

She was able to create perplexing pieces of work; by adding color shadow and lighting. Her flower paintings had lots of details; some thought that they were erotic.

However most people don’t believe this to be true; as Diane Arbus exclaimed, her photos sought to capture “the space between who someone is and who they think they are,” she used photography as a way of bringing us together and revealing the beauty in everyone. Many of her supporters like Sandra S. Philips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco museum of modern art says “She was a great humanist photographer who was at the fore front of what has become recognized as a new kind of photographic art.” Instead of simply taking photos of sunsets, flowers, and rainbows, Diane Arbus set out and strove for more. She strove to make a

Before starting this project, I knew very little about photography, photographers, or exactly how much impact photographical images have had on our society. I have never taken a photography class, or researched too in depth about specific pictures or photographers. This project has allowed me to delve deeper into the world of photography in order to understand just how much influence pictures can have over society’s beliefs, emotions, and understandings’. I have have chosen two highly influential photographers, Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange, who I have found to both resonate with me and perfectly capture human emotions in way that moves others.

Audrey Flack was born in New York in !931, where she still resides. Using her drawings as a young Jewish girl growing up during the holocaust and WWII she was able to escape reality for a bit. Her father continued to feed into her love of art by giving her a 35mm camera. Photography became another element within her artwork, becoming even more apparent later on in life. At the age of 14 the School of Art and Music in New York became her second home after she passed a exam she was sure she would fail. Her inspirations for her

The portrait is displayed horizontally with a gold trimmed frame. The subject is a female that looks to be in her early 20’s sitting upright on a large brown chair. If the viewer travels up the painting the first indication of the woman’s class is her satin, blue dress. The saturated blue shines and falls in the light like water. Paired with the dress are her exceptionally detailed endings to her sleeves. The lace is even painted as though it is translucent, allowing a little of the blue dress to show through the sleeve. Flowers throughout history have symbolized innocence of a woman and her virginity. The repeating theme of flowers, in the sleeve cuffs and ribbon) in the woman’s attired suggests her purity or innocent nature. Another very details section of the painting includes the corset/torso details. The sewing suggests texture in the torso with small beading in between. Towards the top of the chest in the center, the female seems to bear an extravagant, ribbon piece with a tear drop bead in the center. The light pink

Some of the most influential women in Vermeer's life were his older sister, and his mother in law. These women were viewed as ambitious and brave, which is theorized to be Vermeer’s initial inspiration to accurately paint women in their natural state. But he did not start painting women in this light in the beginning of his career due to the pink and orange hues that he used, the

No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman's photography is part of the culture and

While the painters after the Impressionism period were collectively called the “Post-Impressionists,” the label is quite reductive. Each artist had their own unique style, from Seurat’s pointillism to Signac’s mosaic-like divisionism, Cezanne, Émile Bernard, and others. These artists were all connected in that they were reacting to the aesthetics of Impressionism. Two of the more influential painters from this movement were Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, who aimed to connect with viewers on a deeper level by access Nature’s mystery and meaning beyond its superficial, observable level. However, each artist’s approach to achieving this goal was different. In close examination of Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Paul Gauguin) and Paul Gauguin’s Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les misérables), one may clearly see the two artists’ contrasting styles on display.

When I examine the iconic painting “Gold Marilyn Monroe”, I viewed dazzling art elements that consist of lines, shapes, texture, values, and color. Firstly, the lines within the painting posses thickly curved, curled, diagonal, and straight lines. The curled lines are prominent on the hair of Marilyn. Additionally, the thickly curved lines the bring out the facial features can be viewed on Marilyn’s hair, eyebrows, eyes, forehead, and lips. Moreover, the diagonal line can be seen on the sides of Marilyn’s jawline. Also, the straight lines are noticed on the left side of Marilyn’s neck, her lower chin and the framing that encapsulates Monroe’s face. Secondly, the shapes of the painting are organic because Marilyn’s face is natural and symmetrical

An artist Audrey Flack created a painting in 1987, Wheel of Fortune, that is an artwork that puts out the presence of death and tarot cards to create a message of that fate is apart of the cycle of life that is all played out by chance (page 16). The artist attended the Cooper Union to study art and years later she was recruited by an artist. Flack graduated from Yale University, and while attending that university she mainly focused on doing abstract expressionist. Flack was the first to project a photo into a painting called photorealism painting, she started a movement. Other styles of artwork she worked with are graphic realism, new realms, and sculptures.

Celebrated artists Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun and Marianne Von Werefkin have contributed to the evolution of two different art styles and the appreciation of female artists. Le Brun’s Self Portrait in a Straw Hat exemplifies the prominence of Neoclassicism and the Rococo movement during eighteenth century France. Von Werefkin established herself as an Expressionist in her Self Portrait in the rise of the twentieth century. Both representational pieces provide the viewer with a candid insight into the temperament of each artist, reflecting their artistic influences and the time period in which the artworks were created. Consequently this has affected their application of colour, tone and composition, creating two distinctive self portraits.