Finding the Story

Finding the Story: Take Two

Let's see how this round goes...

Edouard Manet was a French Painter of the 19th Century. His painting The Luncheon on the Grass (1863) was of great controversy and rejected by the Paris Salon. Today it marks one of the beginnings of modern art.

The painting features a woman lunching in the nude along side two fully dressed men. There is another woman in the background. Manet pairs an unconventional approach to this painting, with blatant influence from older and notable works of art.
The pose of the three lunching on the grass is taken directly from the etching done by Marcantoni Raimondi, Urteil des Paris (1515). This etching was done from a drawing of Raphael's.


This painting was met with such controversy and rejected from the Salon for a few reasons. One was the manner in which Manet completed the painting, while still incorporating such classical works of art. Besides the reference to Raimondi, is a traditional still life in the left bottom corner, and a shocking new take on a nude figure. The strokes of the painting are broad and appear “unfinished” especially in the background, which gives the background a flat appearance. The entire scene appears unreal. It is set outdoors, but the lack of depth and unnatural lighting creates the sense of a studio setting made to resemble the outdoors.

But the more prevelant reason it was met with such controversy was the nude woman. This was by no means the first time Paris had seen a nude woman painted, but it was the manner in which she was presented. She was not drawn out to represent virginity, or even to represent her beauty. But she sits, unflatteringly, amongst two men fully clothed. She stares directly at the viewer and is unapologetic about her nudity. She is assertive, and a woman, especially naked one, should not be assertive. She should be submissive and to be taken at will. It was a disgrace to see such a display in a painting.

The viewer's eyes are automatically drawn to the naked woman. The lighting throughout the entire painting is unnatural, adding to the illusion of a studio set scene. However, the light on the woman is even more so than the rest. The light is stark and draws our eyes toward it. She seems to even glow. The light on the woman makes her appear drawn out from the rest of the painting. Not only does the background seem like an artificial studio backdrop, but even the men she is sitting with seem to be on a seperate level to her.


Our eyes are not only drawn in by the light and the color, but by the pictorial movement as well. The trees bring our eyes down. Various other objects, like the man’s arm, leg and small shadows coming off of the tree act ass little arrows directing us right to her. The mass of the tree on the right and the branch in the upper left corner also direct our attention toward the woman. The grouping of clothing and fruit do as well. And although the men seem to not be paying any attention to her it does appear the woman in the background is staring directly at her.

Manet does not only bring our attention directly toward the woman, but he does so by still retaining a balance and sense of harmony. He does this through the positive objects in the painting, such as the trees, as well as with the shapes created by the negative space. The angles of the trees are all balanced out by a repetition and also variation of the direction the angle is in. The curve of the woman's back is also replicated in some of the trees, which continues to hold balance, as well as draw even more attention to her. The still life in the bottom left hand corner is balanced by the boat in the background. Just as the tree in the foreground on the right is balanced out by the tree all the way to left. These two pairs also balance eachother, and the cross lines produced by them, again, focuses our attention to the woman in the center.

And finally he retains harmony through the placement, repetition and the shapes created in the negative space. The shape in which we find the main subjects is a triangle. This triangle is the basic shape our eyes follow when we follow the lines that dictate the pictorial movement. This basic triangular shape is then repeated many times throughout the painting in its negative space. This Holds regularity, and balances the negative space against the positive space by giving it shape, as opposed to just open and ambiguous space.

Almost Crimes-Guerilla Art

Our first project-Guerilla Art.

For this project I made two stencils. It was tedious, but quite fun, and something I have wanted to get into for a while now.
Both are in response to upcoming trends in my generation. One generally strong and prevailing theme of today is the increased amount of physical and sexual ambiguity. I think this is wonderful. It is absurd to encase ones appearance within the set out parameters of "feminine" and "masculine." The words masculine and feminine are not synonymous with male and female. Male and female has to do with genitalia. Masculinity and femininity are traits, and really have little to do with one's genitalia. It is just as usual for a man to possess feminine traits as it is for a woman. So for my first stencil I have two faces about to kiss. They could be two girls, they could be two boys, they could be a boy and a girl. The point is you can't be really sure. Whatever the case is, they're here, they could be queer (they may not who knows), and they want to share their love with the world.
For the time being they are just up on my door. Lame, I know. I was shy and nervous with the first ones. I assure you though I had way too much fun with the second to not continue a bit in the guerilla art spectrum. If I put anymore up I'll try to put them up here.

The second stencil was a response to the marketed version of individuality that is prevalent today. It's poking fun at an image, which was originally employed for individuality, but has now become a gross overproduction by today's market.

This one was placed on strange grey box inhabiting trendy street corner in Brookline.


I forgot on the first to take a picture of the environment pre stenciling, so here is another placed on trendy dumpster located in trendy Boston...
It's a bit unclear by the hasty paint job, but the stencil says "Marketable Individualism"


These were supposed to be up prior to this date, but due to misunderstanding on my part they were not. Ah well, so much for punctuality.

I Am Blogged

I HasBlogsNow. A day late and a dollar short, but nonetheless here it is, my first blog/blogpost.