Saturday, September 29, 2012

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Trip Assignment

An Egyptian Peasant Woman and Her Child: 1869-70
Leon Bonnat 
Oil on Canvas
Mada Primavesi: 1912
Gustav Klimt
Oil on Canvas

Two paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art that I found very beautiful were An Egyptian Peasant Woman and her Child by Leon Bonnat and Mada Primavesi by Gustav Klimt. The subject of both these paintings were portraits that portrayed women but they showed them in different aspects of social class. Bonat conveys a sense of strength and dignity in mother while Klimt paints a wealthy young woman who seems to be intelligently gaze at the viewer. Both artist capture a moment which reveal the  a great sense of personality of the subject in the portraits. Both portrait were very powerful to me show two very different views of female strength and beauty.
Klimt uses line to capture form while Bonnat relies solely on value. Both painting are unified by the use of color. Bonnat use all dark and earthy tones creating a while Klimt uses bright pastels. Bonnat uses naturalism to create a realistic portrait. Distortion is used by Klimt in the background to create flowers and nonobjective designs. Both portraits use curvilinear lines to capture shape and form. In both paintings the subject of the portrait is the positive shape while the background is the negative shape.

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