Museum Essay #1

This work is Chitra Ganesh's Eyes of time. It is a mixed media wall mural. It has three parts to it. (I only have a picture of the middle part) The part on the very left is the face and left arm of a women holding something black over her right eye. The figure is made up of blue lines and none of it is colored in. Her fore arm looks to have stitches. Where her right arm should be there are many thin and sharp shards of mirror placed together in the form of little insect legs. The middle figure has six arms, three legs, and three breasts.The head looks like the clock above the information booth at Grand Central Terminal. The figure is wearing a skirt made up of severed hands that have red glitter on the ends to give the effect of blood. In one of the figure's hands is a sickle. The hair is made up something like wool. On the left side the wool is shaped to spell out words like "the haunted" and "knowing" and connects to the figure in the left part of this piece. The figure on the right side is the face of a women drawn with purple lines. She has gears and other mechanical objects coming out from the back of her head. It is connected to the middle figure by the string extending from the middle figure's hand to her lip. The background is made of negative space. The background is made up of the primary colors, the top is blue, the middle is yellow, and the bottom is red. The piece has both historic and modern parts to it. The middle figure looks like a deity while the figure on the right looks almost like a machine. It seems to tie together technology with ancient figures.

This is Kehinde Wiley's oil on canvas painting, Dogon Couple. It is based on the Dogon Couple sculpture. In this painting there are two African men sitting in chairs next to each other. The man on the right has his arm around the man next to him. They are wearing similar colors clothes. The man on the left is wearing a dark blue top with purple shorts. The man on the left is wearing the a light blue top with light lavender shorts. Even though the man on the left is wearing darker clothes, his sandals are white while the man on the right is wearing black sandals. The background is made up pattern of birds and vines. The contrast of the warm colored background to the cool colored clothes makes the figures stand out in this painting. I like the concept of representing past art with modern figures in this painting.