Essay #2

Piotr Uklański

Untitled (Joannes Paulus PP. II Karol Wojtyla), 2004

Photograph

This was probably my favorite piece I saw in the entire museum. The photograph is from a bird eye’s view and created by 3,500 Brazilian soldiers. Two of colors are earth tones, a lighter shade of brown and a darker shade of brown. The other most obvious color that makes up this picture is white. The soldiers have arranged themselves in the silhouette of Pope John Paul II’s head. The topless section of the soldiers represent the face of the pope, as the soldiers wearing white shirts represent the pope’s hair and clothes; zucchetto (hat) and mozetta (short hooded cape). There are also a few people scattered outside of the silhouette in different colors such as red, blue and black.

Cliff Lee (born Austria, 1951)

Pair of Prickly Melons, ca. 2008

Porcelain with incised and applied decoration under yellow glaze

These two sculptures of melons caught my eye by the texture they had. Beside each other are two bright yellow melons, the first round and the second one, to the right of that one is an oval melon which rises vertically. The groves have all around the melon run vertically as well, some lines are not evenly spaced out. The melons have stems that have a prickly texture, all of the mini spikes are pointing from different sides of the spiral stems. Now going to the texture of the melon itself, it looks very smooth as if they had a glossy finish.

Piotr Uklański

The Nazis, 1988

Chromogenic and gelatin silver prints

The variety of colors in this piece is very active. There are 117 small portraits of Nazi’s from television, and movies. It being made out of small rectangular portraits makes it all geometric and well aligned. Some are black and white colored, and scattered all around in different spots of the huge collage. There are tones of reds and blues/greens; reds usually being the colors of the faces and the blues/greens being the colors of the uniforms. One portrait in particular is all yellow towards the bottom of the installation, and a slightly duller yellow portrait of another Nazi under the entirely yellow portrait. The collage itself makes it look like something straight out of a comic book.

Claude Monet

The Path through the Irises, 1914-17

Oil on canvas

Claude Monet’s painting is a very calm with long strokes. There are two groups of purple flowers; irises, growing from the left and right side. Separating those two sections of flowers is a curly path which represents the dirt. The ground has a yellow and orange undertone with a few blots of dark red around. On top of the path is a blurry gray oval, which I would say is a random stone. Going back to the irises, they have long blue and green leaves that make it look like a bush full of flowers. The irises are not that detailed, but weird oval shapes that are lilac colored, with darker purple petals.

Claus de Werve (Netherlandish, ca. 1380-1439)

Virgin and Child, ca. 1415-17

Limestone with paint and gilding

This sculpture is a very huge, I would say almost life size representation of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus. It catches a moment with the mother and son as mother looks down at her son, and him looking back up at her. The sculpture is mostly a coppery color, as well as different shades of reds, oranges and browns. Starting with the Virgin Mary, she has wavy hair going past her shoulders, mid-sectioned. She is wearing a long dress which blends into baby Jesus’ clothes. She is holding a book in her lap, as well as Jesus. Jesus who is holding onto the slightly open book cover is too focused looking at his mother. He has small curls as hair, and is wrapped by the arm of his mother.

Overall, I really enjoyed the trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There were a bunch of art pieces from different time periods so it was pretty interesting. The works I picked are in the museum because they are all intricate in their own way. Some have made me feel more aesthetic emotions than others, but all amazed me. They were all made by a person who tried to either share a message or just share beauty of what they implied to represent.