Museum Essay #2

         British artist Anne Seymour Damer’s Shock Dog (nickname for a dog of the Maltese breed) is a representational three- dimensional sculpture. It gives a view of a naturalistic figure of a life-size, small dog (Maltese breed) sitting on a round shaped mat on the square shaped base and it seems as if the dog is looking up directly at the spectator. There is an inscription of Damer’s name in Greek on the round shaped flat surface. The whole thing is made with beautiful white Carrara marble probably in 1782. Texture is real here. It’ll feel rough if you touch it. The overall depiction of hair of the dog has organic shapes which almost makes a few repeated patterns. The area around the sculpture can be considered negative space.

 
        French artist Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players (1890-2) is a two-dimensional oil painting measuring twenty-five and three-fourth inches by thirty-two and one-fourth inches on canvas.  In the foreground of this representational painting, three men are sitting playing cards looking downwards. They look studious in their game.Their hands, a pipe and a few cards are seen on the light blue colored table. Only one wooden chair is visible in the left. The men are wearing winter coats and hats. The color of the coats are brown, white and dark blue from left to right. The man in the left is wearing a brown hat, and others are wearing black hats. In the background, a man immersed in smoking pipe stands in a dark blue coat and black hat, also looking downwards. He is wearing a red shirt underneath. There are four pipes hanging on the wall. A brownish yellow curtain is also visible there. Texture is implied on the curtain and the clothing they are wearing. The colors have a cool tone. Negative space visible under the table and the chair. The figures of the men are stylized. Their heads look small in proportion to their bodies. 
 

        Irish artist Thomas Frye’s Girl Holding Up Her Necklace (1760) is a first state mezzotint print measuring nineteen and three-fourth inches by fifteen and seven-eighth inches sheet clipped to plate line. The focal point of this two-dimensional artwork is a girl holding her pearl necklace with her right hand looking away from the viewer. She has her hair parted from the middle and in a perfect braided bun. There is a feather looking object or jewelry seen on the parted middle portion of her hair. This representational print is all about the range of lights and dark. Value is suggested on her hair, face, neck-line and back of her head. Surface quality should be rough as it’s a mezzotint print. The background has diagonal lines which suggest a calm atmosphere. Outline is clear. This is an idealized portrait probably of a rich girl in fancy clothing.
  

         I found this artwork in the Islamic Art section. This is a fourteenth century ceramic mosaic panel from Spain, Córdoba. Met Museum has it on loan from The Hispanic Society of America, New York, NY. This two-dimensional glazed earthenware is made of small ceramic tiles individually trimmed into interlocking geometric shapes mostly octagram or eight-sided star polygon. Octagram’s use as a religious symbol stretches back in history to ancient civilizations. It is a symbol of wholeness, rebirth and cyclical infinity. The color of tiles used here are mostly complementary: orange and blue. There is also a few black long hexagon shapes visible. There are three square shaped tiles in the upper part of the panel. The middle square tile is turquoise and others are green. All the shapes are outlined with white lines excluding the square shapes. The interlocking white tiles make me think of piping system.

        Shift (2012) is a beautiful representational photograph by American artist Erica Baum. It is a two-dimensional inkjet print. Erica used slightly parted pages of some book to transform them into this ready-made scene. The parted pages of the book look like vertical striations in both sides; left and right. These vertical striations are of yellowing margins and green-edged gilding. They are working as a frame for the middle portion where fashion model Brigitte Bardot castes a sidelong gaze. It seems as if she’s peeking through the frame. The middle part is black and white where value is observed on her face. There are negative spaces visible behind her and in between pages in the left. Texture of this realistic photograph is implied. It looks coarse but it is smooth.

        The Metropolitan Museum of Art is probably the biggest museum in the world and it has the most variation in collections. All these different collections fulfill the need of art. This is the most important reason they are here. I roamed around and got lost in this amazing museum and the wide range of artworks, sculptures, photographs, ancient history left me amused and wondering. The five different works I chose deserve to be in the museum because they took me to a trip in the past, made me feel weirdly amused and taught me how different artworks can be.