Preview

George Gittoes, white earth

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
450 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
George Gittoes, white earth
George Gittoes' art piece, White Earth is a dramatic oil on canvas depicting the political corruption a 15 year old boy had been pressured into.

Gittoes, the renowned Australian artist has always created his pieces by inspiration of his life experiences. He has an immense passion for art and humanity so being an eye witness to suffrage of humanity all over the world is conveyed in his work.

White Earth is another successful and captivating work. Gittoes was witness to an Afrikaaner - Weerstands Beweging (AWB) Rally in South Africa of April 1994, where he saw a 15 year old boy submerged in the propaganda of Nazi in youths. The young boy gets on the stage silent with resentment as photographers begin to infinitely snap at him. Gittoes' sympathy for the boy is emphasized as he retells them "raping and torturing" him. Too young to understand the political corruption he is stuck between being used by the ABW and being tortured by the international press.

Trapped, as the victim of this controversial saga, his only escape is to close his eyes, however it is impossible to close his to ears to the Hate Speech delivered by Terre Blanche. Gittoes sympathized for his entrapment and compelling distressed state, so he depicts and dramatically distorts this experience through the art piece, White Earth.

Being one to love expressionism, his passion for it gives meaning to convey and express emotions and feelings. He exaggerates the boy giving specific detail and emphasis to his ears. The distortion of his ears expresses the impossibility of closing his now larger ears. The figure to the right is racist Terre Blanche driving the propaganda into him, taking advantage of his naïve and young position.

Distinct lines and vibrant colours on the boys face determine his resentment and struggle in his entrapment of what is around him.

Once again George Gittoes amazes us with his brilliant techniques and skills. The strokes and their positioning all are part of his meaning in this sad

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Del Kathryn Barton

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Using herself and her children (Son, Kell and Daughter, Arella) as the focal point of the painting, it captures a maternal, motherhood like feeling by adding abstract line contours and detail to the painting setting off a free motion throughout the composition. The texture and tone used for the figures are soft, light and pale. Detailed patterns and abstract line work are used in the foreground to emphasize the figures.…

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Peter Goldsworthy’s novel Maestro is substantially autobiographical. Through the development of the narrator Paul Crabbe from adolescence into maturity, Peter recalls aspects of his own experiences growing up in Darwin. Goldsworthy employs a musical style throughout the novel to engage the audience with visual imagery. The style features used to create characterisation and descriptive settings are all distinctively visual and help to shape the meaning of the text. Similarly Pablo Picasso used imagery to create meaning and shock viewers through his painting Guernica. The painting is Picasso’s protest against the massacre and suffering of innocent civilians during the bombing of the small town of Guernica by the Germans during the Spanish Civil War.…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The painting consists of a very blue color scheme throughout. This is, in most cases, associated with coldness and sometimes death. The dark blue background also, as mentioned above, provided almost an extreme contrast. In addition to the background, her hair also dark. Had he chosen blonde hair, the contrast would dulled. Most importantly, the girl’s eyeliner very much brings out her eyes. It is strategically placed on her waterlines rather than lids to accentuate her eyeballs and provide incredibly sharp corners to her eyes. The coldness and “deathly” tone of the painting manifests an eerie and dangerous theme. The contrast and accentuation of the girl and her eyes inclines the audience to be intrigued by the girls fearlessness in a cold and deathly…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    George Gittoes

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages

    On the work, the boy’s ears are distorted, expressing the impossibility of closing them now and not listening to the lies he is immersed in. By using blue and yellow dividing lines in the background it separates the boy from the two official behind him giving orders and leading him.…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Virgin Luxuries Analysis

    • 1357 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Two relationships of power are depicted in the painting entitled “Virgin Luxuries”: sexual power and physical power. In the first panel of the painting, a well dressed white man embraces a female African-American woman, presumably a slave. The way in which enslaved woman gazes admiringly - somewhat praisingly - into the white man’s eyes and the way in which she submissively entwines herself around him illustrates the white man’s sexual power over the black woman. In a parallel scene, a white slave owner is shown aggressively beating his slave with a cane. The white man’s expression is vivid and his stance is open and menacing. By contrast, the black man is virtually faceless, positioned with his back to the audience, and his hands held upwards in fear. These elements combined epitomizes the physical power that the white man possessed over the black slave.…

    • 1357 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Bronwyn Oliver Case Study

    • 1989 Words
    • 7 Pages

    2. How does the work attempt to express the personal views of the Artist? The artwork automatically portrays that the artist likes to play around with her artworks, and doesn’t make them in an ordinary manner. It shows us the abstract and unusual side to art.…

    • 1989 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dead tree trunks rise from the muddy ground and clouds of smoke obscure the view of the background. The searchlights piercing through the murky clouds give off a sense of lostness, but may also signify that among the barren wasteland, there is still a sign of humanity and hope. This painting exceptionally illustrates how the war changed beautiful, innocent meadows and fields into grotesque and frightening wastelands.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    End Barrio Warfare

    • 935 Words
    • 4 Pages

    This graphic piece is in poster form and features a bleeding corpse and two figures fighting behind him, one being a police officer. At the top of the poster is crying feminine eyes overlooking the scene. The subject of the poster is the violence in barrios. A barrio is a Spanish-speaking section of a city or town that stereotypically has a high poverty and violence rate. Many drugs make their way into barrios and for some, crime is a way of life. Cervantez captures the reality of life in a barrio by showing death and sadness. The poster implies that the police officer was the gunman who shot the bleeding corpse, whose blood surrounds the scene and spells out “End Barrio Warfare.” The crying eyes seem to be a reference to “The Great Gatsby,” a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In “The Great Gatsby,” the main character Gatsby is shot and killed and the end of the book. Cervantez uses graphic imagery in this poster to inspire citizens of the barrio to stop the…

    • 935 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The main colours in the visual are orange, red, and black. These colours suggest emotions and mystery. The colour red suggests anger and rage, which is possibly felt by the main character at one point in the novel, and the colour black can create a sense of mystery. By just the colours, we can know that there is going to be mystery, anger and rage revealed in the novel. The distinction between the light and the dark gives a sense of mystery and foreboding.…

    • 424 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Despite the boy’s conformity to white rule, he continues to struggle in discovering his dignity. The repetition of the word “blood” serves as an important symbol for the boy’s dignity; it signifies the pride he…

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The young child’s expression is something that is interesting to analyze because one does not quite know what he is expressing. It seems to be a mixture of confusion and nonchalance which contrasts to what the audience must feel when they look at the photo. The picture evokes wonder, awe, and curiosity, emotions that starkly contrast the boy’s aura of…

    • 515 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Brett Whiteley Essay

    • 1414 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Artists interact with the events and issues of their time and place and this is shown with Australian artist Brett Whiteley’s artwork series called “the Christie series”. Some of Whiteley’s artworks include “Head of Christie”, “Christie and Hectoria McLennan”, “10 Rillington Place” and “Christie and Kathleen Maloney”.…

    • 1414 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many artists apply rhetorical devices to their paintings in order to portray an important message. In this painting by Frances Stephenson Orr, she depicts her life through surrealistic symbolism and imagery to make the viewer understand her struggle and pain as well as her faith.…

    • 968 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Surrealist Art

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Max Ernst, an artist who helped establish the Dada movement created many pieces that were designed to portray thoughts from free association. There are many varieties of techniques formed during this style of Automatism. Ernst’s painting titled The Horde…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The most important element is how the shape of the human is faded and is being constricted. The lack of colour in the artwork shows the depression and loneliness of Aboriginal Australians who were separated.…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays