How To Write A Contemporary Artwork Comparison And Analysis Essay
Contemporary Artwork Comparison And Analysis Art Essay
The two pieces that I have selected for comparison and contrast use similar photographic technology and content to evoke various feelings of viewers, this is one of the way in which contemporary visual arts show the incredible glamour to audience. Comparing “Fringe”(Belmore, 2007/2008) with “Self-Portrait/Cutting” by Catherine Opie in 1993, both works break the rule of thirds, making the female form in the center of composition. AS a result, instead of drawing viewers’ attention away from the body, these two pieces display a clear naked woman with back respectively. The most significant parallel between the two works lies in unlike pictures on their backs, even though the patterns are different: the first …show more content…
work shows a large wound , while the second work displays the cut as a stick-figure scene: a house, a cloud, two birds and two women holding hands together in the foreground, the wounds seem still weeping blood, which creates these photos vivid and reality，in turn encouraging different outcome to appreciators.
The overall effect for both pieces is to express a kind of life suffering, which torments the women’s both physical and psychological. In this essay, I will focus on discussing these two artworks in relation to the themes of identity and body.
“Fringes” by Rebecca Belmore is effectively “a life-sized photograph presented as a light box transparency”, allows the viewer explore the special identity of this thought-provoking photo. Taking a close view at it, the photograph portrays a naked woman lying horizontally on her side on the white pure sheet, the same color with pillow and cloth, which covers only her hips and buttocks. Horribly, there is a diagonal large gash which almost covers all of her back-across with exaggerated stitches on the wound, which seems like the rough wound would never be cured and leave its mark forever. What is more, can you image that you get a deep wound on your back-across and then you have to stitch up the wound a needle sew a needle. How tragic pain it is for the woman! She has to undergo twice sufferings. There are also bunches of regular bloodstains flow down from the woman’s back-across to the
pure and white sheet. These bloodstains have a stark contrast with the white sheet and give audiences the strong visual impact. Then, we can pay attention to the woman that covers only her bottom half, not expose everything, making audience feel like she is insecure. I observe that this woman put her hand tightly upon the only bed sheet which indicates the direct information that this woman is afraid of being completely naked. For the deeper meaning, the woman was hurt deeply. Not only the forever scar on her behind-across, but also the deep mental wound hints that she has experienced roots in her life forever. Referring to Belmore’s identity associated with her culture background, she expresses the complex conflict between her nature culture and the civilization that was forced upon her among most of her ambitious works. Specificity, this piece appeals to viewers with photographer’s perspective of the violence against First Nations women, which makes political identity. ”Identity politics is a term used to the beliefs and activities of those who target racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice and work for social rights and economic parity.”(Robertson&Macdeniel 48). Obviously, this work uses art mirror to implicate the struggling cultures, which reflects the unstable politics in the society because of multiculturalism. Furthermore, which group will be suffered under the unstable politics? The artworks tell us that it is the frail females that would be hurt under this terrible circumstance.
“Self-Portrait/Cutting” by Catherine Opie is heavily related with the photographer’s own experience. Looking at the piece, it shows a bare woman seated before a decorative green background with flesh bleeding cut on her back.
The cut image radiates all the painful suffering that the female has gone through. However, when I observe the cutting picture, I feel it is like a pure image that drew by a little kid; blue sky, white cloud and nice log cabin all of them give us a wonderful sense. The tragic cutting with the naïve picture has a vivid contrast in the composition. What’s more, the photo is self-portrait and expresses photographer’s inside wish of starting a family even though the reality is always cruel. Opie, who had recently broken up with her partner, presented all her pains and sorrowful with this surprising self-portrait. Compared with the politic identity of “Fringes”, “Self-Portrait/Cutting” shows the communal identity. “A contemporary artist who is interested in the theme of identity is asking not only, who am I as an individual? But, who are we as members of groups?”(Robertson & Macdaniel 45)In this photo, Opie faces the camera with her back and topless, showing a tough story filled with symbolic meaning, it reflects a wish of open lesbian communities which maybe cannot accept by a number of people now. Shot from the heart, this powerful image stands for whole lesbian communities to chase for the freedom of love and social respect about homosexual. The artist use the naïve picture to express this idea and also want to advocate the freedom and love of lesbian comes from our insides. Meanwhile, Opie also advocate the public to accept lesbian and don’t see them from the perspective of discrimination. Because of her efforts on the lesbian identity, there is no doubt that Opie wins her unique reputation in the field of contemporary art by exploring lesbian identity.
“We experience the world through our bodies. Our bodies’ sensory apparatus allows us to gain acknowledge about the world and to seek pressure and feel pain.”(Roberson &Macdaniel 87)Artists use bodies as a tool or material to address the spirits presented by the body and makes works more significant and has better visual feelings. For these two famous works, besides the theme of identity, they also embody the theme of body. The work, “Fringe”, uses woman’s short dark brown hair, skin with large wound, bloodstains and white cloth to describe a desperate woman filled with pains. Similarity, the second work, “Self-Portrait/Cutting”, adopts typical body elements, such as short brown hair and fat naked body showing cut image on the back to display a pathetic female who is eager for her family warm. “Not only as a body a site, it was an important source of information. Much of woman’s social status was seen as based in the body, so issues like violence, birthing, sexuality, and beauty were frequent subjects.”(Roberson & Macdaniel 87) In this case, both pieces use the image of female to state different subjects as aims; “Fringe” is intended to against unfair female violence due to multiculturalism, while “Self-Portrait/Cutting” tries to gain “normalizing” of lesbian communities. In some degree, both of the pictures use the same model, short hair women, backed naked bodies and wounds to express the severe social issues about females. I believe that the artist use the two compositions to try to arouse people attention to the vulnerable females. The publics maybe can notice the visible phenomenon like poverty staving and pollution happened in the society, however, some invisible problem like what I mentioned above, violence, birthing and sexuality are usually ignored by the society.
It has been interesting to explore two powerful contemporary visual artworks that have such different two ways to present the same themes of identity, as well as the theme of body. Frankly, the works use similar technologies and are both taken in the studio with mild lighting in order to give the audiences the similar visual feelings. The most engaging way in which they differ and compare at the same time lies in the contrasting types of identity displayed by the works, yet both conjure up strong feelings and emotions with the viewers. What’s more, most of the excellent compositions come from daily lives and then would reflect some significant social issues and there two excellent works also do very good jobs in this aspect. I learn a lot from these two compositions, I understand the unobserved female violence issue and the unfair rights and treatment for lesbian which, to tell the truth, I have never think about that before. According to the searching and study for these two artworks, I realize that there are so many issues I am utterly ignorant. Now, I am thinking that even though they are not happened to me now, should I pay more attention on them? I believe I will get the Affirmative answer. However, I still know that these two works are not only having the meanings that I can understand now. I believe that if we continue to explore the deeper meaning of these two compositions in the future, especially, when we connect these two pictures with some social issues like discrimination, inequity, rights for lesbians, we will be taken into another world and we can learn more about arts, society issues and some other fields in our lives.
Word Count:1,510
Work Cited
Roberson,Jean and Macdaniel ,Craig. “Themes of Contemporary Art: visual art after 1980”. NY: Oxford University Press. 2013.Print.
The two pieces that I have selected for comparison and contrast use similar photographic technology and content to evoke various feelings of viewers, this is one of the way in which contemporary visual arts show the incredible glamour to audience. Comparing “Fringe”(Belmore, 2007/2008) with “Self-Portrait/Cutting” by Catherine Opie in 1993, both works break the rule of thirds, making the female form in the center of composition. AS a result, instead of drawing viewers’ attention away from the body, these two pieces display a clear naked woman with back respectively. The most significant parallel between the two works lies in unlike pictures on their backs, even though the patterns are different: the first …show more content…
work shows a large wound , while the second work displays the cut as a stick-figure scene: a house, a cloud, two birds and two women holding hands together in the foreground, the wounds seem still weeping blood, which creates these photos vivid and reality，in turn encouraging different outcome to appreciators.
The overall effect for both pieces is to express a kind of life suffering, which torments the women’s both physical and psychological. In this essay, I will focus on discussing these two artworks in relation to the themes of identity and body.
“Fringes” by Rebecca Belmore is effectively “a life-sized photograph presented as a light box transparency”, allows the viewer explore the special identity of this thought-provoking photo. Taking a close view at it, the photograph portrays a naked woman lying horizontally on her side on the white pure sheet, the same color with pillow and cloth, which covers only her hips and buttocks. Horribly, there is a diagonal large gash which almost covers all of her back-across with exaggerated stitches on the wound, which seems like the rough wound would never be cured and leave its mark forever. What is more, can you image that you get a deep wound on your back-across and then you have to stitch up the wound a needle sew a needle. How tragic pain it is for the woman! She has to undergo twice sufferings. There are also bunches of regular bloodstains flow down from the woman’s back-across to the
pure and white sheet. These bloodstains have a stark contrast with the white sheet and give audiences the strong visual impact. Then, we can pay attention to the woman that covers only her bottom half, not expose everything, making audience feel like she is insecure. I observe that this woman put her hand tightly upon the only bed sheet which indicates the direct information that this woman is afraid of being completely naked. For the deeper meaning, the woman was hurt deeply. Not only the forever scar on her behind-across, but also the deep mental wound hints that she has experienced roots in her life forever. Referring to Belmore’s identity associated with her culture background, she expresses the complex conflict between her nature culture and the civilization that was forced upon her among most of her ambitious works. Specificity, this piece appeals to viewers with photographer’s perspective of the violence against First Nations women, which makes political identity. ”Identity politics is a term used to the beliefs and activities of those who target racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice and work for social rights and economic parity.”(Robertson&Macdeniel 48). Obviously, this work uses art mirror to implicate the struggling cultures, which reflects the unstable politics in the society because of multiculturalism. Furthermore, which group will be suffered under the unstable politics? The artworks tell us that it is the frail females that would be hurt under this terrible circumstance.
“Self-Portrait/Cutting” by Catherine Opie is heavily related with the photographer’s own experience. Looking at the piece, it shows a bare woman seated before a decorative green background with flesh bleeding cut on her back.
The cut image radiates all the painful suffering that the female has gone through. However, when I observe the cutting picture, I feel it is like a pure image that drew by a little kid; blue sky, white cloud and nice log cabin all of them give us a wonderful sense. The tragic cutting with the naïve picture has a vivid contrast in the composition. What’s more, the photo is self-portrait and expresses photographer’s inside wish of starting a family even though the reality is always cruel. Opie, who had recently broken up with her partner, presented all her pains and sorrowful with this surprising self-portrait. Compared with the politic identity of “Fringes”, “Self-Portrait/Cutting” shows the communal identity. “A contemporary artist who is interested in the theme of identity is asking not only, who am I as an individual? But, who are we as members of groups?”(Robertson & Macdaniel 45)In this photo, Opie faces the camera with her back and topless, showing a tough story filled with symbolic meaning, it reflects a wish of open lesbian communities which maybe cannot accept by a number of people now. Shot from the heart, this powerful image stands for whole lesbian communities to chase for the freedom of love and social respect about homosexual. The artist use the naïve picture to express this idea and also want to advocate the freedom and love of lesbian comes from our insides. Meanwhile, Opie also advocate the public to accept lesbian and don’t see them from the perspective of discrimination. Because of her efforts on the lesbian identity, there is no doubt that Opie wins her unique reputation in the field of contemporary art by exploring lesbian identity.
“We experience the world through our bodies. Our bodies’ sensory apparatus allows us to gain acknowledge about the world and to seek pressure and feel pain.”(Roberson &Macdaniel 87)Artists use bodies as a tool or material to address the spirits presented by the body and makes works more significant and has better visual feelings. For these two famous works, besides the theme of identity, they also embody the theme of body. The work, “Fringe”, uses woman’s short dark brown hair, skin with large wound, bloodstains and white cloth to describe a desperate woman filled with pains. Similarity, the second work, “Self-Portrait/Cutting”, adopts typical body elements, such as short brown hair and fat naked body showing cut image on the back to display a pathetic female who is eager for her family warm. “Not only as a body a site, it was an important source of information. Much of woman’s social status was seen as based in the body, so issues like violence, birthing, sexuality, and beauty were frequent subjects.”(Roberson & Macdaniel 87) In this case, both pieces use the image of female to state different subjects as aims; “Fringe” is intended to against unfair female violence due to multiculturalism, while “Self-Portrait/Cutting” tries to gain “normalizing” of lesbian communities. In some degree, both of the pictures use the same model, short hair women, backed naked bodies and wounds to express the severe social issues about females. I believe that the artist use the two compositions to try to arouse people attention to the vulnerable females. The publics maybe can notice the visible phenomenon like poverty staving and pollution happened in the society, however, some invisible problem like what I mentioned above, violence, birthing and sexuality are usually ignored by the society.
It has been interesting to explore two powerful contemporary visual artworks that have such different two ways to present the same themes of identity, as well as the theme of body. Frankly, the works use similar technologies and are both taken in the studio with mild lighting in order to give the audiences the similar visual feelings. The most engaging way in which they differ and compare at the same time lies in the contrasting types of identity displayed by the works, yet both conjure up strong feelings and emotions with the viewers. What’s more, most of the excellent compositions come from daily lives and then would reflect some significant social issues and there two excellent works also do very good jobs in this aspect. I learn a lot from these two compositions, I understand the unobserved female violence issue and the unfair rights and treatment for lesbian which, to tell the truth, I have never think about that before. According to the searching and study for these two artworks, I realize that there are so many issues I am utterly ignorant. Now, I am thinking that even though they are not happened to me now, should I pay more attention on them? I believe I will get the Affirmative answer. However, I still know that these two works are not only having the meanings that I can understand now. I believe that if we continue to explore the deeper meaning of these two compositions in the future, especially, when we connect these two pictures with some social issues like discrimination, inequity, rights for lesbians, we will be taken into another world and we can learn more about arts, society issues and some other fields in our lives.
Word Count:1,510
Work Cited
Roberson,Jean and Macdaniel ,Craig. “Themes of Contemporary Art: visual art after 1980”. NY: Oxford University Press. 2013.Print.