Personal Narrative: Capture Of The Sabine Women

It was difficult for me to choose just one piece of art that I felt I particularly admired above the rest, I’m indecisive by nature and I have a great appreciation for most forms of art. Eventually, after flipping through all the pages in the textbook, bookmarking each and every piece I liked and then sorting through it all, I decided my favorite was Capture of the Sabine Women by Giambologna. The piece is morbid, disturbing, and not at all what most would consider a favorite, it’s nothing like the colorful complexity of Van Gogh’s Starry Night or the calm coolness of Monet’s Water Lilies but I have always valued pieces that entice an emotional response from me above those whose value is intrinsically aesthetic.
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The statue is nothing if not emotional, a woman, held tight against her captor, is being forced against her will to comply while a witness is a victim to the scene. It is horrific, it is tragic, it is entirely painful, but it is also amazingly beautiful. The marble the figures were crafted from is so incredibly detailed that every muscle, every expression, every vain, and even the smallest dimples are purposely and craftily executed. The statue is designed in a spiral
fashion so that every viewpoint presents a new perspective.
The witnesses horror, while muted while facing the Roman, becomes incredibly apparent once facing the woman herself, her struggle more defined from the soldier's right, and the captor’s power or strength more focused from the back. It’s
another thing that I can appreciate about it, in giving his art dimension, Giambologna also created characters that are very real to us, most of what I feel makes the piece so incredibly tragic is this realism. Could I say I would feel the same way about the piece if the men and women were cubic rather than humanoid? Probably not, I hurt more for this woman because I can relate to her, and that’s another beautiful thing about the piece. While I cannot relate to being taken from my home against my will and forced into obscene acts, I can relate to this woman’s struggle with helplessness, the feeling of complete vulnerability, and in my opinion that’s what good art does: it allows us to relate and confide in the artist’s voice.
It may have been hard to choose a piece I liked more than the others but it was very easy for me to choose something I didn’t because there were so few of them. Ultimately I settled on Dead Flower by Yoshitomo Nara. It depicts what seems to be a little girl brandishing a jagged weapon smiling at her recent destruction of a flower.
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To begin the painting is elementary in style, and purposeful or not comes off as amateurish. According to the text, the author wanted to contradict the typical “kawaii” Japanese style with a more modern punk-rock but nothing about the art makes me feel that it is true to either movement. The cuteness the little girl is supposed to invoke is offset by her malicious smile and slanted expression, while the “punk” is completely distracted by bright bold offensive phrasing. The painting is crude and maybe even a little crass, I can’t say there is one thing I genuinely like about it. The juxtaposition of the piece makes it difficult to focus on or even appreciate the things that I could maybe enjoy.
If nothing else I can confidently say that Dead Flower made me appreciate the piece I did like that much more, and maybe that’s why it’s so important to identify and be honest about things we don’t like. We shouldn’t and can’t be expected to like everything we are shown, so why should we pretend to? Art is incredibly subjective, and while I look forward to browsing through the textbook again when we read our chapters to revisit the multiple pieces I did like, I don’t particularly enjoy the thought of having to read two pages of text all while that little girl and her twisted little smile glare back at me.