Picasso And Shepard Fairey: Painting Analysis

Artists have attempted to use their work to influence their viewers throughout the centuries. By looking at the art of the following three artists, Artemisia Gentileschi, Pablo Picasso and Shepard Fairey, I will show that although each had different motives and were from different eras, they each used their work to try and influence the people of their time. Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome in 1593, and was a daughter of a well know artist Orazio Gentileschi. When she was seventeen she was raped by an art teacher, whom her father asked to train her, since schools were not training women at the time. She finally spoke out and her father pressed charges against the man, but the trial hurt her reputation which still over shadowed her
He painted it in 1937 and it is considered a Surrealist painting depicting the horrors of war and one of his most moving works. The painting is 25 feet long and 12 feet high, it’s vivid and shocking imagery holds the viewer’s eyes. He used no color in the painting, only black, whites and grays. It grabs at the viewer to show the atrocities of war. The abstract bodies on the ground, the look of a mother weeping over her child, and a man reaching toward heaven as if to ask” why is this happening”, all come together in unity to show the cataclysm of that day. There are so many figures to represent the pain of the people of that day. The overall theme is that of despair and pain, as well as the futility of the act. Picasso used his art as an influence to people to protest war. The vivid and depressing portrayal of the event on a large canvas captures multiple emotions of fear, despair, and loss. There are no images to portray or cased a happy light upon anything in this