UMFA
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Wolran Kim
September 2012
Last Saturday I went to UMFA (Utah Museum of Fine Art) with my daughter. It has been over five years since my last visit with invitation of special exhibition from my husband’s aunt who is working in this museum as volunteer. Without the assignment of humanities class, we would go to the cinema rather than museum. However the dating with my daughter after a long time separation was really fun and happy moment. UMFA exhibits American, European, and Asian separately by period in each pavilion on the second floor. There was a car show in the first floor on that day, and we could see from the second floor overlooking the show. Those cars seem like toys with the state of extraordinarily designed and colored. We followed a guide who explained about three special arts and felt as having an extra humanities class. A guide threw the same questions as my professor to us, and we were more interesting even though without any prior knowledge about those works of art.
Art is the beauty of technology. In that sense, art is not an exceptional area because our daily lives of every moment are selections of art expression from doing hair and choose cloths in the morning to purchasing stuffs. Changing of the seasons and the landscape of city are also an extension of natural art as a gift. I have another luck because some works of art make abrupt appearances at some point in the future as the motif of the poem. Therefore, art appreciation is the second creation. But without knowledge of the background of the work and the artist’s world, we cannot be impressed properly. How can we be impressed with Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony if we do not know that he composed this during his hearing was paralyzed? We will not be able to be touched if we do not know the background that Picasso painted Guernica to protest against the massacre of the Spanish province of Guernica.
Art coexists with tradition, imitation, and unique creation. The first work of art was Portrait of Mrs. Benjamin West and Her Son, Raphael by Benjamin West (1738-1820) in 1770. He was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence. West’s print reminds me After Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael by Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520). Raphael Sanzio usually known by his first name alone was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his work. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. These tow figures have many common features such as the motherhood theme reminiscent of Mary and baby Jesus, a circular frame, and named of Rafael.
The proportion of Mrs. West and her son seems to have perfected with beauty. I think the best image of happiness, peace and heaven is the appearance of the mother and the baby. Because I cannot find any other figures expressing human nature, the infinite sacrifice, and pure love as much as motherhood. Nothing can intrude into mother and baby. As a primary means of visual communication, line is used to depict the shape of nose, lips, cheek bones, ears, eyebrows, eyes, hair, hands, fingers, tongue, designs on the scarf, robe, swaddling cloth of the baby etc which helps to give the adorable characteristics of the painting. The dim soap bubbles remain on baby’s bare shoulder and the mother’s hand seems just finished bathing, and glows at the baby’s forehead and shoulder.
Smiles of the mother and the baby glows more in black and darken the background. The baby presses his cheek against mother’s cheek, looks like instinctively know that his mother is the only one person who can sacrifice and love him in any conditions. The reason why artist painted baby’s face much brighter than mother’s seems to me that artist accentuates the worth of the creature as just starting its life. Mother’s shawl is dark green color and this color is perfect to express the warm and peaceful atmosphere as most relaxing natural color. All mothers are known that this extraordinary warmth is the origin of happiness and a source of breath. I remember those moments that I changing diapers and taking bath for my babies. I must have enjoyed those moments again with my dog during hold him, take him bath, and feed him. (Sometimes, he is lovelier than human baby because he never cries or says NO.)
The second piece was Painting of Joan of Arc by Georges Rouault. Rouault was French painter who was born in Paris and representing the first half of the 20th century with H. Mathis, and P. Picasso. His father was a furniture cutter and he started studying art from the age of 10 with his artistic talent. He worked as apprentice in stained glass business during attend evening Art and Crafts School due to a poor family. That is why his painting looks like matching puzzles as stained glass. His artistic theme was a tendency to gaze deep inside the human emerging people from the bottom of society including prostitutes and clowns.
One of Rouault’s unique characterizes is a black outline. These lines give a strong impression though primitive technique likes children’s drawings. He clearly reveals his target figures with shine and bright color inside the outline. I do not like Rouault’s picture because it seems like graffiti with smells of rebellion. However, this method may be the most appropriate to represent the lives of the people of the suffering and misery of the world without any sophisticated techniques. Fauvism, innovative painting movement in the beginning of the 20th century, was a reaction of young group to the mannered idealism.
They laid to a turning point of modern art through emphasis on the representation of the color itself, beyond the concept of traditional painting and naturalistic depiction. They extremely simplified the form and tried new technique to represent intense personality with parallel four strong colors, red, blue, green, and yellow, denying the light shadings of Impressionism. Vlaminck (1876-1958) spearheaded this movement with saying that he sees things through the eyes of a child. His style is a distinctive representation of the Fauvism which relies on mixing intense colors scheme and excess flooding the colors on the canvas.
Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc, 1412–1431), nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" is a folk heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. She was born a peasant girl in what is now eastern France. Claiming divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII of France. She had became a focal point to rally the people, especially since France was fall into crisis with amazing superhuman abilities, faith, religious experience, common sense, and unwavering mental and physical courage.
To the present day, Joan of Arc has remained a significant figure in Western civilization. From Napoleon I onward, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory. Famous writers and composers who have created works about her have continued in film, theatre, television, video games, music, and performances. The Joan of Arc in Rouault’s picture looks like a little toy soldier on a horse, and this gives me a fantasy of turn impossibility into a possibility.
The third piece was Rex (2002-03), a life-size bronze cast horse, by Deborah Butterfield.
This is a popular piece in the Utah Museum of Fine Art's collection. Butterfield's contemporary bronze horse is a visual centerpiece atop the UMFA's staircase on the second floor. Butterfield (1949~) is an American sculptor, who is known for her sculptures of horses made from found objects, like metal, and especially pieces of wood. Her mentor Manuel Neri dominated that form. Instead, she chose to create self-portraits using images of horses. Gradually, the horses themselves became her primary theme. She began crafting horses out of scrap metal and cast bronze in the early 1980s. She would sculpt a piece using wood and other materials fastened together with wire, then photograph the piece from all angles so as to be able to reassemble the piece in metal. She only works in the winter, so pieces usually take 3 to 5 years.
Butterfield's work has been exhibited widely and there is demand among art collectors for her sculptures. As critic Grace Glueck wrote in The New York Times in 2004, "By now Deborah Butterfield's skeletal horses, fashioned of found wood, metal and other detritus, are familiar to almost a generation of gallery goers. Yet they still have a freshness, which comes from the artist's regard for them as individuals. In fact, training, riding and bonding with horses, as she does at her Montana ranch, she thinks of them as personifications of herself...They seem to express the very spirit of equine existence."
The horse, Rex must be excessively heavy because the sample piece of just a half foot size was about 4 to 5 pounds when I lift it. The material of Rex seems like dried rough branch with actual gray. So the whole atmosphere feels as the x-ray pictures or skeletons of Halloween. The horse turned head toward back and the contrast between dead materials and moving motion shows the distance of life and death. As animal, horse gives a mysterious feeling with the bone shapes of the dead branches as mounting. The history of creation of the world are surrounded this work because the image of horse normally appears with the running scene on the green meadows dynamically. The flesh and internal organs of this horse which was stopped during looking back, returned to dust. The materials seem soon crumbled away, but the pose of horse is still alive.
I forgot to take a camera, so I took pictures with the phone. The mother and daughter’s pictures in the background of art were stored as a file, ‘UMFA, Sep. 15, 2012’ into my lap-top as paintings and sculptures of the museum. The figures of me and my daughter also creations of art to the creator. Like the words of Hippocrates, “Life is short, art is long.”
=====
Wolran Kim
September 2012
Last Saturday I went to UMFA (Utah Museum of Fine Art) with my daughter. It has been over five years since my last visit with invitation of special exhibition from my husband’s aunt who is working in this museum as volunteer. Without the assignment of humanities class, we would go to the cinema rather than museum. However the dating with my daughter after a long time separation was really fun and happy moment. UMFA exhibits American, European, and Asian separately by period in each pavilion on the second floor. There was a car show in the first floor on that day, and we could see from the second floor overlooking the show. Those cars seem like toys with the state of extraordinarily designed and colored. We followed a guide who explained about three special arts and felt as having an extra humanities class. A guide threw the same questions as my professor to us, and we were more interesting even though without any prior knowledge about those works of art.
Art is the beauty of technology. In that sense, art is not an exceptional area because our daily lives of every moment are selections of art expression from doing hair and choose cloths in the morning to purchasing stuffs. Changing of the seasons and the landscape of city are also an extension of natural art as a gift. I have another luck because some works of art make abrupt appearances at some point in the future as the motif of the poem. Therefore, art appreciation is the second creation. But without knowledge of the background of the work and the artist’s world, we cannot be impressed properly. How can we be impressed with Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony if we do not know that he composed this during his hearing was paralyzed? We will not be able to be touched if we do not know the background that Picasso painted Guernica to protest against the massacre of the Spanish province of Guernica.
Art coexists with tradition, imitation, and unique creation. The first work of art was Portrait of Mrs. Benjamin West and Her Son, Raphael by Benjamin West (1738-1820) in 1770. He was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence. West’s print reminds me After Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael by Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520). Raphael Sanzio usually known by his first name alone was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his work. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. These tow figures have many common features such as the motherhood theme reminiscent of Mary and baby Jesus, a circular frame, and named of Rafael.
The proportion of Mrs. West and her son seems to have perfected with beauty. I think the best image of happiness, peace and heaven is the appearance of the mother and the baby. Because I cannot find any other figures expressing human nature, the infinite sacrifice, and pure love as much as motherhood. Nothing can intrude into mother and baby. As a primary means of visual communication, line is used to depict the shape of nose, lips, cheek bones, ears, eyebrows, eyes, hair, hands, fingers, tongue, designs on the scarf, robe, swaddling cloth of the baby etc which helps to give the adorable characteristics of the painting. The dim soap bubbles remain on baby’s bare shoulder and the mother’s hand seems just finished bathing, and glows at the baby’s forehead and shoulder.
Smiles of the mother and the baby glows more in black and darken the background. The baby presses his cheek against mother’s cheek, looks like instinctively know that his mother is the only one person who can sacrifice and love him in any conditions. The reason why artist painted baby’s face much brighter than mother’s seems to me that artist accentuates the worth of the creature as just starting its life. Mother’s shawl is dark green color and this color is perfect to express the warm and peaceful atmosphere as most relaxing natural color. All mothers are known that this extraordinary warmth is the origin of happiness and a source of breath. I remember those moments that I changing diapers and taking bath for my babies. I must have enjoyed those moments again with my dog during hold him, take him bath, and feed him. (Sometimes, he is lovelier than human baby because he never cries or says NO.)
The second piece was Painting of Joan of Arc by Georges Rouault. Rouault was French painter who was born in Paris and representing the first half of the 20th century with H. Mathis, and P. Picasso. His father was a furniture cutter and he started studying art from the age of 10 with his artistic talent. He worked as apprentice in stained glass business during attend evening Art and Crafts School due to a poor family. That is why his painting looks like matching puzzles as stained glass. His artistic theme was a tendency to gaze deep inside the human emerging people from the bottom of society including prostitutes and clowns.
One of Rouault’s unique characterizes is a black outline. These lines give a strong impression though primitive technique likes children’s drawings. He clearly reveals his target figures with shine and bright color inside the outline. I do not like Rouault’s picture because it seems like graffiti with smells of rebellion. However, this method may be the most appropriate to represent the lives of the people of the suffering and misery of the world without any sophisticated techniques. Fauvism, innovative painting movement in the beginning of the 20th century, was a reaction of young group to the mannered idealism.
They laid to a turning point of modern art through emphasis on the representation of the color itself, beyond the concept of traditional painting and naturalistic depiction. They extremely simplified the form and tried new technique to represent intense personality with parallel four strong colors, red, blue, green, and yellow, denying the light shadings of Impressionism. Vlaminck (1876-1958) spearheaded this movement with saying that he sees things through the eyes of a child. His style is a distinctive representation of the Fauvism which relies on mixing intense colors scheme and excess flooding the colors on the canvas.
Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc, 1412–1431), nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" is a folk heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. She was born a peasant girl in what is now eastern France. Claiming divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII of France. She had became a focal point to rally the people, especially since France was fall into crisis with amazing superhuman abilities, faith, religious experience, common sense, and unwavering mental and physical courage.
To the present day, Joan of Arc has remained a significant figure in Western civilization. From Napoleon I onward, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory. Famous writers and composers who have created works about her have continued in film, theatre, television, video games, music, and performances. The Joan of Arc in Rouault’s picture looks like a little toy soldier on a horse, and this gives me a fantasy of turn impossibility into a possibility.
The third piece was Rex (2002-03), a life-size bronze cast horse, by Deborah Butterfield.
This is a popular piece in the Utah Museum of Fine Art's collection. Butterfield's contemporary bronze horse is a visual centerpiece atop the UMFA's staircase on the second floor. Butterfield (1949~) is an American sculptor, who is known for her sculptures of horses made from found objects, like metal, and especially pieces of wood. Her mentor Manuel Neri dominated that form. Instead, she chose to create self-portraits using images of horses. Gradually, the horses themselves became her primary theme. She began crafting horses out of scrap metal and cast bronze in the early 1980s. She would sculpt a piece using wood and other materials fastened together with wire, then photograph the piece from all angles so as to be able to reassemble the piece in metal. She only works in the winter, so pieces usually take 3 to 5 years.
Butterfield's work has been exhibited widely and there is demand among art collectors for her sculptures. As critic Grace Glueck wrote in The New York Times in 2004, "By now Deborah Butterfield's skeletal horses, fashioned of found wood, metal and other detritus, are familiar to almost a generation of gallery goers. Yet they still have a freshness, which comes from the artist's regard for them as individuals. In fact, training, riding and bonding with horses, as she does at her Montana ranch, she thinks of them as personifications of herself...They seem to express the very spirit of equine existence."
The horse, Rex must be excessively heavy because the sample piece of just a half foot size was about 4 to 5 pounds when I lift it. The material of Rex seems like dried rough branch with actual gray. So the whole atmosphere feels as the x-ray pictures or skeletons of Halloween. The horse turned head toward back and the contrast between dead materials and moving motion shows the distance of life and death. As animal, horse gives a mysterious feeling with the bone shapes of the dead branches as mounting. The history of creation of the world are surrounded this work because the image of horse normally appears with the running scene on the green meadows dynamically. The flesh and internal organs of this horse which was stopped during looking back, returned to dust. The materials seem soon crumbled away, but the pose of horse is still alive.
I forgot to take a camera, so I took pictures with the phone. The mother and daughter’s pictures in the background of art were stored as a file, ‘UMFA, Sep. 15, 2012’ into my lap-top as paintings and sculptures of the museum. The figures of me and my daughter also creations of art to the creator. Like the words of Hippocrates, “Life is short, art is long.”