In the Louvre, hangs a portrait with a curious smile and piercing eyes which follow one’s every step as they walks across the room. The woman in the portrait has vexed art critics and tourists for centuries. Often pictures are described as alive, as having wants and desires. Why is she smiling? Why did he cut his ear off? Why are they unhappy? There is a sense of mystery in great pictures and this mystery is what captivates an audience, leaves an impression, and becomes great art. Art leaves people wondering.
‘American Gothic,’ painted by Grant Wood, has this sense of mystery. At first glance, one notices a solemn man, holding a pitchfork, standing next to a bitter, hardened woman. The two stand close in front of a house, staring off in
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It wants it be stared at until the viewer notices every little detail. It wants to be noticed. The man’s determined stare and pursed lips captivate the viewer. And once the viewer is drawn in, it’s the figures’ turn to tell their story. His body language reads tense, as he guards the woman, his home, and his way of life. Is he determined not to let his worldly burden overtake him? Is he defending his way of life, his values, or his wife? Is he too determined? The woman’s gaze, however, reads differently. Her eyes have a sense of longing, as if she longs to leave the man and his sternness. Maybe she longs for a better life with less hardship, or maybe for a better lover who satisfies her needs. Maybe, she wishes he was a different type of man, less hard and more understanding of her. She is upset, displeased with her life and judging from the man’s expression he can sense this. He recognizes her misery but cannot relate to her needs. Thus he holds firm to what he knows, the hard, disciplined life in his dulled world. His stubbornness frustrates her, for he is unwilling to sway from ingrained beliefs. He guards her from the outside world, preventing her escape to the life she so
The image of a young smiling carefree Marilyn Monroe elicits reverence, yet also sadness. Monroe is an iconic figure yet her tragic existence and early demise contribute greatly to status as an icon. Marilyn, appears to be an oil painting. It is a still life and the colors are vibrant and saturated. There are many items; the main being the image of a smiling Monroe inside of a open book; her image is on the right side and on the left is a page of unreadable text.
She has no one to talk to. We can empathize with her. She does what she does because she is lonely but the manner she does it is not right. " I saw too many you guys"(Steinbeck 78) thus the quote symbolizes the dangers of the American Dream. She is depicted as a flirtatious woman who is looking for someone to rescue her from her unhappy life, which is a reflection of the false promise of the American Dream.
Matt Bell's, In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods (2013), is a magical realism novel that follows the perspective of an unnamed husbands attempt at creating a family. The novel begins with a couple that has moved away from civilization and settled at first in a cave, as the husband builds their house in a place between the woods and a lake. However, the couple is forced to move into the still barren foundations prematurely after an encounter with a bear. It is within the empty walls that they discover that the wife is capable of singing things into creation, and she quickly finishes what he has mostly made (3).
Through the centuries, art can differ and appear in several ways, but art will always have a positive effect on people. Art can be defined as a way to express what you feel or to create an emotional response from the person exposed to art. Art can make the person exposed to it remember great memories that warm the heart. Artists create art because it’s their talent and passion; however, they unconsciously shape lives and history with their artwork. Several artists, such as William Edmondson and Selma Burke create art because it is their calling and influence others to strive for something better with their artwork.
These final lines represent the overcoming of love, and seeing herself as a different person than she was when she first met her lover. The light she seeks is love and she feels as though her lover does not give her this light
These two sentences show that she loves her husband with all her love and he loves her very much and she says that even if there was a man who could love her more she wouldn’t give him up. Also in the poem “ To my loving husband and loving Husband” she
The world is a hostile and violent place and the woman had a right to be fearful of him, but it troubles him that he cannot change the fact that he was the cause of this fear. He begins to understand that he has the opportunity to change the enviorment around him solely because of him being a
She catches the man looking at her coat, while she examines his face. This is important because the man doesn’t make eye contact with her, he doesn’t look at her in the face. She then wonders
As a result, he doesn’t identify with the fear and weakness of a woman;” in other words, he does not accept his wife’s mindset of their life on the farm. His initial perspective is that accepting help during their time of need would make him look like an
In this scene, the man recalls the final conversation he had with his wife, the boy’s mother. She expresses her plans to commit suicide, while the man begs her to stay alive. To begin, the woman’s discussion of dreams definitively establishes a mood of despair. In the
It is the most well-known painting in the world and has “set the standard for all future portraits” (Heydenrich “Leonardo Da Vinci”). The Mona Lisa is a portrait of a woman in a serene environment. Though the portrait is simple in style, the way Leonardo set the painting so beautifully has allowed it to become the “most popular and the most analyzed painting of all time… The sense of overall harmony achieved in the painting—especially apparent in the sitter’s faint smile—reflects Leonardo’s idea of the cosmic link connecting humanity and nature, making this painting an enduring record of Leonardo’s vision and genius.” (Heydenreich “Leonardo Da
In the story “The Reaper’s Image,”, there are many key points to make it classify as gothic literature. The story takes place in an art museum, where two men, Mr. Carlin and Johnson Spangler, are transporting a Delver glass mirror from down in the viewing gallery after an “unfortunate incident” (King). A woman by the name Sandra Bates, lost her brother after he looked such the occasion of him looking into the glass and sawseeing a dark, hooded figure behind him. In the story, the dark figure is portrayed to be the Grim Reaper, personifying death. As the story continues, Mr. Carlin and Spangler have a few run-ins with “death” in this eerie museum attic, with supernatural occurrences, leaving the reader to decide what caused Spangler to disappear.
For instance , the images such as “ decayed trees “ also reveals that the house is located far away from urban which is portrayed as “
Then the way the woman is smiling in the picture, could look almost comical, but she still has some backbone. The way she is shaped in the portrait shows she has some strength and will fight for her sanity if necessary. Despite how one can see a strong, firm woman in this painting. Still today people discriminate against them, some men don’t like the idea of a woman being independent and stronger than him. However, that still won’t stop women from showing who they really are and what they have to offer to society.
3 Northanger Abbey and the Gothic 3.1 Process of Creation and Style of Writing It is presumed that Austen wrote the first draft of Northanger Abbey in 1798 and the title was Susan. However, Emden suggests that the novel was actually composed in two stages. The first part describes Catherine’s stay in Bath and can be seen as a satire of sentimental novel, the second is set at Northanger Abbey and represents Gothic passages. Therefore, Emden argues that Austen wrote the first half in 1794 as a part of her juvenilia.