Cantor Museum Visit

The museum I chose to go to was the Cantor Museum located at Stanford. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. As well as having modern and contemporary art, there was plenty of classical renaissance and older art available to see.(As you can see from the above pictures.) Probably my favorite thing I saw was "The Thinker" by Rodin(Last picture) This has long been one of my favorite pieces of art to look at and consider what it means, and seeing the full size recreation was very cool. I also enjoyed the full landscape paintings by William Keith in the 19th Century American and European art section of the museum.(First Picture) The sheer size of the painting and the vast scale that the paintings were painted on really allowed me to be drawn in and appreciate the buty of the nature that was being portrayed.

Overall, I'm very glad I went toe the Cantor. Hopefully this summer I'll be able to visit the Legion of Honor, and The De Young Museums :)

Blog #8

Above is the engraving titled "Hannibal Crossing the alps." Now, the term sublime was one used alot in our last reading assignment. But this picture so strikingly represents that "genre" of painting, I had to post it. It's probably one of my favorite pieces of art that we've seen so far in the book. The focus is not at all on the men, but rather on the looming, almost evil looking backround. It is so vast and huge, one can tell the scale even from a small representation of the original engraving. Work like this is really what makes me enjoy art, and I continue to look for more representations of the Sublime genre.

Blog #6

Back when art was really being developed as, well, an art...so much art was used as an output to comment on society of that day and age.

I think today art is very much the same as this. Artists tend to be very strong, opinionated people with beliefs. And these beliefs seem to show up alot in their art.

Blog #5(Late Blog)

So this blog is actually really, really late(This is the one that was due LAST saturday) But I'm posting it just for the sake of consistency.

This sculpture really caught my attention due to the vast amount of expression the artist was able to portray in the figures. The sculpture is about the woman experiencing the true ecstasy of heaven, and she was sculpted with such care and precision, you can literally see the ecstasy that she is experiencing. This is what sculpting should be all about; the realism in the sculpture.

Blog #4

So I thought I would be incredibly unoriginal this week for my blog and put up a picture that doubtlessly many of you will also pick. But this picture intrigues me so much I thought I'd comment on it anyway. I have selected the mona lisa. The portrait was obviously done by the famous Leonardo Da Vinci, and is an oil on wood painting. The woman in this portrait is extremely unremarkable, with no obvious adornment or rich clothing. Who was this young woman? Another interesting thing about this painting to me is the slighty smile she has. What could she be smiling at?

I don't think the mysteries of this painting will ever be really be unlocked, be they many or few, but it's very interesting to speculate.

Blog #3

The architectural facade you see above is the Palazzo Rucellai, located in Florence Italy. It was designed by architect Leon Battista Alberti in 1445. Today, you can see many buildings with facades very similar to this. The design elements you can see in this building facade are very geometrical, parallel window and colum designs. This type of facade is copied in many places today.

Blog #2

In this chapter it was interesting to see how much of the art was influenced by biblical ideals and meanings. So much of the art portrays scenes taking place within the church, or scenes from the bible. Today, many people still paint stylistically scenes from the bible, so the influence from the old European art still influences some art mediums today.