Art and Eye

  My eye is immediately drawn to the head of Medusa. At first glance it looks gruesome, as though Cellini has captured the moment just after the head has been decapitated, and it oozes blood and bodily matter. However the viewer then notices the similarity between that and Medusa's hair. Maybe it is just her hair after all. Cellini has cleverly enticed the viewer in here, to take a closer look and therefore involved them in the sculpture as a whole. Once they do come closer, they begin to notice other things such as the similarity between Perseus' hair and Medusa's snakes. Hero and monster are not so separate. Even the features of their faces are very similar. Perhaps Cellini wants to suggest that evil can often wear the mask of good. Or he could even be implying that everyone has some evil within them, even the hero Perseus.  One of the good things about sculpture is that the viewer is able to walk around it, and fully immerse themselves in the piece. Cellini has used this

My eye is immediately drawn to the vanishing point of the painting, because that is what the use of perspective here is designed to do. My eye follows the leaping hunting dogs into the rows of trees and beyond to where every figure is excitedly heading. Everything about this piece screams symmetry, from the way the trees are positioned to the depiction of the animals and humans. Uccello has even laid down tree stumps and branches on the ground to point the viewer in the direction of one point perspective. By using these foreshortened logs he is spelling it out to the viewer - here is the perfection of Renaissance painting.  Although it may not be the most detailed painting in terms of the actual figures, everyone is at least doing something different. From the figures running into the trees to the men on horseback waving their arms to point the way for the viewer and the other hunters, this is a painting of movement and excitement. You can almost hear the cry of the dogs and calls of t

  My eye is drawn into the painting by the profile of the girl and then through her gaze back out of the frame towards the unseen stage. The lightness of her flesh, the black point of her eye, which seems the most sharply drawn part of the painting, and above all the curving gilt frame behind her all focus our attention on her expression. She is leaning slightly forward, out of the seclusion of the box she sits in. Her lips are slightly parted and her face is hard to read, which emphasises the ambiguity of the piece in general. We do not know what has got her so captivated, but we too are mesmerised, not by the stage but by her features in desperation as we try to read her. Meanwhile, the quick Impressionist brushstrokes that make up the left of the painting mean that the viewer cannot connect with anyone else in the painting. It is almost as if the woman in the foreground will at any moment turn to us and ask ‘did you see that?' Thanks to Renoir’s composition, the viewer is eff

  My eye is not drawn to the painting itself but the title of the painting, 'Light Red Over Black'. We would automatically think that the black is on top of a red background, but Rothko has flipped this around, subverting the title just like he subverting the meaning of what it was to be an artist and what Art actually was. During this time, art was going through rapid changes, with abstract expressionism coming into full force (Rothko, Pollock). But Rothko showed that all this change was for the good, even if for him, it was short lived.  The colour red in this painting is searing and the black struggles to fully cover this velvety border, especially at the bottom of the canvas. Unlike the black squares which have a hazy quality to their edges, the red is clear and impregnable. It is hard to figure out what this represents - the Tate has suggested a window perhaps, but if it is a window then what are we looking out into? Perhaps it is night, or perhaps the viewer is catching a

  My eye is drawn to the eye of the horse. Stubbs has humanised the animal, creating an expression of desperate terror with the white of his eye emphasised by the white diamond in the forehead and the deep shadow between. He has also positioned the horse and lion’s heads locked together, making a direct comparison between their teeth, but also their eyes: the lion looks up almost impassively, as if what is a matter of life or death for the horse is of little consequence to him. In fact, Stubbs himself actually witnessed a horse being attacked by a lion during his visit to Africa, and this haunted him and the subsequent paintings he created. The drama and raw brutality are very different from the majority of his other images of horses. If it was not for the background perspective in the painting, it would seem like a very two-dimensional picture. There is no foreshortening and the horse and lion are depicted in a very flat manner, almost like a relief frieze, which brings them very clos

My eye are drawn to the pair of eyes in the painting that belong to Merlin. His gaze is one of obsession, and the viewer knows he is instantly drawn to the woman that stands before him, but also of despair. The tilt of his head coupled with the slumped position of his whole body emphasises his complete enthrallment and ultimately his beguiling. Perhaps he is even trying to reach out one of his hands to touch her, but she is constantly moving out of his grip, shown by her contrapposto stance. His eyes are white, further suggesting some enchantment or spell has been cast upon him, to lure him in. The way the artist has shaded the eyes with a darker colour around the white emphasises his unblinking stare, reinforced by the deep line of furrow on his brow. As a painting, this is a snapshot in time and those eyes of Merlin will never be shut. For the rest of time he will be constantly staring at the person who is just out of his reach.  As a Pre-Raphaelite painting, this piece is rich with