Art and Eye

  My eye is drawn to the hand. Those long, bony fingers are so characteristic of Schiele but here they are particularly skeletal and deathly – the veins seem to have been injected with poison. And they are a warning right in the foreground of the painting that keeps the viewer at bay as an outsider to this incredibly intimate relationship between mother and child, and sets the tone of death and mortality which hangs over the whole image. The mother cradles her child in a womb-like shroud, alluding to childbirth and the death of the mother explained in the title. She seems desperate to feel that bodily connection with her child, highlighted by the emphasis on her craned neck as she tries to connect to the baby. There is a clear link between the mother’s bent neck and the child’s bent neck, again emphasising their longing to be with each other. However, the darkness around the child is almost like ropes, with flecks of white in the painting making it look as though the darkness is wound

  My eye is firstly drawn to the two figures. The artist has used an unknown light source on the larger figure's face, and the viewer always looks to the light first when looking at a painting, perhaps because the light is usually more comforting and safer than the darkness. But not here. Everything about Goya's black paintings signals danger, signals the Gothic and the supernatural, signals humanity's deepest fears. The subject material is ambiguous, but it reminds me of Act Four Scene One of Shakespeare's Macbeth - the famous 'double double toil and trouble' scene. The figure of a witch on the left oddly holds a spoon, quite a modern item for someone so separate from society to be welcomed. Perhaps Goya is suggesting the repressed darkness within humanity through this spoon. Even through a simple utensil, the mind races to try and work out what Goya was thinking while he painted this directly onto one of the walls in his house. Beside the woman is a skeletal c

  My eye is drawn to the dirty folds of drapery across her hips – they are supposed to cover her yet  simply accentuate her nudity. The loose strokes and curving lines look agitated, at odds with the  mood of the scene. It almost looks like a hand and arm attempting to grab her. The picture is titled  ‘Odalisque’ suggesting a depiction of a harem, an image of languid, Eastern sensuality, a  very popular subject throughout the nineteenth century. To a certain extent Delacroix conforms:  the setting is dark and enclosed, and the woman seems drowsy, her body relaxed into sensual  curves. The pale, soft flesh dominates the canvas, her torso shaped by the dark shadows beneath.  There are just enough foreground details to establish that this is an Eastern scene and so the woman  is not Venus, or a Parisian contemporary. But my first impression of the drapery lingers and makes me uneasy. The woman’s position starts to  look awkward. Her hip and pelvis are almost thrust upward, making them the

  My eye is at first drawn to the colour. That yellow instantly reminds me of the New York taxi cabs, and in my mind I link it to Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie which also tries to capture the city of New York through art. Just as Mondrian used colour to emphasise the pulsating liveliness of the city, Demuth is using it to emphasise speed. The receding five represents the speed of the fire engine that this piece is based on, zooming past the viewer and down the avenue of the city. The red signifies danger, fire, heat, noise. But it also signifies that liveliness of the city and New York as a hub of culture and a hive of activity. It links to the flashing lights of Times Square and Broadway, and it suggests the discordant sounds of sirens wailing down the streets - Demuth is making a piece of art come alive and highlighting art's power to represent not only a place, but a way of life.  Demuth was creating art in the Precisionist style and this is highlighted in I Saw The Figu