Art and Eye

  My eye is not immediately drawn to anything. The image is so familiar, over familiar, that I look without really seeing. It is almost impossible to see this as 'radical' and yet when it was painted the term Impressionism had not been invented and this apparently harmless landscape was rejected by the French salon. The magpie on the gate is clearly the focus: it is the title of the painting, the only sign of warmth and life in this chilly landscape, but my eye still prefers to dart across the whole canvas than linger on the dark silhouette of the bird. Perhaps Monet simply needed a subject, an excuse to paint the light and weather conditions he was really interested in. Yet the choice of this bird seems deliberate. Magpies carry so much symbolism that it seems unlikely he just happened across it sitting on a gate, and the footprints which lead the viewer into the canvas also lead one to climb the 'ladder' of the gate's shadow and then the bars of the gate itself. T...

  My eye has difficulty focusing on anything, certainly not on the religious subject. There is so much going on, so much detail and decoration, colour and gold. It feels more like a Christmas party than a Nativity. In the foreground the basic story is played out: Mary, Joseph, Jesus, architecture to represent the stable, a manger with straw, ox, ass, star, and the Magi with their gifts. The compositional curve of their flat, Gothic, disc-like haloes creates a focus and the 'sky' above the animals completes the circle - a space of calm. But that is less than half the picture space, and the rest is stuffed to bursting, from the background narrative of the journey to the extreme foreground where a kneeling servant removes spurs from one of the Magi, to the unexplained monkeys in the centre. Even the elaborate frame with its Trinity of arches is decorated with panels of greenery and flowers. There's an element of showboating here: Gentile is boasting of his skill with the fores...

  My eye is drawn to the copy of The Times clutched in the hands of the officer. The white of the figurine on the man's knee and the white of his wife's sleeves all serve to make the white paper stand out even more on the canvas. As the title of the painting suggests, this is about the end of the Crimean War, seemingly depicting a soldier who has just returned home, surrounded by his family, but the mood is perhaps less euphoric than you might expect. The soldier seems somber and weary, and his wife has a look of concern. Although on the surface it seems to be quite a harmonious composition representing a close knit and traditional family, the positioning of the man is odd. It is his wife who takes her place at the apex of the triangular composition, the soldier is reduced to an emasculated role, perhaps an invalid, as suggested by the blanket over his legs. Her face is passive, but not exactly positive. With her arms draped around her husband, she looks posed, dutiful but not...

My eye is immediately drawn to the use of  Rückenfigur by Friedrich, where the figure stands with their back to the viewer and is seen from behind, creating the sense of the viewer looking out at another viewer, within the canvas. It also adds to the layers of the composition, with the figure in the immediate foreground and the landscape receding in front of him.  This enables the viewer to identify with that figure in the painting, and involves the onlooker in the picture more, almost suggesting that they are as central to this art as the man standing before them. The viewer enters the canvas and is at once dwarfed by the Romantic notion of the sublime, and the completely overwhelming power of the natural world. The contrapposto  stance of the figure perhaps reflects his uneasiness in the scene - nature is making him unsure of himself and unsteady on his feet, making him question his motives and path through life. However, the fact that the viewer cannot see the figure's...

  My eye firstly notices the hand wielding the hammer above the unsuspecting man's head. Gentileschi is depicting a new and particularly horrible kind of weapon here instead of the huge sword she gave Judith to slice Holofernes' head off in 1620. The tent peg seems all the more violent, especially as the viewer is looking at the split second before the deed has been committed. Moreover, the gaze of the women (Jael) is focused and calm, making the piece seem unnerving. This is not a moment of hesitation but a snapshot of action - the woman has made up her mind and will commit to this murder. The viewer can only imagine how Gentileschi would have depicted the bloody aftermath, in her usual violent and tenebristic way. The fact that the artist has signed her name in the tomb-like stone above the man is significant - she is signing his life away in this painting, sending him swiftly to the grave.  The body of the man (Sisera) is also interestingly depicted. He lies in a rather eff...

My eye is firstly drawn to the violence of the scene. Mantegna has juxtaposed Saint Sebastian's blemish-free and perfect, white skin with streaks of blood trickling from his many wounds. This is foregrounded by the arrow running through his face, straight through his third eye. There are so many arrows that they are difficult to follow them through the body, but the one through the head is deliberately clear. The viewer's eye is drawn towards this because of upwards, agonised gaze of Saint Sebastian himself, looking heavenwards to God. Interestingly, the entire painting has a surprising softness, both in brushwork and colour, considering it is such a violent subject matter. It is an image full of beautiful detail and precision rather than emotion and yet it has agony at its very centre. Saint Sebastian's emotions are clearly depicted on his face, and the brown hair that acts as a kind of second halo to frame his face makes his features stand out even more. The emotions sugg...

  My eye is drawn to the void in the centre of the canvas. Darkness is hard to depict well, but in this painting John Martin makes it the heart of the picture. The crumbling, lightning-shattered rocks are tumbling towards paint so black, it is simply a hole in the canvas. It sucks me in, like the other helpless scraps of humanity in the foreground, and the blackness spills forward, overflowing towards the viewer like a river of death. Martin's canvas surrounds the viewer, disorientating them and engulfing them. It is as if they are there in the foreground, scrabbling on the slope and pushing away the bodies to selfishly save themselves.  Martin’s use of scale and perspective emphasise the three dimensionality and endless depth right back to the fierce red burn of the sun in the centre. The painting is huge but it is not all about grand scale – what keeps you looking are the details. In the foreground, the focus is on suffering individuals: the strain on the bodies is agonising...