Art and Eye

  My eye is drawn to an overall sense of darkness. The monochrome palette made up of charcoal and pastel sucks the viewer in, plunging them into the canvas and echoing the title of the piece. This is foregrounded by Johns' stencilling of the word Diver on the bottom left hand corner of the piece, barely visible against the murky colours. The capitalisation of the word seems like a warning - do not be pulled under. Diver has been interpreted to be Johns paying homage to the suicide of Hart Crane, an American poet who jumped overboard a ship in the 1930s, his body never being recovered. With this interpretation in mind, both the dark colour palette and warning label below the anchor shape depicted are even more emotionally effective.  If Johns is referencing Crane's suicide, he takes the human element of the painting further. Johns said that he wanted to convey the idea of a 'swan dive' through this depiction. Despite an overall darkness, there are graceful movements to t...

  The eye-opening exhibition of woodcuts by artist Helen Frankenthaler at Dulwich Picture Gallery from 15 Sept 2021-18 April 2022 encouraged a closer look by the eye at this often neglected medium. Obvious images that come to mind from the word 'woodcut' might be associated with Albrecht Durer or the works of the German Expressionists. But Frankenthaler goes a stage further, giving her woodcuts a radical yet beautiful twist, as the title of the exhibition so aptly described. Right at the start of the exhibition, the eye is engulfed by Freefall.  Already the name of the piece resonates with an amateur studying woodcuts; the viewer plunges themselves into the abyss of this relatively underexplored medium, freefalling into the mind of the artist herself. The title also implies a freedom of expression. As a prominent second generation Abstract Expressionist and pioneer of the colour-field painting technique, Frankenthaler's better-known paintings tend to evoke a feeling rather ...

  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...