For my final project, I re-created what Vincent
van Gogh’s artwork might have looked like if he were to take a postmodern
approach. Vincent van Gogh focused a great deal of his artwork on landscapes
and self-portraits, so I wanted to use these two key elements of his work in my
re-creation. He was known for his bright
contrasting colors and intense brushstrokes which created implied texture and
gave the illusion of flow and movement in his pieces. After printing out various landscapes and
self-portraits that Van Gogh created, I noticed that so many of his paintings
used the same or very similar colors and color schemes. After cutting out some of his self-portraits,
I realized that they could be placed on different sections of his landscape
paintings and almost completely blend into them. I noticed this trend with four specific landscape
paintings of his so I decided to work with those.
The composition of my piece is divided into
four sections which make up one big rectangle.
I used four different landscapes by Van Gogh, so the focal point will most
likely vary from viewer to viewer but for me it is in yellow hats at the bottom
right of the piece. My eye then moves
about in a counter-clockwise rotation to analyze the other three
landscapes. Van Gogh used complimentary
color schemes in his paintings, so each individual landscape has a different
combination of complimentary colors. Van
Gogh suffered with depression and mental illness, and critics believe that this
influenced his artwork. I incorporated
this into my piece by chopping different self portraits of his, and placing
them in scattered fashions within the landscapes, which gives the viewer an
unsettling feeling. This represents the
connotative meaning of the piece. Since
the colors in his portraits almost identically matched with those in his
landscapes, they appear to blend deeply into the background of the
landscapes. This is meant to symbolize a
loss of self, which was something that Van Gogh struggled with, especially
towards the end of his life. While the four landscapes appear to be in a
symmetrical neat arrangement on the piece at first glance, when you look more
closely, one of the landscapes is actually placed sideways. This symbolizes and calls to attention the
fact that while people may seem fine, many people can be suffering with
depression or mental illnesses that we are not aware of. Just like in van Gogh’s landscape paintings
which may seem positive at first glance, many of them have darker underlying
meanings that are symbolic of his struggle with depression and mental illness.
Overall
I really enjoyed this class and feel that I have taken away a lot from it. My favorite project of the semester was the
Advertisement Breakdown. I am a
marketing major and am very interested in the advertisement and media side of the
industry. It was fun to be able to play
around with different advertisements to then create a whole new piece based on
my visual analysis of one advertisement.
I have an internship this summer for Athlon media group, which is a
company that publishes magazines. Our focus on visual analyses of this piece
along with all of the other artworks we analyzed has helped me to better
understand what advertisements and art might be trying to communicate to the
viewer. This will definitely help me in
my internship and even my future career.
I am happy to have been able to express the creative side of me through
the projects and assignments in this class and there is nothing that I would
really change about it.
