Analytical Survey of Modern or Contemporary Art and Architecture (Case Study Sample)

Student’s Name:
Course: Art History
Course Code: AH 1002
Due Date: August 2014
Analysis of a Modern or Contemporary Artwork on View In/Near Chicago: A Narrative of Victory in Frida Kahlo’s Arbol de la Esperanza (Tree of Hope), 1946
While not a formal scholarly paper based on referenced citations, this paper presents a formal analysis from a personalized perspective of a contemporary artwork. At the beginning of June (Sunday), and towards the close of July (Wednesday), the present scholar toured the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), located at 220 East Chicago Avenue, Illinois, Chicago. The two tours were among the most emphatic experiences with contemporary artwork. More specifically, the tours enabled the scholar to witness how the inspiration of the legendary Frida Kahlo transformed modern Latin-American art into a stereotypic confrontation with the society. Her inspiration remains evident long after she died in 1954. In the two occasions, the present scholar attended the exhibition titled “Unbound: Contemporary Art after Frida Kahlo’ and running since 3rd May upto 5th October 2014 at the MCA.
As an artist, Kahlo inspired an expression and ideology of rebellion against social ideologies, gender markings and class using the paint medium. This inspiration is evident today among dozens of international artists whose works have an emphatic concurrence of the nature and form of the human body (particularly feminine). The inspiration is demonstrated by such artists as Margot Bergman, Martin Soto Climent, Doris Salcedo, Eugenio Dittborn and Jack Pierson among the tens of other artists whose works were exhibited alongside Kahlo’s legendary La Venadita (1946) and Arbol de la Esperanza (1946). The present scholar chose a single work of contemporary art exhibited at MCA, watched the work personally and emerged with a concrete impression from the accruing visual analysis. Between the Arbol de la Esperanza (Tree of Hope) and La Venadita (Little Deer), the scholar chose the Arbol de la Esperanza (1946) which provided an emphatic theme of Ambiguity and Abstractness evident in the works of many other artists displayed in the exhibition.
In the paragraphs hereunder will present a sharp and colored snapshot reproduction of the Arbol de la Esperanza (1946) as the chosen work, followed by vivid and intensive description of the painting, covering its measurement and proportion, media and materials used, its fabrication and use of line, as well as its geometries and formal echoes. The analysis will also highlight Arbol de la Esperanza’s organization of forms in 3D space, its colour and light, its representational and textual content, its sensory impressions, its mobility and manipulability, its function and meaning, its user profile or implied viewer, as well as its temporal extension. The formal analysis was developed towards generating justified conclusion on possible research avenues for the future the questions provoked by the process of analysis, and ultimately, how these questions can be investigated in empirical research.
 Arbol de la Esperanza (Tree of Hope) - 1946
In overall dimensions, the Arbol de la Esperanza (1946) measures 22 inches by 16 inches (approximately 55.9 cm by 40.6 cm). In proportion, like most of Kahlo’s paintings, presents about a quarter of the average human torso in both length and width. Besides a geographical background from which the human forms in the artwork are placed, the focus of the painting in the overall form is centered on the two portraits of women figures (predictably the self). The seat, trolley, terrain and hills are of comparable dimension to the feminine portraits, except for the sun, which appears to have an extra-large proposition to all other internal elements of the painting.
From its visual appeal, it is evident that the Arbol de la Esperanza (1946) is an oil painting particularly due to its luster and precise colour contrast. It is therefore predictable that the painting presents Oil on Masonite artwork with relatively rough and bright-colored patterns. As shall emerge hereafter, the painting presents and even compares two portraits of the Kahlo, one lying on a hospital trolley with an injured back, and the other an upright and very confident figure dressed in an elaborate Mexican dress. Evidently, Kahlo used a similar pattern of distribution on the same platform in media. Importantly however, it is also evident that the artwork lacks a precise image of fabrication, besides an articulate use of the painting medium to display comparative light tone for the two portraits. It appears that Kahlo used paint layering to create a lighter tone on the left side of the painting, after creating the entire dark-colored background, and thus generated a comparative outlook for the left and right side of the painting.
The use of line in the Arbol de la Esperanza (1946) is immaculate and precise, in creating smooth contours, implying a geographical context and creating an emphatic comparison of elements. The painting is devided into two halves by an implied liner border, for a figure with an injured back lying on a trolley and the one sited with confidence. Clear variations in shading and light tone define the two halves, even though there is no vertical line to mark the borderline. Further, an integration of vertical and horizontal line gives format to the hospital trolley and a corset she holds in her hand, as the main highlights of the two halves of the painting. However, what captures a dynamic and emphatic use of lines is the geographical terrain shared by the two halves, highlighting an arid area with numerous cracks on the ground, placed on a rocky underground terrain. The terrain is marked by a heavy series of horizontal, diagonal and vertical lines that emphasize on the aridity, are rough and confident, as well as sinuous and seemingly bold.
Further, on one of the halves featuring an upright and confident Frida in a sitting position, is defined by a colorful dress, with horizontal, diagonal and vertical lines used to highlight the artwork on the dress’s breastplate and white array of vertical folds. Most notably however, is that the hospital trolley extends to the other half of a sited figure, with one end of its wheels projecting behind the seat, implying that the second upright and confident Frida in a sitting position has merged from a backgroung of having been on a hospital trolley to be healthy and strong. Only the precise integration of lines enables such a derivation of meaning. In so doing, Frida integrates the use of formal geometrical shapes particularly cones, circles, squares, cubes and rectangles to define the realistic shapes of the hospital trolley, the celebrant Mexican dress and the seat. The terrain however, uses a patterned series of unsymmetrical shapes to create the cracks, arid terrain and hilly landscape, scaled to create a larger background upon which the two portraits emerge (although with a relatively geographical shape of the sun).
Besides implying that we can see the underground of the terrain, Arbol de la Esperanza (1946) does not imply any negative space. What the painting creates is a three dimensional representation of three varied contexts, one in an arid desert terrain as the overall terrain, a portrait lying on a hospital trolley, ad a woman sited on a masculine chair. These three contexts are derived used a three dimensional implication. Nonetheless, the painting’s major feature is creating comparative and highly contrasting halves using coloration and lighting. On one figure, the painting presents a brightly colored but less saturated overview with a sharp tone, typical of a dessert fountain where the sun is a dominant source of lighting (reddened to enforce its effect). The other half is slightly darkened, highly saturated and...