Topic #3: Museum Substitute

A section I found particularly interesting at the Wolfsonian Museum was Portraiture & Personhood within their Art & Design in the Modern Age exhibition. As it focuses on the machine age, I liked the approach of communicating these messages of political differences, social changes, technological developments, etc. through portraits. Portraiture is really divine in the way it works and how it can help portray a message. One’s face and body language can tell a story in itself, so the route of using portraits so create work communicating these themes can be highly effective, in my opinion.

One of the pieces that caught my attention was Subway by Daniel Ralph Celentano. This oil painting consists of a crowded group of people on the Subway. It clearly tells a narrative and provides one with a lot of detail and information. When I viewed it, I already liked the aesthetic portion about it and the heavy New York feel one would get from simply looking at it. Though the message behind it resonated with me immensely, allowing me to appreciate it even more. The painting does not simply convey a crowd in a subway scene, but tries to communicated the feeling of being alone in a crowd. At this time, the transportation advances such as the subway were helpful but caused a group of people to be compacted into a small space and invade each others personal space. When viewing the painting one can see that all the passengers are in their own little worlds. No one is interacting with one another, but rather being separate in a crowd. The way Celentano captured this was powerful, successful, and beautiful in my opinion.

Another piece I appreciated was Le Balcon by Henry Meylan. It is a self portrait of the artist on a balcony along with his wife and child. Meylan ignoring the rules of perspective for this painting makes it even more interesting. It adds a special twist to it, but it works well. Much context was not given behind the meaning/purpose of this painting, but I will assume it was Meylan’s way of allowing the viewer to have a peak inside his world. Something about the pipe, the fashion, the use of color and buildings gives you a look into Meylan’s culture. I receive a very homey feeling when viewing it. The use of color and position of the people intrigues the viewer, desiring one to know more about who these people really are.