The Artwork Soft Calendar for the Month of August, 1962. Metropolitan Assignment

The Artwork Soft Calendar for the Month of August, 1962. Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City - Assignment Example One must wonder why the artist uses the particular medium that he does—especially since it is quite strange. â€Å"Soft Calendar for the Month of August, 1962† is basically canvas filled with shredded foam rubber; it’s painted with Liquitex and enamel. Now, Liquitex, as one understands it, is primarily a plastic paint—which we now know as acrylic gesso. Gesso is what artists usually put on their canvases in order to prime the piece of artwork with paint. So, it seems rational that Claes used Liquitex, perhaps for a first coat. Then, he most likely next applied enamel, which leaves a decorative and glassy coating. It’s a type of paint used for modeling (such as miniature toy plane replicas, etc.). One must ask why the artist uses this particular medium besides why he actually uses the types of paints—and rather, why does he feel this is the best way to represent his art? Perhaps this was the easiest way to paint shredded foam rubber. It must h ave taken some masterful skill to form the rubber just the way he wanted it, because the rubber numbers on the calendar look like dough. The advantages of working with acrylic gesso would be that the first coat would dry easily. The limitations of working with enamel include the fact that enamel takes a longer time to dry. III. Style Elements of the composition work to constitute the artist’s style, much in the way that putting a bunch of puzzle pieces together creates a whole picture. As for what movement within which Oldenburg was working, he was clearly in the realm of various possible categorizations: Modernist, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. It’s possible it might have even been more than one style blended together. At any rate, â€Å"Claes Oldenburg's highly individual figurations make him one of the leading protagonists of Pop Art† (Osterwold 193). Pop art, short for popular art, was at its heyday in the ‘60s, along with the likes of Roy Licht enstein and others. Unmistakably, as one can see below, the calendar for the month of August of 1962 starts with the number â€Å"29,† as that was the day of the week from the previous month of July in that particular year. One also may note that the August calendar of 1962 ends with the number â€Å"1,† because the last day in the calendar was September 1st of 1962—according to the painting. The numbers and letters almost look like baked bread dough rising. More is forthcoming about why this painting looks like it does, in the next section regarding the context of the painting. IV. Context One should examine also, the context of the work. This was painted in the 60s by Claes Oldenburg. He was born in Sweden in 1929, but is an American citizen. It’s uncertain exactly where he painted it, nor with what other works it would be in conversation with unless one talks about this painting being a type of conversation piece in the context of Pop Art. All of the f irst days of the week on the calendar are painted red, while the other days are white. One is unsure whether the colors or this particular month held any kind of cultural or historical events or issues which the piece is addressing. To be sure, Soft Calendar for the Month of August, 1962 is definitely riveting. It makes you ask why a thousand times. Why are the first days of the week painted red, and the rest white? Why do these numbers look like rising bread dough? And so forth and so on. It is a discussion that must be had. V. Conclusion

Research paper based on the life of Edgar Allan Poe Essay

Research paper based on the life of Edgar Allan Poe - Essay Example aware of his life story realize that he was orphaned at a very young age and was never able to achieve any sense of connection to his foster parents, the Allans. The author is also famous for his marriage to a young girl. At the age of 27, Poe decided to marry his 13-year-old cousin Virginia, the only girl he ever truly loved and who tragically died while still considered a young girl. Contributing both to his despair and his alienation from his foster father, Poe is known to have also engaged in a number of poor personal habits such as drinking, gambling and using opium, perhaps even as an addict. Despite these issues, he was able to find early commercial success as a writer. He published his first book of poems at the age of 19 and began publishing his short stories by the age of 23. Unfortunately, though, he never achieved the kind of financial success he felt his innovation and talent were entitled to and he remained a mostly disillusioned and miserable man through most of his li fe. Setting the rules for the art of the short story he’d brought into popularity, Poe said â€Å"If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression† (Mowery, 1997). Like many writers, though, Poe wrote of what he was most intimately familiar with, in this case his own inner demons, and his stories were thus themed primarily around the concepts of sorrow and loss. By examining works such as â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† or â€Å"Ligeia,† one begins to understand much about the author’s personality and inner character through the revelation of his anima. The term anima was introduced by Carl Jung’s work on dream analysis as a means of understanding the psyche on a different level than what had been proposed by Sigmund Freud. According to Neumann (1954), â€Å"the Anima is the personification of all feminine psychological tendencies within a man, the