Well owing to a combination of boredom and some
arm twisting from one of the forum members who shall remain anonymous (unless
this is a total flop in which case I am passing the blame on to them) I decided
to do something constructive with my time and being as my one 14day trial run
of WOW ran out (after a mere 6 months) I decided to do a review of various art
pieces. Rather than risk getting risk getting hung upside down over some
burning coals by the moderators (again) I decided to review more traditional
art pieces rather than anything on IFX.
I was originally going to review Jackson
Pollack but decided I shall save that for a Special occasion so instead I
decided to review the Mona Lisa by Leonardo De Caprio, err no that’s not right.
*Checks wiki* Ah, De Vinci. I knew that, just testing you.
As any good review will tell you should start
with a controversial statement (Just made that part up to sound like I know
what I am doing, which I so totally do and am not making it up as I go!). Well
I guess the controversial statement is that the piece is boring.
I suppose this is just me being fickle, I mean
the flesh is painted beautifully and the detail in her garments is very nice,
but it all just feels too safe. Realistically if you place this piece next to a
man who has just been set alight people would flock around the burning man
(either out of sheer terror spawned from the hapless victims screams of agony
or out of sadistic curiosity in seeing if anyone else gets caught ablaze).
So let’s get down to the nitty gritty (and oh
god doesn’t that sound girly). The picture itself is a portrait of a woman
sitting with a smug look on her in front of some outdoor scenery. The woman has
a smug look on her face as if to say I am better than you, and even goes so far
as to avoid looking at you directly as if you are the only drunk at a high class
party (oh and apparently pants were mandatory to that party). Composition seems
to be based on triangles as her body fits into one right in the centre of the
canvas, thus dividing the remainder of the picture into a triangle on either
side of her. On a side note, how much of this ****in’ image does she want, attention
seeking cow.
There is no doubt that Da Vinci was a master of
his craft. Subtle things like a complimentary colour pallet (red tint of her
face and hair vs green errr… everything else) are used very well as nothing
feels overpowered in this piece. I suppose this is another reason why I find
this piece boring as there is no conflict what so ever. (I know the point of
this piece is simplicity but still he could have thrown in a set of BEWBZ, or a
tiger, on fire, with lightning swords … with bewbz etched on them). This leads
me to believe one of the reasons that this piece has become such an icon of art
is because of it’s theft in 1911, along with the numerous parodies of the piece
such as the pieces done in the Dadaist style. This leads me in a random fashion
to my next area of scrutiny, her legs.
As you may have noticed the legs are not
painted and this was done for an oblivious reason. You see Da Vinci was an inventor
so obliviously the lower half of the painting was of mech legs. Ah yes, you can’t
fool me Da Vinci, your conspiracy has been unravelled. Speaking of hidden
issues in or around the picture did you know that Da Vinci had no close
relationships with any woman which leads me to believe that he painted this so
he could get some action with the model (like playing backgammon and if you
thought I meant getting down and dirty please get your mind out of the gutter. Actually
… … … Okay I am never going to that part of my mind again).
The picture has undoubtedly had an effect on
most of the pieces here on IFX as a lot of artist seem to want to blend skin in
a similar fashion to Da Vinci where there are no clear transitions of shades
(Hard brush with hardness at 0% in Photoshop), so I guess we all owe a lot to
this piece but I can’t help but feel if it was created today and placed on any
internet art forum it would be quickly forgotten (right after it was stolen and
placed on a motivator).
Next time I will slaughter … er I mean provide
an unbiased review on the works of Tracy Emin.
All the good/ funny/ informative bits were written by Phoenicorn. Art work in question does not belong to me (obliviously).
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