5 Artists And Their Work That Changed The Way I See The World
Here is a deep dive in the visual, emotional, and physical influences from art that changed the way I see the world.
Richard Serra: the late American artist “known for his large-scale abstract sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings, and whose work has been primarily associated with Postminimalism” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Serra).
It was late 2018, I visited LACMA as an art student with Westmont College. I remember finding my way into one of their large exhibition wings, met by Band, a towering goliath steel maze. Tears filled my eyes, I was deeply moved in this intricately beautiful and domineering presence as I walked throughout its baseline. Reluctantly having to leave the exhibition as LACMA closed, I knew that was an impression I would never forget.
Band introduced the ideas of art literally moving mountains. To install the piece, LACMA had to reconstruct their ceiling to lift each steel sheet into the room. The curator at the time of installation notes:
“Band may qualify as Richard Serra's magnum opus, representing the fullest expression of the formal vocabulary proffered by his monumental steel arcs and torqued ellipses of the 1980s and '90s. Band is among the most formally elegant and technically complex works of Serra's oeuvre, a sculpture that took him two-and-a-half years to develop and which he described as "a completely new form for me." Whereas the arcs and ellipses had a stolid austerity and an uncompromising formal logic, Band introduces a new quotient of fluidity and sense of freedom, undulating with the apparent ease of a ribbon, flowing back and forth with almost balletic grace. Yet, it is plainly - obdurately - a manifestation of its own titanic size and weight, indomitable in its mass, volume, and ownership of space. Serra's art has always forcefully asserted its materiality and evinced the process of its fabrication. Band is no exception. It is a daunting display of its own immensity, evoking the incomprehensible mechanics of handling some two-hundred tons of hot steel and the precision engineering that goes into shaping it, as well as the placing of its component parts, which requires tolerances down to a single millimeter. At twelve feet high and more than seventy feet long, the work is vast even by Serra's monumental standard. Careening aesthetically between bravado and elegance, Band bespeaks the ambitiousness of Serra's artistic vision and his commitment to its physical realization.
Howard Fox, Curator of Contemporary Art, 2008
Paulus Potter: The "Piebald" Horse (1650–1654)
The Getty Center was the first art center and gallery I had visited as a young girl in the early 2000s. I remember my school taking a field trip and I was in awe of The "Piebald" Horse by Paulus Potter (Dutch, 1625 - 1654). A beautiful white appaloosa horse in the center of a field. Of course this little girl couldn’t refuse, later finding a postcard of the painting in the souvenir shop along with a fabulous multi-colored pencil. I knew I liked this place and it was just the first of many visits.
John Everett Mallais: The Ransom (English, 1829 - 1896)
When I returned to the Getty almost a decade later, in their south wing while most of the visitors were eyeing Van Gogh’s Irises or Monet’s Hay Stacks, in the opposite gallery The Ransom towered on the center wall. The striking and large oil painting depicts the ransomed exchange of a knights’ two daughters from her captors. The figures’ postures frozen in a tense moment, adorned in garb of the time and segregated with details of the wealthy class on the page’s wardrobe to the gold threading on the daughters’ dress skirts.
There was something that stuck out to me that kept me coming back to that gallery while it was on display over the years. Whether it was the father’s gentle embrace while demanding eye contact with the captors or the painted detail in fabrics and back tapestry. When you see something you know is meant for you to see, it stays with you.
Jacques-Louis David: (French, 1748 - 1825) The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis, 1818
A romanized scene from the Odyssey, Odysseus’ son Telemachus softly gazing at the viewer while embraced by the nymph Eurcharis. David’s soft glow of their skin and silky fabrics captivate you in this emotional lovers farewell, typical for the Neoclassical style during his exile in Brussels.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn: (Dutch 1606-1669)
The Dutch master, commonly known as Rembrandt, throughout my career has always captivated my heart for many reasons - his oil paintings, drafts, and prints to name a few. His multitude of portraiture and self portraiture distinctly are widely known for the common theme of dramatic lighting and shadow with strong painterly textures. Rembrandt was also known to paint himself in the backgrounds of many of his vast figures.
These works I’ve shared, Rembrandt, as well as French-Impressionist, Paul Cezanne have dramatically influenced my studies in painting.
As artists, what and who we allow to set an impression on our soul’s eyes greatly resides in the work we produce. We, Artists, determine the art world as its participants, not the galleries, critiques, curators, or collectors.
