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Portrait with Red Chair

&

 Scintillating Blue

Homer Boss

Portrait with Red Chair

1920

Oil on canvas

          In Boss' painting, he depicts a black haired woman sitting in a red chair. In the background is a red, blue, and green wallpaper. Everything in the composition blends together naturally with the exception of the red chair. The red chair is painted with sharp lines and definite strokes, giving it the chair an almost cartoonish feeling.

          The woman's features are exaggerated and harshly outlined while everything within the outlines is beautifully blended with a variety of muted colors. This gives the painting a feeling of contradiction with acceptance.

          The lady is in a relaxed hunch and stares off into the distance as if she's by herself, disinterested in anything and indulged in her own thoughts. It gives the viewer a sense of curiosity.

 

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Hans Hoffman

Scintillating Blue 38-30

1956

Oil on canvas

 

          To some people, this painting may just look like a bunch of paint smeared on  a canvas, but if you look throughout the painting and let your eyes meander their way, you see a variety of layers, texture, brush strokes, and color combinations. The piece comes off as very fun and experimental. For me ( someone new to oil paints) it's a very easy piece to relate to.

          As you look at different parts of the painting you gain more familiarity with it. Although there's an abundance of blues in the painting, there isn't  really any set color scheme, and color you could imagine makes an appearance. It's a very fun, playful, almost whimsical piece. There's no sense of direction with what the artist intended which leaves a sense of openness to the viewer.

 

           For me, I can appreciate both of these pieces equally, just from a different perspective. Portrait with Red Chair is a representational composition which you would think would be more straight forward, but instead leaves you with an endless list of thoughts and efforts of trying to put yourself into the composition. Scintillating Blue is an abstract composition exploring a medium. I can automatically appreciate the playfulness of this piece without over thinking it.These are two very different pieces, done equally well, with separate effects.

 

 

Here's a selfie to prove I went to the Hunter.

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Cassidy C.