#2, Salvador Dali, (Daddy Long Legs of the Evening....Hope!!!), 1940

The Artist: 

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali I Domenech was born  May 11, 1904 in the small town of Figueres, Spain. When he was a young boy Dali spent his years in Figueres and at the family's summer home in the coastal fishing village of Cadaques where his parents built his first studio.  Dali attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Recognition of his talent came  early with his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1925. As an adult, he made his home with his wife Gala in nearby Port Lligat, as it reflects in many of his paintings the great love he had for this area of Spain. Dali and Gala escaped from Europe during World War II, spending 1940-48 in the United States. These were very important years for the artist. The Museum of Modern Art in New York gave Dali his first major retrospective exhibit in 1941. This was followed in 1942 by the publication of Dali's autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. As an artist,  he was not limited to a particular style or media. The body of his work, from early impressionist paintings through his transitional surrealist works, and into his classical period, reveals a constant growth as a evolving artist. Dali worked in all media, leaving behind a wealth of oils, watercolors, drawings, graphics, and sculptures, films, photographs, performance pieces, jewels and objects of all descriptions. Dali was known as a great craftsman his works as creative artist set the standard for the art of the twentieth century.

The Work:


This particular oil on canvas painting is between the transition of Dali's surrealism and classicism phases. This piece was made as a reference of World War II. Each piece in this painting symbolizes an event that took place during that war. In the left hand corner there is a cannon propped up by a crutch which is suppose to symbolize death and war. Out of the opening of the cannon there are two objects including a fluid biplane and a white horse. The horse is displaying a sense of power, speed, and control. There is also a winged victory figure, Dali described as,"victory born of a broken wing." Salvador felt that the use of air power would be the decisive element of the war, the very key to victory itself. History has shown that this is at least partially true (www.moodbook.com). Near the center of the painting there is a figure, which Dali calls a 'soft self-portrait."The self-portrait that Dali is referring to is a decaying body slumped over a dead tree, there are inkwells propped on it, and it's holding a violin. At the time there were signing of treaties taking place and the inkwells symbolize that. There is also a cupid figure in this painting that sees the destruction in front of him. Last but not least, there is a daddy longlegs spider in the exact center of the painting which is a French symbol for hope so Dali wanted to express the fact that through all the turmoil you can still overcome.

My Reaction:

I interpreted this painting a little bit differently because I did not see the daddy longlegs spider as being the subject. The decaying female body is what stood out to me. This body is faceless but I can identify it as a female because of the breasts that are slumped over the tree. I see what appears to be a vagina covered by the handle of a violin. It looks like the daddy longlegs is resting on a piece of the self-portrait and with that being said I conclude that through it all the female symbolizes hope. At this time, the women were finally allowed to step up to the plate and service their country by working in the military or obtaining industrial jobs and no longer being domestic. 

Work Cited:

Janson, H. W., and H. W. Janson. Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Print. 

Neret, Gilles, and Robert Descharnes. Salvador Dali 2v. 2007. Print. 

"Salvador Dali." . Surreal Years. Art, Paintings, and Works. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://www.moodbook.com/history/modernism/salvador-dali-surreal.html>. 

#4, Joan Miro, (Standing Nude), 1921

The Artist:

Joan Miro was born April 20, 1893, in Barcelona, Spain. His father was a watchmaker and goldsmith, his father's background as an artisan and the austere Catalan landscape was very important to his art. It was said that he expressed to his parents that wished he  attended a commercial college. Joan worked for two years as a clerk in an office until he had a mental and physical breakdown. In 1912  his parents  allowed him to attend an art school in Barcelona. His teacher at the showed a great understanding of his 18-year-old , advising him to touch the objects he was about to draw, a procedure that strengthened Miros  feeling for the spatial quality of objects (joanmiro.com). In the early 1920s Miro combined meticulously detailed realism with abstraction in landscapes such as the renowned Farm (1921) and The Tilled Field (1923–24). He  began  to remove the objects he portrayed from their natural context and reassembled them as if in accordance with a new, mysterious grammar, creating a ghostly, eerie impression. Upon his return from a trip in 1928 to the Netherlands, where he studied the 17th-century Dutch realist painters in the museums, Miro executed a series of works based on Old Master paintings titled Dutch Interiors (1928). In the 1930s Miro became to experiment in working with techniques of collage and sculptural assemblage and creating sets and costumes for ballets. His art had developed slowly from his first clumsy attempts at expression to the apparently playful masterpieces of his later period. In his late works he employed an even greater simplification of figure and background; he sometimes created a composition merely by setting down a dot and a sensitive line on a sea-blue surface, as in Blue II (1961). In 1980, in conjunction with his being awarded Spain's Gold Medal of Fine Arts, a plaza in Madrid was named in Miro’s honor (Davies, 997).

The Work:


In this oil on canvas, Miro makes use of basic geometric forms. He creates this woman's figure with a rhythm so the viewer has to look up and down the canvas. Miro manages to show the front and side of each body part to allow the viewer to examine how everything was pieced together. Miro's goal was for shapes to point towards the balance of a form (Mink 27-30).

My Reaction:


This piece says femininity to me because the female is the one and only subject of the piece and I can see the whole female anatomy looking at it. Miro gives us a glimpse of the females hair (straight and pulled back), the eye (open and closed), the breasts (soft and hard), and the stomach (flat and round). He even let's us see the vagina and how curvaceous the female figure can be. For me, this piece displays numerous life cycles of the female body.

Works Cited:

Davies, Penelope W., Walter Denny, Frima Hofrichter, Joseph Jacobs, Ann Roberts, and David Simon. Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Print. 

"Joan Miro Biography." Joan Miro Art. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://joanmiro.com/joan-miro-biography/>. 

Mink, Janis, and Joan Miró. Joan Miró, 1893-1983. Köln: Benedikt Taschen, 1993. Print. 

#3, Frida Kahlo, (A Few Small Nips), 1935

The Artist:

Frida Kahlo de Rivera was born July 6, 1907in Coyocoán, Mexico City, Mexico. Frida  grew up in the family’s home  which is later referred as the Blue House or Casa Azul. Her father, Wilhelm  was a German photographer who had immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother Matilde. At  the age of 6, she contracted polio, which caused her to be bedridden for nine months. While she did recover from the illness, she limped when she walked because the disease damaged her right leg and foot. Her father encouraged her to play soccer, go swimming to help  her recovery. On September 17, 1925, Kahlo was traveling on a bus when the vehicle collided with a streetcar. As a result of the collision, Kahlo was impaled by a steel handrail, which went into her hip and came out the other side. She suffered serious injuries as a result, including fractures in her spine and pelvis. She was considered  to be one of Mexico's greatest artists, Frida began painting after she was severely injured in a bus accident. In 1929 she got married to Diego Rivera who encouraged her artwork (Herrera, 15). In 1930, they lived in San Francisco, California, where Kahlo showed her painting Frieda and Diego Rivera at the Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artist. She incorporated more graphic and surrealistic elements in her work for example her painting, Henry Ford Hospital (1932), where she appears on a hospital bed with several items   things such as a fetus, a snail, a flower, a pelvis, and others which were floating around her connected to her by red, vein like strings , the work was deeply personal, telling the story of her second miscarriage.  Extremely depressed,  Frida was hospitalized again in April 1954 because of poor health, or, as some reports indicated, a suicide attempt. Kahlo died on July 13 at her beloved Blue House. There has been some speculation regarding the nature of her death. It was reported to be caused by a pulmonary embolism, but there have also been stories about a possible suicide. Since her death, Kahlo’s fame as an artist has grown. The Blue House was opened as a museum in 1958. The feminist movement of the 1970s led to renewed interest in her life and work, as Kahlo was viewed by many as an icon of female creativity (Davies, 1027-28).

The Work:


Kahlo created this oil on metal after a report surfaced of an unfaithful woman being stabbed to death on a cot by her spouse. At the time, she was going through her own chronic pain and emotional pain because her husband, Diego, a fellow painter, her and younger sister were having an affair with one another. This painting enabled her to express her pain through a re-creation of someone else's real-life experience. Kahlo told a close friend that she herself felt, "murdered by life"(www.lisawallerrogers.wordpress.com). The white and black doves presented at the top of the painting symbolize the light and dark sides of love and the ribbon they are holding say,"…because she gave herself to another bastard, but today I snatched her away, her hour has come"(www.fridakahlofans.com).

My Reaction:

Everything about this piece screams femininity to me because the painting reveals one of the many hardships that females experience everyday. Nearly, two-thirds of crimes committed against women is done by the hands of someone close to them (allaboutcounseling.com). There is a man in the painting but it's as if he's not even there because your attention is first drawn to this poor woman's lifeless body. Through it all Kahlo still manages to display how beautiful the female anatomy is by keeping the body completely nude. I just can't understand what could trigger someone to have so much rage towards another human being.This piece was truly a call for help for all females affected by domestic violence.

Works Cited:

Davies, Penelope W., Walter Denny, Frima Hofrichter, Joseph Jacobs, Ann Roberts, and David Simon. Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Print. 

"Domestic Violence." – Battered Women, Children – Physical Abuse. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://www.allaboutcounseling.com/domestic_violence.htm>. 

"A Few Small Nips (Passionately in Love)." Few Small Nips, Unos Cuantos Piquetitos, Frida Kahlo, C0150. Web. 05 Mar. 2012. <http://www.fridakahlofans.com/c0150.html>. 

Herrera, Hayden. Frida, a Biography of Frida Kahlo. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. Print. 

#1, Henri Matisse, (Blue Nude), 1907

The Artist: 

Henry Matisse, was a French painter, draughtsman, sculptor, printmaker, designer and writer that was considered to be and one of the most prominent painter's of the 20th century. He was born December 31, 1869 in France to grain merchants (middle class family) (www.henri-matisse.net). Believe it or not, he actually attended law school for five years before he took an interest in art. In 1891, he abandoned law altogether and moved back to Paris with his father's permission to study art. He took up his studies at the Academie Julian and was taught by William-Adolphe Bouguereauthe but was later invited to Gustave Mureau's studio (www.history.com/topics/henri-matisse). He dabbled with impressionism, neoimpressionist styles, and even made mirrored master artist works to develop composition. Matisse first debuted his work in 1896 but was unsuccessful until 1905 when he exhibited work that was part of the fauvism (exuberant use of color) movement (which he later became the leader of). After the era of fauvism was over, Matisse continued to use color and started experimenting with abstraction but never touched cubism (Davies, 946). It is even said that some of his earliest sculptures have african american influence (www.infoplease.com). 


The Work:


This oil on canvas painting was derived from a sculpture Matisse was working on and accidentally knocked to the floor. He was completely distraught after the incident and his wife took him on a walk so that he could get a breath of fresh air and when he returned he began to work. The sculpture was of a reclining nude female and it was an experiment to see how well he could display a very defined figure within limited space. He finished the painting within mere weeks and when he showed it for the first time the Paris art scene was at a lost for words; they loved it! Unfortunately, when the painting was being moved to Chicago for a show in 1913 it was burned because it angered a lot of people. Its home museum is the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, MD, USA (artnet.com).


My Reaction: 


When I first peered at the painting I truly thought I was looking at a man. The figure is so overly sized and some of her features such as her arms, hands, and feet are huge. Maybe Matisse wanted the viewers minds to wonder if the painting is of a man, a woman, or both. He could also be using a creative way to show us that there is femininity in men as there is masculinity in women. He does not even give great detail of the figures hair; the hair is very short and tapered almost in the shape of a typical mans haircut. This woman has muscles like a modern day body builder and her butt looks bigger than a cows hide. After all the fun I may poke of this painting, I can still appreciate it because wherever she is the trees, grass, and plants in the background along with her posture make her seem at peace.


Works Cited:

Davies, Penelope W., Walter Denny, Frima Hofrichter, Joseph Jacobs, Ann Roberts, and David Simon. Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Print. 

Finch, Charlie. "Artnet Magazine." Fine Art, Decorative Art, and Design. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/finch/henri-matisse7-30-10_detail.asp?picnum=1>. 

Infoplease. Infoplease. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/henrimatisse.html>. 

McMullen, Roy D. "Henri Matisse." History.com. A&E Television Networks. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.history.com/topics/henri-matisse>. 

"The Personal Life of Henri Matisse." Biography of Henri Matisse. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.henri-matisse.net/biography.html>.