Art Criticism Analysis

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Art criticism Introduction Art is the expression of an artist to portray a message either through a drawing, sculpture or painting. Analysing two art works made in the 19th century, we ascertain that art is more of a personal expression of meaning or message to a particular audience through time. This paper will evaluate two drawings by Childe Hassam, 1926 and Robert Arneson, 1974. The two drawings portray different messages as they were drawn in different times of history. Childe’s drawing is titled Independence Hall while Robert’s drawing is titled Sin Tax. This paper will use the contextual critical theory in examining the Independence Hall drawing and formal critic theory to analyse the Sin Tax drawing. Independence Hall The Independence…show more content…
This is the venue where the declaration of independence and the constitution of America were first debated and adopted in 1776 and 1787 respectively. The artists wanted to express this monumental piece of history through drawing a replica view of the building as it was in 1926. He carefully chose the perfect angle that enabled the capturing of the entire front view of the building as well as the adjacent buildings. The drawing was drawn during winter season explaining the overall dullness of the picture. Snow cover and the cloudy sky are thus brilliantly expressed by the general white background paper while the trees have withered…show more content…
On the backdrop of a black background, a man is drawn sitting down while a shaving machine is on at the side view of his head. It is a free style drawing by use of lines to portray features of the man’s face and clothing with an overhead hand holding four strings attached to the portrait. The strings depict the barber’s hand holding the cable of the shaving machine while the different colours on the man’s head signify an ongoing shaving session. The artist uses different shades of colours, lines and dots to highlight details of the drawing for example, the wavy lines highlight his hair and beard. The four pictures glued to the drawing include a picture of an animal, a woman riding a white horse, children playing on a hillside and a torn picture of an erupted volcano. This depicts an aesthetic description of a barber’s shop where pictures are usually used to break the monotony of the paint on the walls. The pictures normally portray environments that are familiar to the customers and in this case the environment, nature and humanity are the themes of the

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