Two Compositions Masterpieces - Essay Example

ID Number and Section Introduction This essay compares and contrasts two compositions—masterpieces that are apparently unlike, although they have a central similarity: both compositions depict the post-Second World War era, or the modern period. One is Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych, the other by Willem De Kooning’s Gotham News. Warhol’s work, a mixture of acrylic paint, oil, and silkscreen on print was created in 1962, while De Kooning’s composition was created in 1955. This essay argues that Warhol’s work is artistically controlled, which De Kooning’s canvas is naturally or spontaneously produced. Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych Andy Warhol was pushed to engage in his array of Marilyn Monroe canvasses by reports of her suicide on August 4, 1962. Since childhood Warhol had been greatly interested in pop culture icons and celebrities. In 1962, he was perfecting silk-screen paintings of the movie stars Warren Beatty and Troy Donahue (Warhol, Michelson, & Buchloh 2001). Afterward, on the 5th of August, Marilyn Monroe was discovered lifeless in her residence in California. Warhol, immediately after the death of the famous actress, created a silk-screen picture of her facial features. He used specific shades for the painting, and afterward he silk-screen engraved the picture of the face of Marilyn over the shades. Throughout the following years, Warhol created numerous paintings of Marilyn in a variety of shades. Marilyn Diptych was one of the largely replicated and mentioned of all the Marilyn Monroe paintings. Warhol was the pioneer of the Pop Art movement, in which collectiveness or being in a group, rather than distinctiveness and individualism, was valued. This movement was a reaction to the 1950’s and 1960’s mass pop culture. Trend setting and the need to ‘go with the flow’ and ‘fit in’ was becoming quite powerful (Young 2001). Thus, Warhol illustrates Marilyn Monroe in the pinnacle of her prominence. When creating colored images like Marilyn Diptych, Warhol would in fact develop the image back to front: first Warhol would put colors under the backdrop and specific color zones making up, for instance, the red lips, golden hair, green eyelids, and the pink face, prior to the final putting of colors over the silkscreened graphic illustration of the individual being depicted. The regions of bright shade do not simply serve as visual highlights but function vividly to emphasize the brightness of the media glamour and character of Marilyn Monroe. The minor discrepancies in the under-paintings provide richness to Marilyn’s colored pictures, without reducing the feeling of dullness. The prominence of Marilyn relied upon her face, particularly her attractive, red lips. Throughout her life, she gave her best efforts to put emphasis on her lips, applying a mixture of three colors of lipstick in addition to a combination of polish and petroleum jelly (Warhol et al. 2001). Marilyn Diptych intentionally disfigures her lips and facial features, stressing the hypocrisy of her reflection and showing that it was a gross commercialization of that reflection that resulted in her eventual demise. Warhol apparently rises to existentialism. Willem De Kooning’s Gotham News A thorough analysis of a 1955 Willem De Kooning’s painting, Gotham News, can encourage an interesting study on the diverse aspects of the social and cultural environment of artistic endeavor in New York City, as well as De Kooning’s art works in the 1950s (Lake 2010). Gotham News is to a large extent an illustration of New York life—exhilarating, vibrant and full of life to some, and unfriendly, aggressive, perplexing, and congested to others; and a mixture of all for most people. Several of the partitions in the painting are not partitions in any way, for they overlap or shadow into one another, or progress in tandem. The casualness of Gotham News has been interpreted as disintegration. This painting illustrates a reality and disfigures it. Even though there has been a departure from power, this departure has an argument, an argument largely reflective of its period, the mid-1950s. Spontaneity is the thematic framework against which Abstract Expressionism characterize itself. The chaotic and convoluted surfaces of Gotham News depict the disorder of New York, the disharmony of its visual senses, aromas, sounds, and experiences (Lake 2010). The painting talks about the coarse unpleasantness and energetic lifestyle of Manhattan. Gotham News integrated newspapers. Since De Kooning at times allows his paintings rest for days, he would wrap the damp canvas with newspaper so as to slow down the drying procedure. When the covering was taken out, texts, headlines, and advertisement images had often been shifted to the oil paint (Young 2001). He adopted this procedure, permitting these patchwork or hodgepodge components created by regulated opportunity to serve a function in the work of art, as though in reference to Cubist compositions. At the core of such procedure, as stated by De Kooning himself, was a motivation to use the insights and methods of the earlier period in an attempt to uncover completely new domains of creative expression. For a remarkably abstract canvass, Gotham News was an exceptional rendition of New York in the mid-1950s. Even one is completely unaware of the personal situations of De Kooning during this period, merely looking at Gotham News reveals the fact that the artist usually stumble upon success in situating his wild breathtaking embraced city at the backdrop. Comparing and Contrasting Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych and De Kooning’s Gotham News Marilyn Diptych and Gotham News are two very different compositions, created seven years apart, and represented two very distinct artistic movements. However, despite of such differences, there are still few similarities between the two. Above all, both paintings are reacting to the growing complexity of modern life: the rise of pompous fame in Marilyn Diptych, and the rise of dynamic and complicated city life in Gotham News. After the wreckage of World War II, both Warhol and De Kooning, just like other artists, felt a sense of cynicism and bitterness in the traditional forms of expression. Trying to recreate their perception of the modern period, both artists, deviating from the principles of the Dada and Surrealist movements, started trying out new techniques of illustrating the modern period. Marilyn Diptych and Gotham News both function as a way to communicate the growth of new western illustrations of the contemporary period, namely, artificial (Marilyn Diptych) and chaotic (Gotham News). However, during the latter part of the 1950s, Andy Warhol found Willem De Kooning’s compositions to be harsh and unproductive in articulating the evolving modern period and its social and cultural context (Warhol et al. 2001). Thus the concept underlying Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych is completely the opposite of what De Kooning presents in Gotham News. The different between the glossy, efficient, thoroughly composed image of Warhol and the rough, flamboyant, all but rebellious image of De Kooning is that Warhol maintains Marilyn’s popular façade. He modified it but he did not ruin it. Marilyn’s facial features stayed distinguishable and clear, although loudly highlighted, or cosmetically embellished. Where De Kooning challenged culturally and socially created exteriors in Gotham News, Warhol accentuated them in Marilyn Diptych, although satirically. De Kooning’s Gotham News is an imaginative revelation and expression of sentiments that disobey the social oppression obstacle, intended to sustain the delusion and pretense of rationality, and undoubtedly to create a specific room for real forethought, whereas Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych preserves the social oppression obstacle and strengthens it, and hence adds up to its mechanism, even though satirically distorted, or rather confounded, to afford more reasonable. Conclusions In conclusions, Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych is an outcome of artistic control, whereas De Kooning’s Gotham News is an outcome of original or spontaneous art. De Kooning’s work is filled with natural or unstructured action, ideas, and sentiments, whereas Warhol’s composition strengthens social limitation. Warhol’s aesthetically controlled Marilyn Diptych is challenged and weakened by De Kooning’s original representation of life in New York. Works Cited Lake, Susan. Willem De Kooning: The Artist’s Materials. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications, 2010. Print. Warhol, Andy, Annette Michelson, & B.H.D. Buchloh. Andy Warhol. New York: MIT Press, 2001. Print. Young, James. Art and Knowledge. London: Routledge, 2001. Print. Read More