Jeff's Museum Visit

Jeff Lloyd
Feb. 15, 2008

Today I went to the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth. All of the exhibits were not open due to new exhibits being brought in. I enjoyed my visit to the museum. The way the museum is laid out and the design of the building was very impressive to me. The areas that over looked the water garden and were very cool.

One of my favorite artists of all time is Pablo Picasso and the Modern Art Museum had one of his painting in it’s permanent collection. I had never seen his “Femme couchee listant” until today. It is a very interesting piece.

The lines out line the shape of the woman and the object that are around her. Lines are thick around the body of the woman making her appear to be the important subject.

The shapes in the work are geometric. The shapes come together to form the body and figure of the woman. The shapes are flat and don’t show a lot of volume.

The space is filled up in the center of the piece. The space around the woman is the background and is very plain. The artist creates depth by making the background around the figure darker.

The light looks like it is directly above the woman. The shadows are depicted by sold black on the woman but there are shades of gray shadowing the objects and the background. The couch is the only object that shows a gradiance.

The color is black, white and grays. The black and white, to me gives me the feeling that the mood is calm and relaxing.

The art principal of balance is produced by the shadows on the woman not fading with grays but the sudden white on the top side of her body to the black on the bottom side. The balance of lines are asymmetrical. Black and white are used to show opposites.

Your eye is drawn to the woman because she is the brightest part and the white colors put emphasis on here to stand out from everything else.

I did not see much rhythm in this piece because all of the shapes are so different.

The media was two dimensional on a canvas that was large in size in my opinion.

This piece is a painting done with black and white oil paints. Oils are slow drying paints that enable you to correct mishaps when they happen. The lines were smooth and the look of the paint was flat. The painting was in good condition and I am not aware if Picasso made any changes to this piece later.

I enjoyed my visit to the Modern Art Museum and after taking some note on the Picasso piece I wandered through the rest of the exhibits. I took some pictures of some pieces that I liked and took a couple cool pictures with the Vortex piece that was outside the museum.