Elena's 2D Design Blog

Henri Matisse Young Woman at the Window, Sunset  Last week, we visited the Baltimore Museum of Art with the class. I found three works of art that I found very interesting. The one I found most interesting and ranked number 1 is this one on the right by Henri Matisse. It shows a young woman gazing out of a window from what seems like her bedroom. The composition used is Radiating Lines, because the lines around the window sill always  lead your eye back to the woman, who is the focal point of the artwork. Your eye path begins at the woman, follows her gaze down her arm, and goes all around the window and what is outside, ultimately leading back to her face. The Design Wiki talks about lines and how they can suggest the presence of directional force acting on a point. In this artwork, the lines on the window sill seem to force your eyes around the painting, thus acting as a directional force. I liked this painting because it seemed very real and sad. I perceived the meani...

Ways of Seeing  by John Berger introduces a lot of fascinating points about how we see things and our individual perceptions of them. The first point that stood out to me was in the beginning when he states, "We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice". I think this is a really interesting point, and one that I can relate to based on my future profession as an audiologist. When you look at something, say for example a painting or a portrait in a museum, you look at it, but you have to make the choice to actually see it. The same goes for hearing; you can hear someone, but you must actively choose to listen and understand. This is something that us as students can relate to because we are presented with so much information and stimuli, therefore we must make the choice to take it in and use it, instead of going through the motions.  Later on, Berger discusses more about our perceptions of artwork and how we see things in the present versus in the past. He stat...

This reading was definitely trickier for me to comprehend as compared to the last reading. After I read the chapter once, I felt like I did not fully grasp the meaning and did not understand the main points because of how different the content was from our last reading. Therefore I had to reread it over again. One of the most interesting take-aways from this piece was that it introduced an alternative way to think about art and how our minds and imaginations play a larger role than we think. I appreciate the religious aspect of this reading because these ideas are ones that not many people have been introduced to. I found  the initial point fascinating about how images come into our minds through God. Calvino uses Dante to explain this when he states, "Dante is presented with scenes that act as quotations or representations of examples of sins and virtues, at first as bas-reliefs that appear to move and to speak, then as visions projected before his eyes, then as voices reaching...

I have never been artistically inclined, however I hold a strong appreciation for all art types. Although I got the athletic gene in my family, I still see art in a way that is deeper than the surface. In his article "The Whole Ball of Wax", Saltz raises the question: can art change the world? I would respond to that question with another question: what is the world without art? Art is everywhere; it is the buildings we live in and architecture of cities, it is monuments and historic parks and bridges, it is paintings hung up in museums or graffiti in a skate park, it is the movies that we love or Netflix shows that we binge. Bottom line is, art is everywhere, therefore yes, art can change the world. Because art is more than a painting or sculpture, it deserves more respect than it is given, which is why I really appreciated the statement Saltz makes that art "has no less purpose or meaning than science, religion, philosophy, politics, or any other discipline, and is...