Tôi tìm thấy một bài viết văn trong lớp học hồi xưa "Art 100" thấy cũng zui zui, đăng lên đây chơi. Trong hội họa cũng như trong âm nhạc, phân tích các tác phẩm là chuyện phải làm, trước hết là để mình hiểu thấu đáo một bức họa hay một bài hát. Không thể có chuyện khen hay chê khơi khơi được, mà cái gì cũng phải có dẫn chứng cụ thể. Sau khi học lớp này khoảng 2004-2005, rồi đối chiếu với nhạc VN, tôi tức mình quá vì thấy trong âm nhạc Vn mình không có chuyện phân tích các tác phẩm âm nhạc bằng các dùng nhạc để trình bày, tôi bèn viết từ từ vài bài viết ngắn về nhạc Trịnh Công Sơn, rồi nhạc Phạm Duy. Nhìn lại, tôi cảm thấy sự học nhạc của tôi tăng lên đáng kể về chuyện đọc nhiều sách vở thêm để có thể viết bài phân tích nhạc.
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Design Principles and Visual Elements in Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” and Joan Miro’s “Carnival of the Harlequin” – A Compare and Constrast Study
A brush, a color palette, a canvas – these basic things are just about everything one needs tostart his or her own painting masterpiece. Yet there are not that many masterpieces that withstand thetest of art critics and viewers. What makes a painting a masterpiece? This short essay will humblyattempt to answer that question by compare and constrast Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence ofMemory” against Joan’s Miro’s “Carnival of the Harlequin” in terms of their design principles (unityand variety, balance, emphasis and subordination, scale and proportion, and rhythm.) Specifically, thisessay will try to show how the visual elements (line, shape, light, color, texture and pattern, space,time and motion) helped the design principles to contribute to the meaning of the works.
By limiting to only a handful of objects and a narrow color scheme to depict a sense of“persistence of memory,” Salvador Dali strives to achieve both the visual and conceptual aspects ofhis unity in design. The composition clearly conveys the decaying of time. We see lifeless cliffsagainst a calm seashore, a gray concrete slab, a dead tree with no leaves standing from another largerconcrete pedestal, some melting watches, and a dying look-alike fetus. We do not witness any motionat all other than the slowly melting of time represented by the watches, or the food hunting ants in theback of the red watch. Anything that could possibly have a life is being stamped and dragged down bythese melting watches. Even time itself is being attacked by the ants. To further reinforce this visualunity of design, Dali uses a brown monochromatic color scheme. The light brown fetus is lyingmotionless against a darker brown color. The outside edge of the watches and the pedestal also usedifferent color values from the overall brown color theme. The far away sky and the sea water color, inconstrast, use the remaining primary yellow and blue to depict the cool and invariant of time. The bluecolor is also being used in the inside face of the watches as the reflection of the sky to furtherillustrated the relationship between time and nature. The only watch that seems to be alive by using thered color is helplessly faced down and is being attacked by the heartless ants.
Joan Miro’s “The Carnival of the Harlequin,” on the contrary, is all about life - as rememberedfrom his dreams. The artist uses a plethora of contours and lines as well as an open palette of color toillustrate the variety of his drawing subjects as well as their activities. This composition’s “celebrationof life” unity is expressed by a wide range of motions, from a long and curvy black arm of the icemannear the blue table, the tall man playing the guitar, the curvy white smoke from an odd-looking vase atthe center of the picture, or the primitive creature with blue lungs rising up from the iceman. Even thered tree as seen outside the window is dancing along with the music imprinted on the wall. The ladderis drawn with skewed rails to help make the composition more imbalance. These long reaching curvesand lines give the viewer a sense of busy as his eyes must travel from left to right, or from top tobottom to follow the creatures’ activities. Other shapes such as circles, spheres, cones, cubes, etc. arealso included to enhance the joyfulness of the composition. Miro uses a very open palette with highintensity colors such as black, white, blue, red, green, yellow, etc. He distributes this color schemeevenly across the composition. For example, the blue color appears at all for corners of the painting, asit represents the sky, the table, the cone eye, a wing of the butterfly, or as the star tail.
In Dali’s painting, the asymmetrical balance is established by the heaviness of the largerpedestal against the lighter cliffs placed at the diagonally opposite side of the painting. The meltingmovements of the watches also help directing the eyes toward the fetus, which is placed at the centerof the space limited by the cliffs and the larger pedestal - thus help balancing the composition ingeneral. More importantly, this logical placement of the fetus identifies that it is one of the main themeof the painting, an important focus point for the viewer to contemplate upon. Furthermore, the saddlelook-alike watch which rests on top of the fetus gives a strong visual weight on how human beings arebeing very submissive by time and memory.
In constrast, Miro skillfully balances his composition with the use of the lighter wall color butpacked with many creatures against the darker floor. The floor consists mostly of heavier weights suchas the blue table, the ladder, or the snowman. This division is further amplified by the curvy black armof the snowman reaching over to reach the ladder. To give the room the light and the breathing air,Miro creates a window with a symbolic sun and dancing trees against a blue sky, and he counters thisweight with the blue table on the ground side.
Since the title of Dali’s work is “The Persistence of Memory”, we observe that he emphasizesthis title by the use of the three melting watches and how they influence both living creatures andordinary object such as the pedestal. In every occasion, time seems to put a deadly fate upon thingsthat it delves in. Other subtle focus points of this composition besides the three watches are the redupside-down clock and the shiny and meticulously drawn cliffs against its calm reflection from theseawater, as if Dali tries to tell us that even time is not eternal, but the pure beauty of art itself is?
Against the monotone and slowly decay of time in Dali’s work, Miro’s painting clearlyillustrates a celebration of life. Every object in the painting seems to dance with the guitar’s melody,and thus everyone seems to be in the spotlight with equal attentiveness in detail from the painter.There is no emphasis nor subordination in this painting, just as when one is engaged in one’s dream,there is not a definitive answer to what is happening, and there is not really a meaning behindanything. Clearly, the use of curvy lines and shapes help the painter in achieving this somewhathallucinating state of mind.
From looking at Dali’s painting, we have a feeling that the scenery is real, but in fact only thecliffs, the sky, the seawater and the two concrete slab are real life objects. Other objects such as themelting watches and the fetus all come from Dali’s imaginative mind. Yet, they look very real andquite disturbing, as he uses standard visual elements such as the use of light to cast a horizon, theatmospheric perspective, the slow motion of the melting watches or the dragging tail of the fetus. Scale and proportion in Dali’s work is used in the same way as other painters, only to enhance theawkwardness of his imaginative objects and concepts.
Miro’s painting, on the other hand, is out of proportion, to say the least, as he uses his ownsymbolic system to describe usual object. Whereas a window in his system still looks like a window,other things are invented or are simplified to the point where we could not identify them at all. Theguitar man has the body of a straight black string with a little red shirt, his face is unrecognizable, andhis legs look like a moustache. The snowman has a rather long arm with the glove like Walt Disney’sMickey character. Another man is identified with his red and blue face after we learn that “it” smokestobacco with a small pipe. It is in this illogical, out of proportion system that this painting achieves itsdream-like qualities.
Whereas Miro’s work is all about rhythm, Dali’s work is about stillness. Following the contourlines, we are so busy with our mind contemplating from one subject to another in a hurry, just as wedream about un-identified objects and let them lead us to unseen territories, and without our approval.On the contrary, in Dali’s painting, our eyes are not busy with images, and we have plenty of time tothink deeply about eternity, the fate of human kind, the beauty of nature against the destruction oftime. In general, Dali’s brown color scheme dominates the available space and sadly hints a doomedfuture about human existence.
Using the five design principles and the visual elements as a starting point, one could onlyhope to start analyzing the secrets as to why “The Persistence of Memory” and “Carnival of theHarlequin” are art masterpieces of all time. While it is true that we could identify the use curvy linesas a way to express motion, scale and proportion in Joan Miro’s work, for example, we have not yetstepped into analyzing how all these five design principles work harmoniously and unconsciouslytogether inside the artist’s mind to produce such an extraordinary masterpiece. One could only hopethat through a lifetime of observing, analyzing and practicing some form of art, one could gain thisinsightful and joyful feeling of creating art compositions.
Hoctro, circa 2004-05