Showing 1 - 10 of 14 annotations contributed by Winkler, Mary

T.B., Harlem

Neel, Alice

Last Updated: Mar-01-2017
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Painting

Summary:

A young man lies propped up on pillows, his hand pointing toward a bandaged area on his side. The composition is a powerful diagonal sweep, the body in the bed forming a triangle. At its apex, the head of the man with its mass of dark hair is haloed in the white of the pillow. His dark, glistening eyes arrest the viewer, demanding attention and implicitly evoking sympathy. Neel’s expressionism is displayed in the elongated curvature of the neck, the ears splayed out from the head to rest on the pillow, and in the eloquent gesture toward the bandage.

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De Que Mal Morira? (Of What Illness Will He Die?)

Goya, Francisco

Last Updated: Apr-26-2012
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Etching and aquatint

Summary:

In this satirical etching, a recumbent, slack-limbed man is attended by two shadow background figures (one of whom may be his wife) and his physician--a fashionably attired ass! The ass/physician is searching for the pulse of his patient, a pose that accentuates the ostentatiously large gem encircling his hoof.

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The Last Illness

Neel, Alice

Last Updated: Feb-18-2012
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil on canvas

Summary:

This portrait of the artist's mother was done a few months before her death in 1954. An elderly woman with white, feathery, unkempt hair sits facing the viewer, wearing a plaid wool bath robe. Although the chair is set on a slight diagonal with the picture plane, the impression is one of frontality: the subject faces (confronts) the viewer with a combination of fortitude and vulnerability.

Neel has suggested spiritual and emotional conflict by dividing the face and accentuating the frightened eyes behind large spectacles. The strong geometrical pattern of the bathrobe gives a sense of stability to the form, while simultaneously setting up a contrast with the delicate hands and aged face of the sick woman.

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The Fall of Man (Adam and Eve)

Dürer, Albrecht

Last Updated: Jul-13-2007
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Engraving

Summary:

This engraving shows Adam and Eve at the moment in which Eve accepts the fruit from the serpent. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil bisects the plate, separating the figures of idealized male and female. At the bottom of the picture a cat and a mouse crouch. They are in harmony with each other, but the tension in the poses suggests their future enmity: once Adam and Eve eat the fruit, the harmony of nature will be lost. Other animals (a hare, a goat, an ox) act both as subjects of the animal kingdom and symbols of the balance of humors.

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The Artist and His Mother

Gorky, Arshile

Last Updated: Dec-19-2001
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil on canvas

Summary:

Two figures confront the viewer: a seated woman and a standing boy. In this double portrait, both woman and boy face outward their positions static and almost hierarchical. The woman sits with her hands resting on her knees; the boy stands by her. The colors are muted, ocher, sepia, pink, grey. Although the pair do not look at each other, emotional connection is conveyed through the way their arms seems to touch.

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Farewell (Abschied)

Kollwitz, Käthe

Last Updated: Nov-29-1999
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Charcoal

Summary:

In a pose reminiscent of both a Descent from the Cross, and a Pietá, a grieving woman reaches up to receive the body of a child. The drawing is a preparatory sketch for a series on death and bereavement--the "Farewell and Death" portfolio. The work is characterized by bold curving strokes that animate the scene, while conveying the heaviness of the dead child's body. As the body falls into the mother's arms, both mother and child seem to simultaneously float in some mysterious space.

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Death Giving Comfort

Kollwitz, Käthe

Last Updated: Nov-29-1999
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Black crayon/tinted paper

Summary:

Two figures form a weighty pyramidal unit. Neither figure declares its age or gender, but the foreground figure--the dying-- seems female. She is held and enveloped by a shaded figure representing death. One of death's hands holds the limp arm of the dying while the other wipes her closed eyes.

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At the Doctor's (Beim Arzt)

Kollwitz, Käthe

Last Updated: Jan-25-1999
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Charcoal

Summary:

An older pregnant woman hesitantly knocks on a closed door. Everything in her pose suggests fatigue and a kind of dignified resignation. Her head is bowed in the direction of her pregnant belly. Perhaps this is one of many pregnancies in this working-class woman's life. The title of the drawing tells the story: she has come to the doctor for a pre-natal visit.

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An Old Man and His Grandson

Ghiralandaio, Domenico

Last Updated: Jan-25-1999
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Tempera and oil on wood panel

Summary:

In the Renaissance double portrait (c. 1480), an elderly man and a young boy gaze into each other's eyes. The old man is wearing a vermilion robe which gives his presence a vivid solidity. The child, painted in profile, rests his hand on one arm of the man whose other arm embraces him. The warmth of the orangey red is complemented by the cool gray-green wall behind the pair. A window opens the wall, revealing a peaceful sky and a distant mountainous landscape.

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The Madman

Géricault, Théodore

Last Updated: Jan-25-1999
Annotated by:
Winkler, Mary

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil on canvas

Summary:

This three-quarter portrait of a man is painted in brown tones which, by accentuating the contrast with his skin and the white cravat surrounding his neck, allows the viewer to concentrate on the man's troubled features. His hair is ill kempt, and his averted eyes seem concentrated on some inner grief or turmoil.

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