Art is all about perspective and Roy Lichtenstein just proves it all too well: the majority of his paintings are based on or rather inspired by actual comic strips. The “reproductions” are painted with minor changes in the composition that transform the work completely showing off or parodying the ideas of the popular culture.

The woman is the focal point of the painting. Bright yellow of her coat and hair immediately draws attention to her figure. However, as a viewer’s mind tries to capture the essence of the work, the next thing it sees is her face. It is inaccessible; it does not reveal her emotions. She is the ultimate ideal of blue-eyed blond mysterious woman. She is sitting straight, carrying her head proudly: her position is not the one of convenience. The man’s eyes, which lack any color, are drawn to her beauty.

The most interesting thing about this painting is that if her mystery is revealed, in a sense, it appears to be a very base one. The original comic strip shows her thoughts: 'I vowed to myself I would not miss my appointment – That I would not go riding with him – Yet before I knew it…' This play of original episode and the painting plays on the double standards applied to woman. Woman is the center of attention, mysterious beauty. At the same time, this mystery is very artificial social construct that still does not allow her to offer more than the appearance: romance and intrigue, overwhelming focus on emotions and inability to bound these emotions by reason – this is the image represented by popular culture and revealed through pop art.

I was initially drawn to this work because I did not notice that the 25 versions of the photograph of Marilyn constituting the left part of the diptych are not identical as they appear at first glance – but I guess that is how life works after all. And as I looked into it, new ideas revealed themselves.

This work is often said to represent life and death of the pop idol, but it is the way Warhol unites them, which interest me the most. Diptych by definition consists of two parts. Its essence is having two separate objects necessarily connected together to constitute the whole – as do death and life. Moreover, what unites both the two parts of the work and life and death is an individual: no matter how he or she changes over the course of life or in eyes of others – it is always the same individual, same backbone (and I am not sure whether to be happy or sad about this).

When I was in middle school, a teacher separated us in different groups and gave us a photograph of a man smiling at the camera. My group was told that he was a serial killer. Then she asked us to prepare a short description of the man and his qualities based on the picture. Our group was called first to share our thoughts with the class: overall, our description presented the man as especially malicious with evil smile and shine in his eyes, etc., etc., etc. However, the next group presented man as a happy family-oriented person, another – as a person who smiles through pain, and so on. As you might have understood by now, our teacher presented us with a popular experiment showing how initial presentation or piece of information shapes people’s opinions (the second group was told he was a father of seven kids, the third – a victim of car accident).

However, this work actually took that lesson further. I did not know who Hugh Gaitskell was when I first saw this collage, neither have I ever heard of “Monster of Filmland” magazine. So I saw a scared, tired, and clumsy man (his painted right eye shows a frightened expression, the left actual one seems sad, while the painted mask gives him an awkward, cumbersome appearance) who’s hiding behind the mask in order to protect himself from the aggressive society (the red background). I really wished to learn his story – what made him so scared and sad?

When my poor Hugh turned out to be a politician who was against anti-nuclear campaigns, represented here as Phantom of Opera, a monster hiding behind a mask, I was quite shocked. This was the moment when I remembered that class: the situation I got into was opposite. 

This painting was once a part of the “Mel Bochner: Strong Language” exhibition at the Jewish Museum and represents it perfectly. All of the phrases in the painting represent the same idea: business is closing and the remaining products need to be sold out fast. Moreover, these phrases are commonly used in such situations. The strength of these expression is in their banality: they are so widely known and used that it is impossible to escape their meaning as it is impossible to escape the bright colors – these phrases are overwhelming. At the same time, even when colors get so mixed as to prevent the viewer from distinguishing a word or a letter without a closer look, the language forces the mind to finish the phrase.

It is hard to write about Keith Haring’s work overall: it is overwhelming. Especially this one. The viewer is overrun with colors and details. The eye can only rest when it gets to the lower right corner of the painting that seems to reveal the monotonous blue of the background. The effect of revelation is achieved through the thick black contour separating the bright yellow and orange details that fill the larger part of the work. At the same time, the contour is drawn over the paint that seems to have drained earlier over the blue part.

These intentional drains seem to me to be the most important part of the painting. They are the most important part, the one that makes the statement. Brazil is supposed to be overwhelming for a visitor or a newcomer: bright colors of nature enhanced by local culture and exhausting sun, crumped feel of the crowds, especially during festivals – all of this does not leave the space for either eye, mind, or body to rest and have some privacy. Brazil devours the space. Indeed, the statement that the drained paint makes is that you cannot restrict the manifestations of Brazilian life: there is still “empty” (blue) space, but the intrusion already happened. Now, it is only a matter of time until all of the crumped details, positioned so carefully as to loom over this corner, would collapse, overburdened with their own weight, and capture it. 

I consider this painting to be a representation of the idea that the meaning intended by an artist in his work may fail to be reflected in the work or rather does not necessarily have to reflect it: Van Gogh was painting the morning star, but there is Venus on the finished painting. 

Caravaggio is known for the use of chiaroscuro technique through which he would manipulate viewers’ attention to accentuate the scene and important details. “Medusa” is my favorite example of this technique.

Even, light, neutral-green background is easy on the eye and brings attention to the central piece of the painting: the head of Medusa. The bright red of the blood flowing from the neck tells us that the head was just cut off the body, it could have still been flowing if the moment was not captured once and forever by the painter’s brush. At the same time, lighter background allowed Caravaggio to darken the snakes framing Medusa’s face, which in turn is illuminated by the light coming from the right upper corner. All of the attention is brought to the unnatural, disfiguring horror of the realization of Medusa’s death and defeat. The terror of her expression seems to be so strong as to put her monstrous nature in the shadow as the head casts a shadow over the snake-hair on her right. As a result, this painting is rather a depiction of pure emotion that seems to transgress the painting itself as opposed to the subject representation.

Ruben s first introductory work to the Baroque style initially influenced by the Italian Renaissance art is a triptych that demonstrates the powerfully emotional lifting of Christ on the cross.

This altarpiece is located at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, Belgium. Ruben’s tripartite reveals a compact composition, consisting of the central panel depicting the raw muscular men power to raising the cross bearing Christ’s body. The transcendence of this tripartite is found on the prominent link with the left wing panel illustrating Virgin Mary, St. John and a group of distraught women and children;  and the right panel, whereRuben boldly portrays the brutal crucifying of the two thieves by soldier as the roman officer stands still on his black horse watching.

  The artistic dynamics display a combination of vibrant yet pale colors. One of the key elements of this painting is the use of the Chiaroscuro, which was seen as the main component to portray the contrast between light and dark and attain an expression of volume in order to reveal a three-dimensional effect.

The overall unruly transcendence from a dramatically painful mourning, to an iconic Christian martyrdom, followed by a brutally violent scenery, all portrayed in one composition, served to granting Ruben an artistically historic bravura. 

Bathsheba at her Bath is considered as Rembrandt’s greatest painting of the nude.

This composition is so profound yet rich in emotions that manage to evoke notions of seduction, admiration, and mystery. The moment of illustration is so pivotal, because it unfolds nuances of feminism, where the female nude body is not only seen as a gaze of admiration, but rather more as fragile instrument that explores the emotional dilemmas that many other artist of the time have left unexplored.

The mystery and the curiosity that this painting presents, is due to the great choice of colors, which help the viewer to focus on a deeper level by noticing a nostalgic, sad, yet intimate scenario. What is supposed to be viewed as relaxing and invigorating momentum, its portrayed as a sadly thoughtful, and unsettling situation in which Bathsheba leaning her head over her left shoulder, seems unable to cope with the moral dilemma posed by King David’s letter that she is holding on her hand.

Even though Bathsheba’s body dominates the composition, it almost seems that Rembrandt wants us to rather focus on the peculiar face expression she reveals.

The brilliancy of this work does not necessarily rely on the physical precision of this composition’s portrait but rather on the mystery of her gaze and emotions underlined by her overall expression.

For me, this painting is a perfect reflection of the human history and the momentum. The hands of Adam and God never meet. No matter how much you wait and anticipate it, the human and the divine never touch. The human kind has been trying to set the world in order, set things right. However, it only seems to go in circles fighting each other for what is right and starting from the beginning. No matter how long the viewer looks at the painting, nothing happens. Maybe it is time to paint it over?

This painting is remarkable for the portrayal of solemn, noble honesty. To start, the man portrayed is supposed to be dignified due to his social status: simple in detail and color sleek clothing, the sword, the lucid white of the hand with accurate clean nails, - the hand of a person who does not participate in hard labor, - all of these details manifest his high social status. By definition of the tradition, the carriers of the blue blood are supposed to possess finer qualities of character and simply have a better judgment with regard to right and wrong due to both education and power they possess.

The colors stress this effect: the dominant gray of the background creates the atmosphere of neutrality, free from any pretense. Indeed, his face is surprisingly lacking in expression. The fact that nothing is expressed is what frees him from dishonesty because in order to deceive a falsehood must be presented. Even the fine features of his face are true to nature: his face is not entirely symmetrical. The eyes, “the mirror of the soul”, are a little different: the eyelid of the right eye seems to be a little bigger than that of the left one. His eyes are directed at the viewer, he gazes at the person in front of him revealing his bodily imperfection. In the end, the nobleman with his hand on his chest seems to say with this gesture: “This is me. This is how I am and who I am.”

Mona Lisa is probably the most famous painting in the history of art. It is famous for being stolen and vanishing from the public eye for 2 years over a century ago. It is famous for the mystery of her smile, the mystery of the identity of the woman behind this smile, the mystery of the leveled landscape behind her. It is famous for its fame and ways in which this fame has been played starting with Duchamp and Warhol and ending with popular culture with all of its accessories: socks and phone covers, pens and pencils – it is hard to imagine even one type of product created by human that would not have carried an image of Mona Lisa at some point in time.

However, what I really like about this work is the absence of jewelry, which is a common thing for Renaissance portraits that were supposed to reflect social status of a person. Combined with the fact that portraits of women were overall much less frequent than those of men, it makes Mona Lisa stand out both as a portrait and as a person portrayed. Mona Lisa becomes an individual who has such-and-such smile as her feature as opposed to being a carrier of social role.

So many things can be said about Nicolas Poussin’s “The Adoration of the Golden Calf.” The most lucid of them is a question that once crossed my mind and have remained there since: why does the golden calf statue is represented with one leg raised?

“Woman with a Parasol” is not just an “impression” of the moment; it also projects an impression – the impression of interruption of something. While Madame Monet glance is already directed at the painter, her body is still in the process of turning around: she moved her upper body to accommodate herself in trying to see what interrupted her from walking forward.

This painting has a sense of a physical presence of the painter trying to catch the fleeting pleasure of the moment torn out of the family walk across some field. Representation of motion is the main feature of the painting: wind is moving the grass and the woman herself seems like a hurricane as her turn transforms her skirt into a whirl of fabric folds.

Claude Monet calls for them in order to memorize them in this particular setting – Madame Monet’s brows are raised in expectation of some explanation for the interruption of the walk. The boy is facing us, his hands in his pockets: he has probably been in front of the procession and had been waiting for his parents to catch up, looking in a different direction, his face expressionless.

The painter is in a hurry to catch the instant: while the sky on the right is painted in calm smooth strokes all running in the same direction, the chaotic strokes of blue over the clouds, which seem to have already been finished, as well as strokes of blue over the woman’s face, are a manifestation of attempt to correct the memory and painted representation in order to make up for some missing detail that was too fast for the eye to catch. The impression is only an imitation of the moment and cannot be perfect. The moment is long gone while the painter seems to remain forever immobilized by and in it.