When we arrived at the gallery, we had an introduction on a painting. We as a whole class, had to work together on analysing and gathering information just by looking at the painting and the plaque next to it. We was given starting points to help us understand how we don't need to Internet to do research. These points were;
● What is the artists name?
● What is the inspiration?
● What does the plaque say?
● What is the media?
● What cane you tell by the time setting?
● How has it been arranged?
These 6 questions can help anyone get a better understanding of what the art piece in front of you is expressing. All of these questions can be answered without the Internet or a book. When I was taught about these points it opened up my mind as to how much you can learn just by paying a lot of attention to detail.
After this exercise we then moved on to groups of 3 and chose a piece of work that we wanted to learn more about. Me and my group decided on a painting called 'Women in an Interior' by 'Pierre Bornard'.
This is the picture I took of the painting we selected.
From looking at the painting myself I managed to gather information about it what I learnt is the following information;
● Middle class women dressed formally
● In am informal setting
● Cold colours and books in the background
● Foreground is simple and the background is busy
● Bold brush strokes
From reading the plaque I learnt the following;
● The painting was made in 1867-1947
● The artist and the lady got married 19 years later
● Oil on canvas
Gather this information gave me a good understanding of what was going on at the time when this painting was made. I found all this information to be very useful.
After doing this, the next stage was to look at the different ways of researching. We made two main categories and brainstormed ways we can research our paintings further. The first section was called books and the second section was called Internet. This is what was said for both sections.
Books
● Encyclopedia
● Books on individual artist
● Books on art theory
● Catalogue
● Newspaper
● Dictionary
Internet
● Artist website
● Interviews
● Gallery website
●University website
● Diaries/ biographies
●Letters
Those are all the things we were told are the beat places to look when doing research. I found this part of the day very useful because I now know where to look when i need to find information that is correct. I was informed that Wikipedia is not a very realisable place to look when doing research because it's not always historically correct. I never knew that information until I went on this trip.
After the class and I where taught where to go when researching work, we went off to do it ourselves in our groups. I chose to only use book's to research out painting and this is what I learnt.
● He was a French painter and designer
● He studied law
● The lady in the painting was his mistress so, that means he was married to another women at the time
● He used light to draw attention to the background and used the silhouette to fill the foreground
After all the research I came to the conclusion that, 'Pierre Bornard', used a cool colour scheme, which suggests a very calm and relaxed environment. He also used light to draw attention to the background, which created a silhouette that fills the foreground.
Because Bornard painted like this it brings up the question, who is this lady? At first I personally thought it was his girlfriend or wife but after doing research the truth was reviled. The lady in the paint was not in fact his wife at the time, but was his mistress. This means he was cheating on his wife with the lady in the painting.
Cheating on someone is something that is usually kept i'm the dark which can be the reason he painted the picture this way. He painted the lady in dark colours and made her hard to see and focused the attention on the background.
The pose that the lady has been painted in suggest that this was a very informal occasion. The lady is not dressed up and she is painted in away that looks like she was having a causal conversation within a home environment.
But even though I learnt this information, the one question that remains for me is, what happened to his wife?
