Metropolitan Museum Essay

During the trip to the Metropolitan Museum, I found most the of the art pieces there very intriguing. But the two pieces I chosen that intrigued me the most were Vaprio d'Adda, 1744 created by Bernardo Bellotto (Top painting), and Tomorrow is Never, 1955 created by Key Sage (Bottom painting). These two artworks are approximately two hundred-eleven years old. Both the Vaprio d'Adda and Tomorrow is never are oil paintings. I haven't noticed any major similarities besides that fact, and that the artists featured dark colors in their paintings. It may be hard to notice in the Vaprio d'Adda but the dark colors were used for the shadows and the clouds (The rest of it is made up of warm colors). Bernardo Bellotto painting  "... is the village of Canonica d'Adda, north of Milan, and in the center is the villa melzi,..." he painted it for the Count Simonetta. The sun is setting in the west in the painting, and in the foreground there are people outside of the village chilling and having a good time. Two of the men that are outside the village are pointing at what appears to be a woman on standing in a small boat, while a man rows. Then the middle ground features the beautiful painted building structures and the very large green trees. Overall to me Bernardo captured the site very well, it could pass as a photograph in my book. This is very much representational art. Key Sage oil painting, is way darker than Bernardo, it does not compare (Yin & Yang). What attracted to this painting right away was the structure rather than beauty, which is what I found with Vaprio d'Adda. Key Sage was a powerful female surreal artist, she did many art pieces that included ".... architectural scaffolding, latticework structures, and draped figures, to evoke feelings of entrapment and dislocation..." The sky in this painting is gloomy and you can tell that there is sadness wanting to pour out of it but it's being kept in. Prior to her creating this painting key lost her husband of a sudden death, and soon after she made this painting she committed suicide. This painting to me felt like a cry for help with all of the dark colors already, so learning that she committed suicide didn’t come as a real shock with the lost of her love. Seeing these two different art pieces, Vaproi d’Adda from the eighteenth century, and Tomorrow is Never from the twentieth century made me look into myself in a way because I wouldn’t of chosen them if I didn’t feel they had any significance to me. I feel they represent two emotions that constantly battle inside of me happiness and sadness. I feel that they were placed in the museum because these two artists made remarkable pieces that caused people to think and feel a certain emotion. The same can be said about any art piece right, but its clear that many people recognized their art pieces specifically and that’s why theirs were placed in the museum so that others can see and feel the emotion from their art pieces.