Activity #2 - Write About It! - REWRITE

The City from Greenwich Village is oil on canvas created by John Sloan in 1922. Sloan uses several visual elements to create his picture including color & light to give the picture time, line to create movement & define volume and shape.

The prominent use of the color yellow in its primary (plain yellow), and tertiary (in-between colors such as yellow-orange) forms, creates the lighting that is cast at the base of the figures. This, along with darker hues, or colors, used on the upper parts of the figures, implies the absence of the sun overhead and thus the time of day, night! Sloan uses a bending contour line, a line that defines the outline or surface of an object or figure, to give mass and volume to the train and track. Notice how this line creates movement through the painting carrying one’s eye from the front of the train back through the buildings. Straight line is used to create the buildings. The vertical lines of skyscraper on the right create movement taking the eye upward and beyond the edge of the painting and diagonal lines used to create windows move the viewer’s eyes from the front of the building to the rear. This use of diagonal lines creates a linear perspective which is when parallel lines appear to recede and meet at a vanishing point, ultimately creating a feeling of distance. Sloan also employs a linear perspective to the buildings located behind the bend of the track, creating distance in a new direction. Sloan’s use of atmospheric perspective is accentuated by the use of colors on the buildings on the horizon. Secondary colors (a mixture of 2 primary colors) and tertiary colors of orange and red-orange are used to create the shape of the skyscrapers as well as imply light, as opposed to the brighter yellows used in the foreground. Atmospheric perspective is the observation that distant objects appear less distinct due to the scattering of the light by moisture in the air. It was raining the night Sloan painted this picture from a window in his Greenwich Village apartment.

The Old Violin was painted by William Michael Harnett in 1886. It is oil on canvas. Harnett was best known for his work in trompe l’oeil, French for “fool the eye”. This technique involves producing extremely realistic imagery that creates an optical illusion.

Unlike Sloan’s painting which uses a mixture of color to create light and dark, Harnett use the technique chiaroscuro. With chiaroscuro the artist employs values, light and dark, to record contrasts of light and shadow in the natural world, contrasts that model mass for our eyes (Getlein 92). Notice the shadows from the music sheet, bow and door-pull. The presence of the shadow not only implies the presence of light, but it lifts the objects off of the picture plane. The picture plane is the “door” on which the violin is hanging. As with The City from Greenwich Village, Harnett uses contour and straight line to create volume and movement. The combination of chiaroscuro and contour line on the music sheet make the paper curl off of the picture plane and gives the violin thickness or mass. The straight line of the bow, strings and the grooves in the door create movement making the viewers eyes move up and down the painting.

While both paintings are representational, works of art that depict forms in the natural world, they vary greatly in their presentation. Sloan’s The City from Greenwich Village is simply a portrait of, not to be mistaken for anything else. Harnett’s painting is deliberately deceptive and is meant to be mistaken for the real thing.

Sources: Getlein, Mark Living with Art, 8th Ed 2006