Analysis of a Work of Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Analysis of a Work of Art - Essay Example Upon careful analysis, one can understand the techniques used by the artist as well as understand the subject matter that he tried to depict. The paintings were bought off by the museum at an auction, which sold the various components of art that existed within the villa since the late 1900. The villa was thought to be owned by Publius Fannius Synistor and Lucius Herennius Florus, however, there is no clue as to who was the first owner and who it was that commissioned the paintings (JSTOR 17). This work of art belongs to the Late Republican Roman period, somewhere between 50-40 BC (The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1). The work of art reveals a quite impressive garland made out of fruits and leaves, which has been suspended from a â€Å"brilliant wall of simulated masonry† (1). The garland has a sacrificial bull’s head, that is, the bucrania, from which a red thread hangs tied to a wicker basket that contains ivy leaves and out of which a snake is uncoiling (1). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Works of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History."  The Metropolitan Museum of Art. N.p.,  2014. Web. 19  July  2014.

American post civil war (1861 - 1865)poet Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

American post civil war (1861 - 1865)poet - Essay Example on the market in the fifties rather than to, say, Equanil or Valium, gains ominous proportions when put in the perspective of a canvas which makes Lowell see the sun as a feared savage and the white magnolia blossoms as "murderous". True the metaphors are localised and the "rising sun" is symptomatic of the jaundiced imagination of the poet who fears passion and vitality, very much like an Indian savage in "war paint" who "dyes us red.† But what is more important than the intensifying death-in-life existence of the couple as explained by the pun on "dyes", is the association of this feeling of death with the word Miltown in the beginning of the poem. It is now that the word Miltown no longer remains a torment, but goes onto metonymically suggest such terms as Mill town, mill stone, and small town. It becomes an emblem of the space of doubt, of frustration, of angst that loomed large over the American population at a time when the first effects of a looming Cold War was being fe lt. The poets state of anxiety is thus immediately seen as true representation of a larger American dilemma, of a crisis that occurs in Small Town or Any Town in the United States. The image of neurotic fracture is intensified in the second half of the line and the dislocation of humankind is aptly shown in the image of the nuptial bed that has been replaced by "Mothers bed". Lowell seems to imply that this voice of degeneration, of aridity, of being a dislocated whole, is so alike the husband and wife, locked in a social charter called marriage and continuing to feel consummated, exhausted and dead in the relationship. He feels that these shadow lines can only grow larger until of course the marriage falls apart. In a way, the poem, trying to show the failure of the relationship, is an attempt to question the so-called Christian idea of family and happiness. It seems to make a mockery of the Christian values in a world where Miltown, the tranquilliser rules, and a space where, Miltown the