#pauldell

[blazingmars-blog]

"Autumn" at 629 S. 9th St., Philadelphia, PA 

          This mural--located at the above address in Philadelphia--depicts a rural fall scene rich in fall foliage. I find this particular piece of street art quite compelling because of the narrative that the mural conjures. The juxtaposition of the essentially urban surroundings and the scene depicted engenders a multitude of questions in the viewer because of the visual discontinuity of the autumn trees and the urban surroundings. The most compelling thing about this juxtaposition is that the very surface upon which this pastoral scene is painted is in itself a part of the urban landscape within which the mural finds rebellious context. 

           This piece is very indirect in its message, and due to this there are obviously a multitude of ways to interpret the mural. I believe that the message of the mural is that man is out of touch with nature in his/her urban wasteland, and that nature is a source of solace in our modern lives. The mural doesn’t rebel against its surroundings using aggressive coloration or geometric design, rather it rebels with poise--casting a shadow of inferiority over the crumbling city within which it has been placed.  

[hnrs122-readingthearts]

Thinglink; The Heavenly Realm

https://www.thinglink.com/scene/760939995732115458

In Hiroshi Yoshida’s woodblock print Kameido Bridge I found certain elements to be essential in describing the work. The most important of these elements was probably the state and existence of the Wisteria flowers which are indicative of the season—spring—as well as the shape and reflection of the half-moon bridge in the water making a circle.

In Crary’s Techniques of the Observer, he paraphrases Herbart, saying that “the mind does not reflect truth but rather extracts it from an ongoing process involving the collision and merging of ideas.” Many facets of Yoshida’s print require previous knowledge on the subjects to fill in gaps in the visual presented. For example, the wisteria flowers are only shown as outlines of the whole  clusters filled in with purple. Individual flowers give way to the image of the cluster, only to be filled in with the background—subjective—knowledge of the wisteria’s appearance.

The most important information about the image that needed to be conveyed first was probably the proportions and prime elements of the image. This was a difficult task to execute because the stylistic choices made by Yoshida are different than those of the typical western artist, making it a challenge to describe the visual effect of the image to a western observer.