Grey Hounds in NYC Museums

My first year seminar class, which is for freshman at Moravian College to take that focuses on a topic that relates to the student's course of study. My class is all about exploring the Museums of New York. We have embarked on two trips to visit four museums in total (so far) including the Guggenheim, Museum of Modern Art, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and the national Museum of the American Indian.

A favorite trip of mine was when we visited MoMA. This museum includes many types of drawings and paintings that I love. For instance, I saw a well known piece from one of my favorite artists, Andrew Wyeth. This painting is called "Christina's World."

It is a tempera painting on a gessoed panel from 1948. The subject matter includes a woman (assumed to be Christina) laying in a barren landscape in from of two lonely buildings.

I really appreciate the distance or depth that Wyeth created between Christina and the background. Christina's body lies in the foreground, facing away from the viewer - towards the house that is palced all the way out on the horizon. The depth isenhanced with scale. The size of the house in comparison with Christina is miniscule.
With some research I read that Christina, whose full name is Christina Olsen, was a neighbor of Andrew Wyeth's and she had polio which left her lower body paralyzed.

I believe that a majority of my peers in my class enjoyed the Museum of Modern Art due to the collection's variety and quantity. Not only did I find various pieces of art that I was familiar with and obsessed over but, I found new artists and their work.

I found an etching entiteld "Large Head." It was created by Lucian Freud in 1993. The subject matter of this image is precisely the same as the title. A picture of a large man's head takes up most of the center of the composition. The first thing I notice with this painting is a large head but one that seems to have "too much on top" as in the head does not look proportioned correctly (basically it looks like a defective egg.)

Then, I see details on the man's face that appear carved due to the artist's use of contour and cross contour lines. There is a mole on the man's left cheek, a scar that runs from his forehead down across his left eye, and he has very bulky and masculine features. The "thing" about the etching and the point I want to make about it is the model's contrary pose. He is most likely sitting and looking down or his eyes are closed which makes him look as though he's reflectingor pondering. It is a peaceful, non-aggressive expression that does not mimic the artist's almost brutal depiction of the man.

So far I love being able to experience new York's greatest Museums. I feel so fortuante to see different kinds of art whether it's paintings, etchings, or three dimensional. It is exciting and rewarding to see the masterpieces that I spend hours looking at in books and then get the chance to see the work in full size (and touching distance.)