MOMA observation

The Museum of Modern Art, Floor 5, Collection Galleries

Varvara Stepanova, Russian, 1894-1958

Figure,1921

Medium: Oil on canvas

Oil painting allows the artist to create various kind of brushstrokes in order to make the painting dynamic and abstract.

Dimensions: 55 3/4 x 34 3/4″ (141.6 x 88.3 cm)

The painting is enough big for people to stare at its details and watching it as a whole. It is like that the person in the painting is facing the people who are in front of the painting. 

Palette: industrial and modern.  It’s like the color that would appears on normal clothes.

Composition: The artist used simple lines and curves to combine with  geometry shapes which is a way that has its own aesthetic, so that a figure with dynamic balance are able to be created. Varies geometry shapes represent different part of  human body, though the body proportion is abstract, through the cross, slope line, the movement of the body is still able to be tell. For instance, we can see the twist between the the upper part of the body and the crouch from the four cross line in the middle of the painting, which is the biggest shape in this painting. 

Color:Most color in this panting is high color purity, especially the small shape like joints, where brushstrokes are more clear and firm. Basically, each shape has it own color, some of the colors gradually become lighter than what it is originally like, where brushstrokes are rough, which is like the paint on the brush is not enough to finish a whole stroke. The lower color purity concentrate on the main part of the painting. From the the corner of the biggest shape to the center of the shape, color purity is lower and lower, eventually  mix.   

Contrast: The background is a sightly yellow canvas, which is integral so that the those colorful shapes and black lines will be emphasized. 

Context: In Museum of Morden Art. It is considered to be a great work of cubism and an art piece  that represent the Russian Avant-garde.

I really like the balance in this painting. While all shapes are like floating in the space, separating from each other, those lines are like skeletons of a man and also the rhythm of this painting, which makes me feels like this painting is telling me that although a man’s body gradually decomposes, his spirit is till there, simple but clear, casual but meaningful.

What I don’t understand is that the real goal of the artist, since I always try to interpret it with my own understanding and I don’t know a lot about abstract art.