Describe how a piece of art, a work of literature, or a dramatic presentation has had a significant impact on your intellectual development and your appreciation of the fine arts. (Santa Clara University)
One of the weirdest pieces of art I've ever seen is "The Scream", by Edvard Munch. I saw it a long time ago when I was playing games on freerice.com (I even have an account for Free Rice!). The paintings and art I actually looked at before were by artists like Van Gogh and Monet, whose art I found was realistic and neat. My work during that time was realistic and neat, or at least neater than my work now. There's really nothing wrong with being neat, but the problem with me was that I thought that as long as my work was neat and clean, I would be guaranteed a better grade. The content didn't seem as important then. When I saw "The Scream", I actually got a little scared (because it reminded me of the movie Scream), but more importantly I was confused. How could a piece of art as messy and weird as "The Scream" be so famous? My insignificant confusion would be more understandable if I told you that I drew everything with a straight-edge ruler, including curtains, windows, and the grass. Neatness was everything to me, and "The Scream" for me was anything but neat. It had strange swirly lines and the sky was coloured weird and the man was all squiggly!
As I looked at the painting more and more, I was, in some way, enlightened. I looked up the painting and what I read made me understand why the piece was the way it was. In the end, I liked the piece. It was cool, and it was more personal in an unexplainable way. It really wasn't perfect, but it made sense. I think its imperfectness made it all the more appealing. If it had been a person made normally with straight edges and lines, I'd probably not be as interested as I was. I'd most probably be able to find a million people who could draw "neatly" and "perfectly."
I learnt from "The Scream". I didn't need to have everything look perfect and clean. I just needed it to make sense and to portray my ideas and thoughts to anyone who was looking at it. Perfect and neat don't equal to good. In fact, neatness doesn't really seem to matter a lot, as my Physics teacher also said last year. It's the content that makes the difference. The ideas in "The Scream" were more important, and if being "messy" got the point across, messy was good.
"The Scream" also helped me understand other works of art. Works by artists like Pablo Picasso and Mark Chagall were easier to understand. I was surprised to see that amid all the strange colour combinations and overlapping shapes, there was meaning and symbolism. These artists could portray ideas in ways different from other people. In some ways, it is easier to draw a flower than to draw a completely different object that can still show an observer that thing drawn is actually a representation of a flower. In fact, you can find meaning in everything. We managed to make a few triangles represent Gabriel and arrow flaps represent determination and our goals and aims. (the arrow flaps thing is really funny, and it still makes a lot of sense!)
Neat is not always good. Messy is not always bad. Weird is not always bad. Weird is actually very good. "The Scream" might teach you that too.
One of the weirdest pieces of art I've ever seen is "The Scream", by Edvard Munch. I saw it a long time ago when I was playing games on freerice.com (I even have an account for Free Rice!). The paintings and art I actually looked at before were by artists like Van Gogh and Monet, whose art I found was realistic and neat. My work during that time was realistic and neat, or at least neater than my work now. There's really nothing wrong with being neat, but the problem with me was that I thought that as long as my work was neat and clean, I would be guaranteed a better grade. The content didn't seem as important then. When I saw "The Scream", I actually got a little scared (because it reminded me of the movie Scream), but more importantly I was confused. How could a piece of art as messy and weird as "The Scream" be so famous? My insignificant confusion would be more understandable if I told you that I drew everything with a straight-edge ruler, including curtains, windows, and the grass. Neatness was everything to me, and "The Scream" for me was anything but neat. It had strange swirly lines and the sky was coloured weird and the man was all squiggly!
As I looked at the painting more and more, I was, in some way, enlightened. I looked up the painting and what I read made me understand why the piece was the way it was. In the end, I liked the piece. It was cool, and it was more personal in an unexplainable way. It really wasn't perfect, but it made sense. I think its imperfectness made it all the more appealing. If it had been a person made normally with straight edges and lines, I'd probably not be as interested as I was. I'd most probably be able to find a million people who could draw "neatly" and "perfectly."
I learnt from "The Scream". I didn't need to have everything look perfect and clean. I just needed it to make sense and to portray my ideas and thoughts to anyone who was looking at it. Perfect and neat don't equal to good. In fact, neatness doesn't really seem to matter a lot, as my Physics teacher also said last year. It's the content that makes the difference. The ideas in "The Scream" were more important, and if being "messy" got the point across, messy was good.
"The Scream" also helped me understand other works of art. Works by artists like Pablo Picasso and Mark Chagall were easier to understand. I was surprised to see that amid all the strange colour combinations and overlapping shapes, there was meaning and symbolism. These artists could portray ideas in ways different from other people. In some ways, it is easier to draw a flower than to draw a completely different object that can still show an observer that thing drawn is actually a representation of a flower. In fact, you can find meaning in everything. We managed to make a few triangles represent Gabriel and arrow flaps represent determination and our goals and aims. (the arrow flaps thing is really funny, and it still makes a lot of sense!)
Neat is not always good. Messy is not always bad. Weird is not always bad. Weird is actually very good. "The Scream" might teach you that too.
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