Art Comparisons

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews various works of art through the ages, all depicting various scenes of war and battle. It takes a look at the work of various artists such as Eugene Delacroix, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Edouard Manet, Paul Cezanne, Jackson Pollack and Henri Matisse and compares their scenes of war and battle.

From the Paper:

"The major similarity between the two works is the depicted violence. In Sardanapalus a Negro stabs a white horse and a bearded and richly dressed man plunges a dagger into the throat of a woman. The foreground is brighly illuminated and, indicative of the Romantic period, the figures are expressive and sensual with a mixture of the erotic and violent. The painting is believed to be based on Lord Byron's 1821 play Sardanapalus, which ends with death and destruction (Spector 19).
The painting has life-size figures in the foreground and in the rear, including the king, much smaller. The complex composition and spacing between the figures is unique--with figures on the lower right and upper left, and only the red of the bed spread in the middle. Colors of gold and red as well as actual pearls are used to unify the different parts of the painting. Women, slaves, animals, jewels, and fabrics are combined in a swirling, circular composition. The painting was used to evoke emotion--even Delacroix was disturbed by what he had painted. The Sandanapalus tilts diagonally back from the foreground, with earlier Romantic battle paintings, such as Gros' Battle of the Eylau in 1807, Delacroix's own Dante and Virgil in 1822 and Massacre of Chios in 1821, the main figures occupying the foreground (Spector 23). "

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