Art Museum Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Art Museum - Essay Example My recent experience of visiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), one of the prominent art museums in Los Angeles, may be explained in this connection. It is the most significant and largest encyclopedic art museum in the region. Situated on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angels, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a number of great art pieces which attract people all over the world. The art museum is a storehouse of American art, ancient Islamic art, South and Southeast Asian art, Chinese and Korean art, Japanese art, modern and contemporary art, European painting and sculpture, photography, prints etc. However, it was one of the chief art pieces in the Modern Art Collection which caught my particular attention. It was 'Weeping Woman with Handkerchief' (1937) by Pablo Picasso which made me reflect on the significance of art on human world. To introduce the great art piece that won my interest, 'Weeping Woman with Handkerchief' an elegant example of the modern art especially the art by Picasso. The piece is a painting, oil on canvas. I found the luxurious piece ready for public view in Ahmanson Building 2nd Floor and the gallery display of the piece kept on changing from time to time. I approached the piece with an expectation of how it demonstrated Picasso's work in general as well as how it expressed the artist's personal life. The view of the magnificent work by Picasso has been one of my dreams for a long time and the beauty of the sight helped me appreciate the power of modern art. The size of the piece is 21 x 17 1/2 in. (53.34 x 44.45 cm). It was gifted to the museum by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mitchell and every one who comes to enjoy the beauty of the art recognizes the value of the gift. The piece remains one of the permanent examples of beautiful interpretive art and it remains a decoration to the Los Angeles Cou nty Museum of Art. The beauty of the piece is mainly because of the physical agony evident in the face of the lady in the picture. It is the emotional elements of the piece which attracted me more. The exploration of the main themes of the stylistic period which was noted for Cubism, Neoclassicism, and Surrealism, etc was the major concern of Pablo Picasso and it is evidently visible in the piece 'Weeping Woman with Handkerchief'. The art piece with tears all over her face is a symbol of despondency. The woman in the piece, adorned with the traditional matronly mantilla, is the manifestation of Spanish womanhood and she articulated the artist's public as well as private distress. "She was the victim of war, the grieving mother, the terrified peasant, the stunned survivor; but more specifically, she was a portrait of his lover, the artist-photographer Dora Maar, one in a long line of Picasso's muses." (Highlight from the Modern Art Collection) The dramatic relationships of the artist with women reveal the meaning of the metaphors he used in the art in order to convey the amount of his feelings over events in Spain. The symbolic elements of the pieces of art are often considered significant and as remarked before the main symbol of the piece 'Weeping Woman with Handkerchief' is the face of the woman expressing misery. It is a representation of Picasso's inner torment due to the horrendous images of the massacres in the Spanish Civil War. There is a strong political and social message that the art piece demonstrates. The artist's empathy for his lover and partner Dora also represents Picasso message