Lillian F. Schwartz was born
in 1927. Her love of art began at an early age, where a limited budget influenced
her to use simple objects such as, slate, mud and sticks to express herself.
She was working as a nurse in Japan and caught Polio. The disease paralyzed
her, but she ended up overcoming it and learned how to move her muscles enough
to slowly draw again. She used pen and ink, as well as oils and acrylics and
most of her artwork turned out dark and barren. She then moved onto creating
plastic paintings, electron mobiles and plastic imagery using kinetic fluid.
She eventually developed different programs and techniques that would create
artwork that could be viewed as 2D or 3D without pixel shifting.
Schwartz used the art of
Leonardo Da Vinci in a lot of her works. Her most famous image was Mona/Leo, which she created in 1987. In
this piece she shows half the face of the Mona Lisa and the other half of the
face is Leonardo Da Vinci. I find this piece of artwork very interesting
because the two sides have similar characteristics and match up in the middle.
I know that some people believe that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of
Leonardo Da Vinci. Schwartz’s Mona/Leo
shows a comparison of the Mona Lisa and Leonardo Da Vinci, leading me to
believe that she believed that the Mona Lisa was depicted to be of Da Vinci.
I really like the concept
and aesthetic quality of the artwork. I can tell that the Mona/Leo piece was created shows many structural similarities in
the two faces and matched faces are done with a purpose. The different parts of
the face are done to show alignment. The shadowing of the two backgrounds are
even similar. I believe to address the point that the Mona Lisa was a
self-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci. I like how Lillian Schwartz used artwork to
get her view across. This piece of artwork could be improved by not showing as much
hair on the right side because it makes the artwork look unbalanced. The amount that Lillian Schwartz was forced to overcome really amazes me.
Schwartz's Mona/Leo piece is quite clever, and I think it shows not just the physical similarities between the Mona Lisa and Leonardo Da Vinci, but the relationship inherent between any artist and their works. In making a piece of artwork, we consciously or unconsciously put a part of ourselves into it. It's also really neat that by combining two pieces created by another artist, Schwartz has created her own, original piece.
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly with Elaine's point about artists putting themselves into their works. I think this is done through the artist becoming the lens through which a person/object/idea is filtered. The viewer can then identify the feelings and thought processes of the artist by navigating their portrayal. Just as people describe others in a positive or negative light according to their perception of them, I feel that artists do the same with their artworks.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea that people believe that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci, so seeing this piece by Schwartz is really interesting. I can see the similarities between the two, especially in the stare of the eyes. I also agree that artists put themselves into their works and by doing this, it makes their work original and identifiable with the viewers.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Lilian Schwarts was using her speculations about the Mona Lisa in an art expressionistic form. It is amazing how gossip can translate, and spread within many forms.
ReplyDeleteUpon taking an art history course over a year ago, I remembered being told, after covering Leonardo Da Vinci, that many thought that the Mona Lisa was in fact a self-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci. Even though i've seen both images separately, i've never in fact seen them together like in Schwartz' portrait above. I might come off a little rude here, but i'm just curious, did Schwartz just split each picture in half and put them together to create one image, or what?
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