failing this response with pride

Zak Rose

10/10/10

Prof. S. Baker

Art History of the Western World

MFA response

During our visit to the MFA I quickly realized the similarities and lack of variation in the new technique of creating oil paintings. I’m not trying to put down the artists of the Renaissance era, but I personally do not enjoy the work of the renaissance, because it reminds me of how awful my Western Civilizations class was when I was a freshman in high school. I could honestly not find one specific painting to pick out, but I did take photos of most of the oil paintings that featured “babies”. I put babies in quotes, because in all honesty, I have no idea how the artists of the renaissance didn’t understand how to draw a proportionally accurate baby without making it look crude, or look like a scaled down adult with a wretched face. Sure, peoples drawing skills weren’t way too advanced, but in my opinion, it doesn’t take drawing or painting skill to understand how to make a baby look different than if you drew an adult male, but shrunk said adult male and took a way his facial hair. I may not be an art connoisseur, but to someone like me, who obviously is not, seeing religious depiction after depiction is incredibly tiresome to somebody who does not believe in religion. I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell you a single difference in technique, besides color choice and what they used to paint with. In my opinion, which is not a mature one, and biased, if they said only one person created these paintings, I would have believed it. I feel bad that I couldn’t pick one specific piece to respond to, but I felt the same exact way about every single painting.