Mona Lisa - The Enigmatic Meaning Essay Example for Free

Mona Lisa The Enigmatic Meaning Essay The Enigmatic Meaning They call her â€Å"The Enigmatic Woman,† yet the painting at first glance is quite banal. It looks a lot like any run of the mill portrait with the subject positioned in the center while she sits facing and staring directly at the viewer. Even the colors are boring in this painting with its abundance of earth tones with different mellow shades of faded green, brown, blue, and burnt orange. The picture itself is only 30†x21† which is about double the size of the average college textbook. With all of the hallmarks of a picture that most people would discard, it is quite an enigma as to why the world has been obsessed with the â€Å"Mona Lisa† for over 500 years. In â€Å"Ways of Seeing† John Berger, an art historian and novelist (only a tiny sample of the different ways I could title this Renaissance man), offers his readers a way into understanding the moment captured in paintings, especially mysterious paintings like the â€Å"Mona Lisa.† He suggests that viewers ask questions about and to the painting as way into entering into a sort of dialogue with the artist and his or her subject. By asking the appropriate questions, I was able to get a bit of a grasp on exactly why this enigmatic woman’s gaze has been capturing the rest of the world’s for so long, but I was also left questioning Berger’s theory. Berger encourages everyone with an interest in art to complete this process in order to fight against the â€Å"mystification† of classic paintings, but sometimes mystification is part of the experience of enjoying art and there is merit in that as well. As the title of the essay hints, Berger believes that â€Å"Every image embodies a Way of Seeing† (99 My Italics), meaning that every image also includes the perspective of the artist to the subject. Once a reader can start to grasp where the artist is coming from in relation to what he is painting, then the image may start to make sense. As an example of this process Berger examines â€Å"Regents of the Old Men’s Alms House† by Frans Hals, which is depicted below: Berger contextualizes the pictures by first inquiring into the artist’s social status at the time. During the commission of the painting Hals was â€Å"an old man of over eighty, [and] was destitute† (101). These wealthy men that Hals depicted gave him â€Å"three loads of peat† (101), or rotting vegetation, for this portrait. With those facts in mind, Berger comes to the conclusion that there is a sense of bitterness in the perspective of the painting, which may be why Hals depicted the third man from the right as being drunk. Berger argues that the man’s expression and hat are not necessarily a result of facial paralysis and fashion as art historians argue, but part of the â€Å"drama of these paintings† (102) which in this case is an old pauper struggling with his feelings of these men while trying to stay objective in his depiction of them; therefore, he let a glimpse of the truth out, a glimpse at these regents’ corruption. So, how does one begin to ask questions about the â€Å"Mona Lisa†? Perhaps it is best to start the same way that Berger does, by understanding who the artist was at the time of the painting. According to the Louvre’s official website, (the museum where the painting hangs) the painting is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. Leonardo da Vinci, the artist, would have been just over fifty at the time. Kenneth Clark from The Burlington Magazine explains that â€Å"after he had lingered over it four years, [he] left it unfinished.† In 1516 the king of France invited him to work on a project. BBC contributor Bob Chaundy believes that da Vinci took Mona Lisa with him to continue working on it until his death in 1519. So what we have is man nearing the end of his life working on a seemingly personal project (since he took it with him everywhere), a project that he felt he never finished. The next obvious question: who is the woman? According to the Louvre, the model was Lisa Gherardini who was by all accounts an average Italian middle-class mother to five children. Her husband, Francesco Giocondo, commissioned da Vinci to paint the portrait as a way to celebrate the new Giocondo home and the arrival of their second son. Essentially, Mona Lisa, My Lady Lisa, is a housewife put on a pedestal. She is arguably the most glorified housewife of all time. With an understanding of the artist and the subject, it is time to ask, â€Å"what is the perspective here?† What point of view was da Vinci trying to give his audience? Knowing the information that I do, it is hard to even suggest that there was an audience for the painting. The accounts suggest that da Vinci painted and gave what he was commissioned to Gioncondo, but he kept one of the original sketches to keep working on. In other words, the Mona Lisa the world knows today was really for da Vinci’s eyes only. The portrait is an intimate depiction perhaps of someone who baffled da Vinci’s sensibilities. Of all the different subjects and models da Vinci painted, it was a middle-class mother who captivated his attention. Perhaps da Vinci could not even wrap his own mind around why she was so enthralling and so spent the rest of his life trying to capture that â€Å"it factor† she seemed to exude. In a sense, da Vinci was trying to capture the feeling of love at first sight, the feeling of being completely attracted to someone and not knowing why. So how does this feeling of awe-inspiring adoration flow over into the other stylistic elements of the portrait? Most people tend to comment on her eyes and her smile, and if you notice, they do not really seem to correspond to each other. If you only look at her eyes and cover her mouth, the eyes give a sense that she is giving a much broader smile than she actually is since the eyes are wrinkled and upturned. The high placement of the cheekbones also lend to this interpretation. The rest of the portrait with the conservative colored clothes and pose do not exude the sense of joviality that the eyes give. Those eyes that seem to contradict the other aspects of the portrait are also paradoxically the focus since many people comment on how Lisa’s gaze seems to follow you wherever you go. Her eyes tell you one thing, and the rest of her tells you another. She feels two emotions simultaneously, and that is mysterious. Many people also tend to comment on the background since it is not based on any real location (BBC). It is almost other-worldly, alien in that sense. In the same way that she can feel two emotions at the same time, it is as if she can be in two places at the same time since she is posed in between two  manmade columns on a balcony; she is simultaneously human and extraterrestrial. The colors of the background also give this sense since they are split into two. The top half is bluish green in its depiction of the sky, water, and trees while the lower half is brown and orange in its depiction of the land. Finally, her equilateral triangle pose really seems to seal this reading, for what is a triangle but the convergence of two opposite points on a single point? Mona Lisa is that point of convergence. She is place where two emotions can converge. She is the place where terrestrial and extraterrestrial converge. She is the point where a mundane housewife converges with an iconoclast of the world. She is the epitome of mystery since she cannot be pinned down to just one thing. Mystery, though, is what John Berger is fighting against. He wants to take what he calls the â€Å"bogus religiosity† (109) that mystifies art out of the equation by giving people the tools they need to make meaning on their own. He believes that art critics and historians mystify by â€Å"explaining away what might otherwise be evident† (103); in a sense they try to confuse interpretations that might be obvious through academic discourse and elitism. But what happens when the point is mystification? When the point of the painting is to leave the viewer confused? Is not there a place for that in art also? If it was not for this mysteriousness that Lisa creates, would anyone care? I think not. â€Å"Works Cited† page deleted

Labyrinth and Star Wars :: Movies Essays

Labyrinth and Star Wars It is amazing how in many stories a group of the most unlikely characters can overcome the most impossible odds. The battle of good vs. evil is reenacted in thousand upon thousand of movies. A lot of the times in these movies the group of heroes consist of very ordinary or odd characters, those who seem to possess few heroic traits. As seen in the movies Labyrinth and the first made Star Wars, a group of small and seemingly powerless characters can overcome great evils. The movie the Labyrinth tells a story about a group of unlikely heroes trying to make their way though a maze in order to defeat the Goblin King. The story starts out with the main character Sarah whom, without even realizing it, wishes her baby brother to be taken way by Jareth the Goblin King. He tells her that if she wants her brother back she will have to make her way through the labyrinth and to the castle beyond the Goblin City. She only has 13 hours to complete the seemingly impossible task or her little brother Toby will be turned into a goblin. While making her way through the twisted and endless maze Sarah runs into many weird characters. The first person she encounters is Hoggle a very untrustworthy dwarf whom is under the influence of Jareth. He is selfish and does things only if there is something for him to gain. He betrays Sarah many times throughout the movie, but in the end he proves himself to be more than a traitorous coward. Ludo is a yeti and despite looking vic ious is a gentle and caring monster. Ludo also has the power to control rocks. Sir Didymis is a loudmouthed, but noble knight who displays his valor throughout the movie. The four heroes manage to fight their way through the perilous labyrinth. The Goblin King Jareth is defeated and Sarah’s brother Toby is saved. Though the characters in this movie seemed to be nothing more than ordinary, and if not odd, they fought their way through labyrinth and conquered an entire army of evil goblins and their king. (Labyrinth 1986) Star Wars also tells of a similar story; the most unlikely set of people can stop an entire evil empire. The movie begins with Princess Leia’s capture by the evil empire. In an attempt to save herself and her mission plans, she sends two robots, R2D2 and C-3PO, to deliver a message to the illusive Ben Kenobi.

Ethical Dilemma Essay

What Dr. Schneider is doing by putting crowns on teeth that could be treated with two surface amalgams is unethical. It is obvious that she is doing this to increase revenues during a downturn in her financial condition related to her divorce. Two surface amalgams have a long history for use for fillings for decayed areas of teeth and for general repairs of chipped or cracked teeth. Although its use is declining in the U. S. it remains the first choice for posterior direct restorations. (1) Other bonding techniques are now being employed by dentists in lieu of two surface amalgams that are gaining in popularity for esthetic reasons and because they use no toxic metals such as mercury. To crown a tooth requires a dentist to grind away all of the enamel of the tooth so a crown can be put on the remaining dentine layer of the tooth. This procedure is six to seven times more expensive than two surface amalgams or other bonding techniques to repair teeth. A general rule in dentistry is that you preserve as much enamel on a tooth as possible. So Dr. Schneider is not only performing a procedure that is unnecessary and expensive but is detrimental to the patient because a tooth’s enamel is being destroyed needlessly. Sharon should discuss this with Dr. Schneider and tell her that this improper, unethical and not in the best interests of the patient. If Dr. Schneider persists in this unethical practice then Sharon should threaten to resign and report Dr. Schneider to the American Dental Association and appropriate state licensing agents. (1) http://www. bethesda. med. navy. mil/careers/postgraduate_dental_school/comprehensive_dentistry/Pearls/Pearlsc6. htm

The Skateboarder Ideologies - 1330 Words

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