Cloud Shadows On Pikes Peak 1959 Oil on canvas, Charles Waldo Love (American) 1881-1967
Chapter 5 Analysis
I chose to do this piece because I found it to be one of the nicest oil
paintings in the gallery, and coincidentally of something right in our back yard.
This oil painting entitled Cloud Shadows on
Pikes Peak is a stunning display of Colorado’s natural beauty. From the
snow covered peak to the lush green of the valleys contrasted with the blue
sky, it immediately caught my attention. Also the little tree in the front of
the painting appeared to me to be the focal point of this oil painting. But how
could that be when the mountain in the back ground is so much nicer to look at?
Maybe it supposed to get the viewer contrast the not-so-beautiful with the magnificence
of what everybody knows to be in Pikes Peak, I don’t know I’m not an art
expert. However, Coloradians who live in the shadow of one of this state’s
greatest landmarks have a great appreciation for it, even if it goes
unacknowledged. We would all look at life a little differently if we all couldn't
look West and see the beautiful mountain range that we see every day, it would
be like living in Kansas or something. So in a way, Pikes Peak and the
mountains are a possession we all have and we value as a part of our lives. In
Chapter 5 of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing,
he discusses the tradition and purpose of representing things in paintings, and
it applies to this oil painting.
The vivid and realistic textures in oil painting help to enhance the
idea of “owning things” back in the early 1900s. John Berger starts off Chapter
5 by saying, “Oil paintings often depict things. Things which in reality are
buyable. To have things painted and put on a canvas is not unlike buying it and
putting in in your house. If you buy a painting you buy also the look of the
things it represents” (Berger, 83). To me this says that paintings are a way
showing what you enjoy, like, or value in your life. Paintings were an emblem
of yourself to display to others. However, later in the chapter 5 Berger goes
on to explain that this argument does not apply to landscapes. He says “Landscape,
of all the categories of oil painting, is the one to which our argument applies
least…nature was not thought of as the object of the activities of capitalism”
(Berger, 105). Although this quote may have applied in an earlier time, I have
come to think that owning land is big object of the activities of capitalism.
On page 106, there is a painting entitled Mr.
And Mrs. Andrews by Gaisborough which shows the two in the front of the
painting with all of their land cornfields and hills behind them, showing a
nice painting of nature. This painting communicates the ownership of the land
and its resources, as well as the beauty of the landscape and what they value
in it.
Land in Colorado not only comes with the ownership of property and
economic resources, but it comes with a unique beauty that you come to value
and appreciate. That is what really spoke to me with this oil painting.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing.
London: Penguin Books, 1972. Print.
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