On Thursday, November 17, I went to “A Retrospective Exhibition” by Mercedes Matter at the Sidney Miskin Gallery. When I got there at 12:40, a line was already starting to form. The gallery was small but was very organized and showed how the artist’s work changed as she grew older. Our tour guide was really nice and told us a lot of details on each painting. Our tour guide also told us how Mercedes started to paint at a very young age and used her own way of style to portray a sense of art. In Mercedes paintings, it consist a lot of lines, space, colors, textures, and shapes such as triangles, to create her painting. After the camera was created, Mercedes wanted to create something that can not be seen from these pictures. Mercedes creates her own reality by using visual ideas rather than painting a more realistic photo that is seen in a picture. She did not really care about details that much and just painted whatever image she imagines. The tour took about 15 minutes since there was a really long line of students. Within these 15 minutes I enjoyed looking at Mercedes’ style of painting, it showed how different artists pictures artwork and how each style is unique. It also helped me a lot in relating what I am learning in my art class and compare the differences of every artists that I had been seeing in museums.

I attended a gallery tour at the Sidney Mishkin Gallery. The tour had art pieces painted by the artist, Mercedes Matter. We saw many abstract pieces of art and how her artwork grew as she grew in her life. She was an artist of modernism and showed abstract paintings of a table setting with fruit. The tour guide happened to be an art teacher in Baruch and told us of her experience of trying to recreate the art piece  to her class. The reason for this was because she wanted to show her class if it was possible to draw the painting at the angle shown in the painting. The workshop was interesting and I learned many things about Mercedes Matter. The artwork was very intriguing and showed a good example of modern abstract art. The tour could have been longer since the room was very small and there were not that many paintings. There could be more time exploring the workshop and less time of the explanation behind the artist. Overall, the workshop was interesting and it showed a good example of abstract art and how one artist’s perspective of the art grew as her life continued.

Today, November 17, 2009, I attended a Gallery Tour of Mercedes Matter. The tour was supposed to begin at 1p.m and end at 2p.m. When I arrived at the 22nd street building at around 12:40 p.m., I saw many people already waiting on line before me. By 1 o’clock, the lobby was filled with students on line to attend the workshop. We were sent inside the gallery in groups of twenty-five. The woman who was speaking to us about the gallery told us many things about Mercedes Matter. Before this workshop, I had never heard of this artist before. As I saw her artworks from a young age, around 15, until she was in her forty’s, I could see a change in her style. Most of her artworks were made with oil on canvas. Matter used techniques to not only convey what the artwork was as a whole, but also show the expressions in her art. She used many lines and used bright colors such as red, orange and yellow to express excitement and happiness. Alternatively, she used dark color such as blue, green, and brown to convey a gloomy and dull picture. Lastly, I learned that Matter avoided the use of details. Instead, she drew vague images. I thought that this workshop was interesting since I learned about someone I never knew about. This workshop also helped me link theories that I learned in my Art History class.

Today, November 11, I attended my last and final workshop for my Freshman Seminar class. This workshop filled in the Arts at Baruch requirement and was held on 135 East 22nd St from 1pm-2pm. This workshop was a basic gallery tour held in the Baruch campus. The gallery had artworks created by Mercedes Matter. I found this workshop boring because I did not really understand what the tour guide was informing us about.  However, I learned something interesting at the gallery tour which was that Mercedes Matter did not paint every single detail of the object.  Instead Mercedes Matter painted a very broad and general perspective of the object.  The paintings had a variety of colors and lines that would outline  the artwork and give it tone and structure.  Other than that, the tour basically included most Mercedes Matter’s artworks.  The gallery was split into two sections which consisted of her early work to her most recent work.