Fine Art

Essay by tashyCollege, UndergraduateA+, August 2004

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Lesson 7

Barber Shop

by Jacob Lawrence At the Time of the Louisville Flood

by Margaret Bourke-White

Generally the Barber Shop is an unrealistic painting; it is a painting consisting gouache on paper that the context looks abstract. It uses watercolor to draw the work so that it is opaque. Lots of outlines and some contour lines give simple but unrealistic shapes to the characters. One of the features of this art work is the repetition and rhythm in art - the pattern is based on the diamond-colored apron, with one lavender and white, one red, and one black and green. Besides, the shapes of the characters are triangulated that they are not in a smooth pattern. That is, the shape, color and pattern of the characters are similar, but it is also distinctive.

In terms of the At the Time of the Louisville Flood, it is a black and white photograph showing the living situation of white and black in U.S..

The "dream" is the painted surface, advertising that the white can have the most luxury way to live. By comparing the "world's highest standard of living" at the top of the advertisement and the poor blacks lining up for food, the photo gives huge contrast between the lives in different race.

About the differences between the Barber Shop and the At the Time of the Louisville Flood, the watercolor used in the Barber Shop is opaque that it is different from At the Time of the Louisville Flood, which is a piece of photographic work with some chemical reaction with light. It gives a great deal of differences: first, since a photo is always clearer than any painting, the At the Time of the Louisville Flood consists of much more details than the Barber Shop; second, the At...