“Burning Houses of Parliament” is a painting created by Joseph Mallord William Turner. Physically it is thirty-six and one fourth by fouryy-eight and one half inches. However in the book it is tiny, tiny but beautiful.
Turner created the painting with asymmetrical balance. The brightness of the flames is balanced out by the whitneness of the bridge. In Addition to balance this painting also has movement. The white bridge leads to the crowd of onlookers and more specifically the single white lamp. In turn this lamp and crowds draws the eye across the canvas to the fire before leading off to the smoke and the stars.
Despite the fact that it is based on an event that actually happened, which Turner had the ability to whiteness from a boat on the Thames River in London, I cannot help but find the painting almost unreal. I enjoy the contrast of the yellow flames against the blue sky as well as how the white bridge seems so bright in comparison to the darkness of the crowd of people.
Whereas “burning House of Parliament” is a depiction of a real life event, Rene Magritte’s “Delusions of Grandeur II” is not. In fact, it does not show any event, real or fictitious. Instead, Magritte plays with the scale of his subject, a woman’s body, by separating it into three pieces that get smaller and smaller the higher they are stacked. The sky is also skewed. At the top of the painting it breaks off, proving to be blue boxes stacked up while clouds weave themselves around the boxes.
Altogether, Joseph Mallord William Turner, and Rene Magritte are two very different people and artists. They were from different times as well as different countries. Turner focuses on real, touchable events whereas Magritte played with scale and manipulation to create scenes that never existed and probably never will exist in real life.
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