Chapter Seven: Artist Contrast 1

Zhang Daqian’s “Mountains clearing After Rain” Is a beautiful scroll done with ink and color on paper. It looks very much like water color. The majority of the piece is composed of cool hues or greens and smoky blues to be more specific. The images are vague and the colors bleed together beautifully with pigments of reds and orange intermingling with the blues and greens. There appears to be a buildings on a portion of the mountains and more buildings far below. At the bottom right hand corner foliage and trees.

In Comparison to this beautiful by Daqian, Pablo Picasso’s “Guitar and Wine Glass” is vague in a completely different sort of way and that way is meaning. The image itself, a collage and charcoal, is crisp an clean. It is composed of eight distinguishable items that are easy enough to point to tell where one begins and one ends unlike “Mountains Clearing After Rain” Where the colors blend and bleed with each other to create one indistinguishable object.
Picasso‘s choice and use of the colors in this collage is also very different as well. Instead of focusing on a cool color palette, Picasso uses primarily shades of browns in this piece with the exception of the blue rectangle shape in the very middle, the black half-moon at the bottom, and the white circle hovering just above it.

As stated previously, the primary similarity in the two paintings is that they both are very vague. It is unlikely that the true image that each painting depicts would be envisioned and coherent if not for the Artists’ helpful titles which clearly suggests what should be seen within the artwork.

Unfortunately in Picasso‘s case, even the title “Guitar and Wine Glass” Does not make the collage hint at a guitar and wine glass. However, this is not the case with Zhang Daqian’s wall scroll. After reading the title it is easy enough to make out the mountains clearing after a draught of bad weather, the lines that make up what could be buildings, and the rainy clouds off in a difference. In addition to this the choice of colors definitely gives it a “rainy day” sort of appeal and feeling.