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During the second week of class, we went on a trip to the NUS Museum and had the opportunity to appreciate the various art works at the Radio Malaya: Abridged Conversations About Art exhibition. Insyirah, Janice, Jia Yu and I chanced upon this painting which drew our attention despite the dull and limited colours used.

 

Response

 

The painting exudes a feeling of destitute and loneliness, which made us feel downhearted just by looking at it. Through the highlights and shadows, we saw what we wanted to but were blinded by what we didn’t want to see. This was largely due to the associations we made with our personal experiences. Although the painting was largely dark and mysterious, there was a tint of red which added colour to the picture and brought light to the darkness. It struck us that although we might see our lives as being filled with darkness and negativity, it is the smallest things in life that we must first learn to appreciate to be able to feel that sense of satisfaction and happiness.

 

Description

 

The art piece depicts the living environment of people in the past where shacks were commonly seen. As we looked closer, we spotted human figures (mostly) in the foreground. These human figures were in black with white lines shaping them. This draws attention to these individuals, where the white lines appear to be highlighting them. However, the human figure that was most striking was the girl in the red dress. With a pop of colour in this, otherwise, black-and-white art piece, our vision was immediately directed to the girl. Additionally, the artist had intentionally drawn the region around the girl to be brighter than the other regions. Light is shining from the left of the painting hence suggesting that the time of the scene is during sunset.

 

Analysis and Interpretation

 

Based on the artwork, the artist seems to darken the mood of the location but yet push focus to the red girl in the bottom left of the art piece. The artists also uses mainly lines, both horizontal and vertical to complete this piece and at the same time uses very few colours. The lack of colours within the frame itself allows the viewer to focus on the girl in red the moment they lay their eyes on the artwork. The artist has successfully done so through his use of (or lack thereof) colours. The artwork is also much more brighter on the left hand side and seems to suggest the sun perhaps setting and drawing attention to the tin-like roofs which reflect the “light”. The artwork extracts various emotions from the viewer and also evokes a sense of nostalgia for Singaporeans who, upon seeing the artwork, are reminded of the olden days where tin roofs and two-storey buildings were the norm.

 

Evaluation and Judgement

 

Every viewer of the artwork would pick up different cues from the artwork. After voicing out what we each saw from the piece, we collectively agreed that the artwork somehow provides a glimpse into a particular corner of a town in the past- real or imagined. As we view this artwork through a frame, it feels like we are watching a black-and-white television where the lives of people in the past were played on screen. We were the audience of the show, making sense of their movements and making up a story out of these figures. It is definitely difficult to make out what these figures were doing or representing even after squinting and going as close to the artwork as possible.

There was probably an intended effect of making the subjects less recognisable and mysterious. The frustration of viewing someone or something from a still art can overwhelm us when we try to make or force meanings out of artworks. Thus the artwork seems to suggest that the attention should not just be placed on making out small details, in this case the hardly visible human figures, but on the big picture instead. The rough texture of the roof and the dark and rough sketches of the houses. These are details worth looking at and therefore, we should not confine our attention to only things that seem to make more sense. It was after the shifting of attention from one aspect of the artwork to the other that we created our own collective meaning of the artwork where the past landscape of tin roofs and two-storey buildings was full of nostalgia.