Arnold Böcklin

When being an art major, you end up diving into and analyzing a WIDE variety of pieces. Art history is one of the most fascinating and important aspects of the subject of art, as it studies what established art itself. As a junior in college, I've been in five art history classes, and was starting to think how many people don't get to experience exploring these works. Today we will be discussing a work by Arnold Böcklin. This work was created in 1872, with oil paints on canvas, and is a self portrait.

Arnold Bocklin Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle

Arnold Böcklin was a swiss painter born in October of 1927. This artist mostly paints in an academic style, like shown in this piece. An academic painting is a work that is painted "realistically", with accurate shading and shapes that have depth. He veered away from the usual naturalistic artworks, and focused more on symbolism. Naturalistic consists of what it sounds; natural entities. A good example of this is a landscape, or in this case, a self portrait, but with a background that can be found in the real world. Symbolism is art that symbolizes something, and usual contains less concrete items. For example, the skeleton in this work looks life-like, and would most likely not be behind a man in a portrait.

Now that we have discussed the basics of this work, let's dive in a little deeper. As art students, we are expected to try and see things the way the artist intended them. For this painting, he paints himself ready to paint, but looks slightly uncomfortable. He has a look on his face as if something is making him feel uneasy. You can also see him leaned slightly back, with his ear directly next to the skeletons mouth, hinting at the fact that he is possibly getting told a secret.

Focusing more-so on the skeletal figure now, you notice the violin (or fiddle), also stated in the title. This instrument when accompanied with a skeletal figure, is often known as a symbol of death. So earlier we labeled this as a symbolic piece. What is it possibly symbolic of? Hinting at his own death? You almost start to compare it to your own thoughts. His looks to be in the middle of a painting with a wet brush and colors slightly mixed on his pallet, and is suddenly interrupted by this feeling or thought of death over his shoulder, whispering to him.

Analyzing art and diving into the mind of the artist can help with understanding how people think as well as give you more knowledge about the world before out time. I will be doing more of these as a go on with the blog. Comment a piece you art interested in and we can dive in together.