The Hope Athena For my visual analysis assignment I chose to go visit the Los Angles County Museum of Art. It has been an extremely long time since I last visited a museum. Took my twelve year old son with me to explore what the museum had to offer. We found the art to be very interesting, educational and unique. There were so many beautiful pieces throughout the museum that it was difficult trying to decide which one I wanted to base my visual analysis on.
Walking through LACK there was a section that caught my eye and found it to be of interest to me. That section was the Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Art which as located on the Manson Building, Level 3. There were various unique pieces such as vases, jewelry and sculptures. Chose the sculpture of Hope Athena to do my visual analysis because I found it to be beautiful. Athena was a Greek goddess of wisdom and war. The sculpture at LACK is a Roman, 2nd century copy after a Greek original of the late 5th century BC School of Paddies.
The sculpture was made out of marble with neutral colors. In parts the color was dull with hues of ivory and golden brown. The shape of the body was rectangular with broad shoulders. The sculpture had her arms missing. Her head was round tit hair coming down in vertical waves. She was wearing a warrior helmet from my view point I could not tell what the helmet had on it. The helmet gave her a powerful look. Her facial expression seemed reflective with facial features being symmetrical and smooth. The eye sockets were hollow and dark.
Her nose was chipped and her upper and lower lips were thin. One of the focal points for me was how her robe or drapery had such detail throughout the sculpture. It wrapped around her body with great detail with vertical creases and folds giving the sculpture a realistic look. The vertical lines toward the bottom of robe had read detail and were distributed equally and her feet and toes looked real. Another focal point for me was her chest. The medallion she had on her chest was the face of Medusa which had extraordinary detail.
The face of Medusa on the medallion was round with great definition of the eyes, nose, mouth ears and hair. The hair is split in half going down in horizontal wavy lines. I also noticed snakes coming out of the medallion and on her shoulders. The snakes had detained lines that stood out. Her body language possesses power and authority. The overall physical condition of the sculpture was fair with some arts cracked and chipped. I enjoyed our visit to the LACK Museum.
Studying the sculpture of “The Hope Athena” and paying attention to the detail made me realize how interesting art can be. Am working on understanding art, identifying the different meanings and how to use the proper wording to describe it. At times I feel as if am lost for words to express what I see. I do have to say I have learned a lot from this class in regards to art and I am enjoying it as well. I’ve gone ahead and attached a one of the pictures I took at the museum.
