A Beautiful Maze

review by Denby Fortune

March 17, 2017

The MFA is an endless museum full of extraordinary pieces of artwork from all different time periods. The MFA, located in Boston MA, is an enormous museum that contains countless pieces of artwork. There are many factors that cause this museum to be fascinating, and make you never want to leave. Not only is this museum enormous with a multitude of exhibits, but the beauty of every single piece of artwork is unimaginable.

            One modern piece of artwork that was riveting was a piece called The Rich Soil Down There by Kara Walker. This piece is a silhouette of about 12 people, and a couple birds spread out over a grey wall. The silhouettes are both black and white, and the images are of people that appear to be dancing, moving in various ways, and talking. Kara Walker was able to create a mysterious tone to this piece by using silhouettes, simple colors, and telling an open ended story. The silhouettes are mysterious due to the fact that you can’t specifically tell what they are feeling, which makes the audience think hard about the story that is being told. The colors that Kara Walker used added to the mysterious feeling of the piece, purely because of how simple it is. All of the focus is on the pose the silhouettes are in and where they are, instead of the colors that were being used. This forced the audience to wonder what the story means. Overall this piece was not only exquisite because of where it was placed and how It looked, but it also generated many questions in the audience’s mind.

            Another piece that stood out in this museum, due to who the artist is and how stunning the painting is, is Number 10 by Jackson Pollock, which is located in the Making Modern exhibit. This piece is hung up on a wall and stretches out about 8 feet long. On the canvas there is a grey toned background with splatter paint on top using tones of black, white, orange and green throughout the whole piece. Although at first glance it seems as though this piece is messy and not well done, once you look at it up close you can see how stunning and marvelous it really is. It seems as though the artists’ intention for this piece was to create a messy, complicated tone, and this was executed due to the splatter paint, and the colors that were used. Overall, this piece is incredibly fascinating to look at due to how much is going on and how stunning it is.

            The MFA as a whole is quite an experience. There are many different exhibits containing a huge variety of art from contemporary art to ancient statues. All of the art within this museum is fascinating to look at and understand what it means. Overall, the MFA is an incredibly mesmerizing museum filled with absolutely incredible pieces of artwork from all over the world, and through all different time periods.