Hey! I was here 10 years AGO!

Well, this week was pretty great! And I bet you can guess why: I and my fellow classmates went to the A.rt G.allery of O.ntario (AGO)! I walked in thinking I had never been there, but after coming across Tom Thomson's The West Wind (1917), I can tell you I had a mind-blowing-deja-vu-nostalgia moment - because I remembered seeing  the painting - among others - in a field trip I had taken with my grade three class! Oh my Gosh, I was at the AGO 10 YEARS AGO. Heh heh, see what I did there?

So anyway, I was taking my rounds through the exhibits, waiting for a piece to just, you know, catch me, hold me, and make me stare. And you know what, a lot of them did! But, you know what it's like - right? That one art piece that almost has a gravitational pull for you? Well I'll show you the piece that was mine that day:

Mother & Child Figure (Portrait of Queen Nana of the Batufan Kingdom)

1914

This sculpture (yes it's a sculpture - I know the title says portrait - usually making people think it's a painting) totally hit me! You know, first of all, I didn't even see it in sculpture form, first. I saw it on an advertisement in the AGO - at the entrance of the Frum Collection of African Art. And just the PHOTOGRAPH caught me! I stared at it - squinted at it - but it just wasn't good enough to see the 2D form... I had to find it!

So I searched throughout the exhibit - seeing some pretty cool stuff! But eventually - A-HA! There you are! Okay! 

So I did a full roundabout around the sculpture, and I will interpret my feelings about this piece for you:

The sculpture is stated to be made of wood with polychrome. It gives off the scent to prove it. It smells a little bit like cedar. 

Well, it really seemed to draw me in simply because of how she and her child looked. Queen Nana's body is made to look so disproportionate and unnatural: her breasts point out like cones; her head is very small and very round, with eyes that take up most of her forehead! She has an arm missing (except I am thinking that unintentional). She looks human, no doubt - but in a primitive sort of way. 

Now her child, is very thin! She sits upon her left knee - as seen in the photo - but often you can barely notice her unless you look really close. (By the way, I am not saying that the child is a female - I am just saying I don't know what gender the child is. You can totally tell with the mom - her genitals are carved in! You can't see it in the photo, but the artist was actually very detailed and precise on carving it. The artist did not provide this detail for the child.) Anyway, yeah, the child looked skinny - about the same width as a Wiimote (man I really wanna play games, can't you tell?)! And the child also looked very small - making me think the child was an infant. But I would normally think that infants are chubby and stout. The artist made this infant look long and lanky. This makes me wonder... I mean, the mom was carved to look very feminine, and also very outstanding. But the child, well - it looks like the artist didn't want to contribute as much wood towards creating her. The sculpture brings to mind that - at the time - children were not as often recognized as important as adults would be. Even if the child is one of a queen... 

I get the impression that the artist emphasized the femininity of the queen - you know, by making her genitals very clear - perhaps because femininity usually represents fertility; which is an  important quality to have in a leader and her nation. Perhaps the artist was celebrating the reign of a bountiful harvest! Well, that's what I thought.

Okeydoke, so the most affective Art Word of the Week  in this AGO anecdote must have been shape, right?? In art, shape is all about the form of the artwork. Sculptures really need to focus on this. And well, the shapes of Queen Nana gave me those impressions of motherhood, fertility, etcetera. Oh, wow! The significance of shape in art has quite the effect on our perspectives. I mean, what if Queen Nana looked all scrawny, and flat? She wouldn't look even nearly as regal and important, would she! :)