This piece by Picasso must be one of my favorites. It just breaks all barriers and rules of what “art” should be especially with the past eras and the type of works that were done. You can tell with impressionism and post-impressionism; it opened the doors to possibilities that Picasso took and transformed the meaning of art. He was always experimenting and changing his style from making realistic paintings to abolishing perspective and rejecting beauty by twisting and turning body parts with a cubism look, just like this very piece. Looking at it, we see five women in nude in a certain pose but with very vague details painted in sharp/jagged lines (not smooth and soft like most art pieces that were delt with in the past) with shading differences but expressed so beautifully. The colors are not blended well together and are separate, but it works because as he once said, “Art is the lie that tells the truth”. For example, the background with blocks of blue, white and different shades of brown showing us what colors are used to create this work. Very radical but influential to future art and architecture.

As Sister Wendy, a religion history sister and art historian, said René Magritte designed his pieces to give us a “psychic jolt”. As a surrealist painter, his paintings are dream-like, very clear, vivid and illogical which is what he gives us in Empire of Lights, a series of paintings. In this specific piece, it does give us those characteristics of sharp images of the house, the lamp and the clouds in the sky making it clear to us of our surroundings however the time of day gives us that double take of the perspective of time. The sky is bright as daylight, making the clouds visible in the baby blue sky but the bottom half where the buildings are, it is dark as night with the lamps turned on and windows of the houses lit. I think that this oil on canvas is a great example of what surrealism is because it looks like a normal painting but as you look at it longer you are able to catch other details that are out of the ordinary giving you that psychic jolt as what Sister Wendy said.

The 20^th Century has pushed all sorts of medium out of its boundaries like what we see from famous artists like Picasso and cubism and Kandinsky with expressionism conveying explicit and raw emotions through his art works. Musician, Igor Stravinsky, took those elements and transformed those radical ideas into sound giving us the controversial ballet of its time, Rite of Spring. Listening to this piece sounds nothing like the previous pieces that have been composed before, but we can see how the ideas and philosophy of romantic thinking has influenced Stravinsky to keep pushing those limits to create something powerful, eccentric and well known. We can hear these eccentric sounds in the accents of the offbeat notes, called syncopation, different instruments that are being introduced like the bassoon, and the arrangement of different instrumental entrances making it hard to follow along if you are not paying attention. He was going for a primitive sound to match the mood of a ritual which did not settle well with many people causing riots in the streets of Paris. Again, these changes in music and art were seen as radical however changed and revolutionized what we know today and that entertainment we are used to and now find “normal”.

Having differences and similarities from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, this four-episode ballet is an American favorite giving nostalgic, western feels that makes its audience relate and attach themselves to Copland’s pieces. Still having an emphasis on syncopation and using more percussion instruments, we hear more calming, recognizable instruments. Composed back in 1942, this time and era was big on the rise of film and cinema entertainment causing creativity within this industry. So, while listening to this piece, we can probably recognize certain excerpts from commercials, tv shows and movies we have seen. Music pieces like this changed how music is used, not just in concert halls and musicals and ballets but in movie entertainment and television making it widely known all over the world, spreading its influence on anyone who has seen it.