Brilliant piece of artwork Essay

This artwork, Moonrise Hernandez, will be critiqued based on the elements and principles of art to determine its meaning. The author, Ansel Adams, created this piece in 1941 in southern Mexico. Here, Adams used black and white film to make an original gelatin silver 16 by 20 photograph. The artwork consists of a moonlit dark sky above a small camp with mountains in the background. The sky appears stormy because the clouds stand out, while the half moon shines well above. The town looks really boring and poor. Plus, the mountains in the background are very tall and appear to be touching the sky. All of these factors contribute to a wonderful photograph. In this piece both elements and principles of art are prominent. The color of the sky is pitch black, which creates emphasis on the clouds, which are bright white. Also, the sky takes up a lot of space in the photograph and it towers over everything. This creates an uneven proportion throughout the piece. Finally, the texture of the clouds appears smooth, while the foreground is very rough. This creates variety throughout the photo. In all, this piece portrays many of the elements and principles of art. The mood in this photograph is depressing because almost half of this picture is black. See above paragraph. The moon against the dark sky in the picture is a symbol of the constant battle against evil that all of us face. The story it tells is that there will be bad times for the town because they’re about to get rained on. In conclusion, this artwork employs mostly emotionalism. This is because it makes the viewer feel sad and lonely. In all, I think this is a brilliant piece of artwork.