Analyzing Wyeth's Letting Her Hair Down

Putting Wyeth’s painting next to Mondrian’s really helped me distinguish what he does to get the viewer to look at the left side of the painting to the right side and then back again. Like the large red block in Mondrian’s painting, our eye is instantly drawn to Christina lying in the field of dry grass. Wyeth then gets our eye to go to the right side of the painting by including a house in the top right hand corner just like Mondrian places a blue square in the top right hand corner of his painting. By adding the house to the painting, our eye moves from the main object, the woman, to another object, the house, because as viewers we went to ensure we see the full image. We do not want to miss anything. He created visual balance by adding the house to the right side of the painting.
Wyeth manages to bring us back to the left side of the painting by placing another building on the same horizontal plane as the house. Our eye follows that plane instinctively from right to left. The second building is then in the same vertical line as Christina, which brings our eye back down to focus on her. The second thing in the landscape that brings our eye back is the colors that Wyeth …show more content…
He gets us to look to the right side of the painting by adding the colors that seem to resemble grass and maybe a dock leading to a body of water that we can see through the open door. We also look to the right because our eye is first drawn to the bright colors of the characters and then as our eye moves to the right the colors get darker and then our eye is drawn to the bright colors outside of the door in the top right hand corner of the painting. I just keep looking through that door wanting to know what is outside of