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Ben Froling

Mr. Phinney

English 10: Global Voices

11 November 2019

Fractured Reality

Once many years ago I used one of my friend’s pellet guns. I was unsure about whether

the safety was on or off, and accidentally shot it indoors. The pellet ricocheted off the walls and

floor then hit a glass door. The door instantly snapped, but due to its high quality, no glass fell

out. The door instead made a shattering pattern, a spider's web branching its spindly supports on

to the frame of the door. This pattern reminds me of “Birds” by Franz Marc. This piece of

abstract art mixes reality and other universes in a way that makes you ask questions.

The first time I saw this painting was in eighth grade. I had seen one Marc before,

another depiction of an animal, the fox to be exact. I enjoyed his pieces because they were

different. Marc didn't paint people laying on the lawns of great estates, he painted things that

interested him. He painted the rawest things he could find, the beasts of the world. He painted

these primal animals and fit them into his paintings with aggressive brush strokes and only small

sections of refinement. I viewed this painting superficially as only something interesting to look

at, never as a piece to look deep into.

The painting consists of many fragments or shards of colors, aligned like a mosaic. A

black and red color scheme dominates the picture, but there are pockets of yellows, blues, and

greens hidden in corners and along edges. Smaller white slivers slash through this already
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fragmented piece. It is on these white bolts of lightning, that the focal points of the painting rest,

the three birds. The birds are arranged with two on top of each other, and one to the left side. One

of the three birds (the one on the left) is not really a bird, but rather a stylization of a cormorant

like bird. It is a stylization of a bird because it does not show any body, only a long neck, and a

pair of feet resting their claws on a gash of white. There is another bird, harder to spot, peering

down upon the others. This bird is skinny and long, you could easily grab it around its blue waist

with your hand. It is hiding. I don’t know why. Is it scared of another bird? Is it scared of the

world? Why is it camouflaged? The final bird is the star of the piece, painted with a glowing

yellow body, and defined by sharp black lines, it is what people notice first about the painting.

The yellow bird is the most recognizable as a bird and makes the viewer see that this painting is

not only about abstract colors and lines, but about how when those colors and lines converge

(with a little imagination) they can form recognizable creatures.

I have painted this image once before, in great detail. It is difficult to paint, not because

of its sharp lines, but because the colors that Marc has used don’t blend. The only way to

accurately replicate it is to use confident single strokes, imitating the original creation strategy of

his work. These strokes can tell you a lot about what the artist thinks, he is using the boldest and

widest brush possible, then outlining his fragmented birds and their wings with a fine brush. This

tells us that Marc’s creation strategy is to explore his feelings, and passions onto the canvas, then

return and edit it with a small brush to make it a refined piece. These brush strokes make you

feel the art is easily created. This is quite frustrating when you try to mimic these strokes, and it

does not turn out as desired. In contrast, artists like Monet use very detailed brush strokes, with

tiny brushes, and watered down paint so as not to paint too much at once. This shows his
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devotion to precision. He needed every painting to perfectly mimic his reality. Marc is not afraid

to mess up, because he can’t. He has no goal like Monet and his gardens, but rather wants to

explore how his colors can be used in shards to create a living creature that is easily

recognizable.

Before I began to paint I sketched out my idea of what I was copying, This took a very

long time because Marc had not done the same to his. The other painters had balanced their

paintings and possibly divided them into sections. But mark had simply started his piece with no

direction. During this process, I examined closely the painting, the colors, and the features, but I

never dwelled on it too long. I never looked into it and kept looking until I understood

something.

An artist like Marc doesn’t feel this need to represent reality in an accurate way, he paints

his horses blue, because he wonders what they would look like that way. He believes that blue is

a colored representation of the male spirit and that horses are strongly male creatures. His art is

an exploration of reality, and how he can change one’s perception of it, and make them question

common constructs. When creating a work, it would be impossible for him to know what he is

going to make exactly before he paints it. The creation of art is more of a journey than a product.

It is about how your vision changes and morphs into a product, from an idea. This made me

copying a piece of abstract art acutely aware of how the idea of copying a piece of abstract is so

completely oxymoronic. If the point of a realistic piece is to mimic, and gain an understanding of

reality. And the point of an abstract piece is to express an emotion that you feel strongly. Then

copying an abstract is learning another person’s emotions.

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In this piece of art, Franz Marc uses high contrast colors, a vibrant candy apple red, an

azure blue, a pine forest green, a shiny black that seems to reflect the other colors, and of course

a white to give the painting depth. I imagine the canvas has a thick coat of paint on it, enough

that if you ran a fragile hand over it you could feel welts, and blemishes in the piece. But at the

same time, the painting looks delicate and smooth in some areas. This balance or tension

between rough and smooth is one of the many enigmas of this painting. Artists generally stay

within the confines of one style per painting, But this piece moves between delicate small lines

and large globs of color. I painted the image slowly, too slowly, in the beginning. I used only a

fine brush, recreating as exactly as possible what I saw. As I got closer to the deadline I painted

more frantically, this is when I felt most in touch with Marc. I painted fast, with direction, but not

copying, more painting what I felt was right. I began to understand the painting in a deeper sense

than liquid on a piece of fabric. I began to explore it myself. Winding between great heavy red

columns, and black shadowed patches. I began to see that by copying this piece I was, in fact,

exploring myself, my ideas, my expectations, and at the same time exploring Marc.

This exploration of ideas and the lack of expectations is an essential part of humanity.

Some people express their creativity in different ways, making sculptures, buildings, and other

forms of art. The word art is used to mean “anything created with effort”, as almost everything in

this world is art to someone. Art can be successfully created to reflect reality, with an expectation

made to meet a standard before the art has begun its creation. But most of the greatest pieces of

art are not made with an expectation. Rather they begin as incredible urges to show emotion.

This morphs into a depiction of something tangible that is able to convey the emotions of what

they wanted to show, but more than that these great works of art are showing how you react
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when you feel these emotions. In this particular piece, Marc is trying to convey freedom, and

how it differs between genders. There are a lot of wow reactions of sadness, or happiness, but

Franz Marc’s art to me shows freedom, the small yellow bird, one of the freest animals, along

with wild horses, the subject of his most famous painting. But with this depiction, he shatters the

surface of the canvas, conveying a feeling of questioning the reality of this freedom. Are birds

really free if they’re confined to this world? The battle between gender in this painting is more

subtle, it is about the colors of the characters. The yellow in the main bird represents the female

spirit, a gentle, and comforting color. The small blue bird represents the male spirit, it is hiding,

maybe from the war. The blue or male bird, I have come to realize is what I believe to be a

depiction or self-reflection of Marc. At the time when this piece was painted, (1914) World War

One broke out. Marc could have known that the war would soon expand over where he lived. He

could be trying to escape his inevitable draft and sequential death. This bird could also be

representing a divinity, some greater power looking down upon its subjects. Then again the bird

could be just a bird and nothing more.

The fractured imagery of this painting also somehow contains a kind of spontaneity. I

believe for beauty to be created it must be somewhat spontaneous. When I shot the door and

destroyed it, I was in a sense not destroying it but morphing it into something else. This

completely accidental act had created a beautiful thing. This shows that beauty can be dangerous

or unexpected, but still create something that was made to be that way. If I hadn’t broken that

door, then I don’t know if I would have painted This painting, or written this essay. That would

have been a great loss because by doing those things I have learned about others, and how they

express emotions, and I have learned about myself how things make me feel.
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Bibliography:

Marc, Franz. Birds. 1914. Franz Marc Museum, Kochel. Franz Marc Museum,

https://www.franz-marc-museum.de/. Accesed 5 November 2019.

Franz Marc Paintings “Birds by Franz Marc.” Birds by Franz Marc, www.franzmarc.com/birds/.

“The Blue Rider.” Lenbachhaus - Marc,

www.lenbachhaus.de/collection/the-blue-rider/marc/?L=1.

MoMA. “German Expressionism.” Marc, Franz. MoMA.org,

www.moma.org/s/ge/collection_ge/artist/artist_id-3748.html.