Influencing Emotions As I learn and grow through education, I begin to understand what art really is about. When I first looked at art, whether paintings or what I called art “posters” I can say that I had to be influenced by the emotion of the art, to appreciate the art. I never really looked at the art to see what aspects of the art gave me the emotions that I felt in the first place. A perfect example is Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the “Medusa” Which portrays the horrors of a wreck at sea, and “tells a story of [how] government incompetence resulted in [a] tragedy” (Sporre 61). Unlike my reason for liking art for the emotional aspect alone; art has to be really “seen” and understood. As I look at Gericault’s painting of The Raft of the “Medusa” I begin to see how emotions are influenced through the use of lines and chiaroscuro. When I look at The Raft of the “Medusa” the first thing that strikes me is how Gericault uses light and shade to bring about fear and joy. The painting depicts sailors shipped wrecked on a raft at sea during a storm. The ocean is made ominous through lines and shading, bring about a sense of coldness and yet calmness. The waves around the raft go from being darkly shaded giving you a sense of coldness, and power to waves that begin to become smaller, and lighter giving you a sense of calmness, a sense of peace. As you look to the sky you are given a sense of darkness, like a passing storm, has just finished bring its furry. The sky begins to lighten and becomes brighter giving you a sense of warmth and hope, as the sailors realize there is a ship on the horizon. Gericault continues to bring the portrayals of the sailors to life by depicting how the men survived on the raft at sea. What brings the emotion into the painting is the use of shading and mass to depict life and death. The raft is big and yet all the sailors are located in one area of the raft; including the dead. The dead and dying are depicted in a lighter color and give you a sense of despair. The detail of the sailors’ figures and facial expressions brings about a human aspect to the painting, even the dead. The painting also has me asking myself why is, so much detail and effort being placed on the dead like they are precious cargo, instead of being set free. I think Gericault really