La Fortune

Valerie Valle
Mrs. Buckles
February 25, 2013 I chose to go to one of my favorite museums, The McNay, to find the piece of art that I wanted to write about. I always find something interesting even though I have been there hundreds of times. They are having a special exhibit called “Real/Surreal” selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art. Along with the exhibit they gave you an Ipad mini that was loaded with a game that you played along with while enjoying the artwork displayed. It was actually very fun. It included things like history of the artist, the location and its history if it was a real place, YouTube videos of how a certain piece was created, audio of what the painting would sound like, and a seek and find of different objects that were located in a few of the paintings or photographs. The piece that I chose named “La Fortune” by Man Ray is oil on Canvas 24 x 29 in. painting (description card next to painting). It looks to be scenery with bright colors at first. I was actually attracted to it because of its brightly colored cartoon-like rolling clouds and the extremely long pool table, which was also brightly colored. There were six clouds, each a different color. The colors were blue, purple, red, orange, yellow and green. Below the multi-colored clouds is a line of white clouds that seem to be continuous on both sides of the pool table. Following the line of white clouds were what looked to be baby blue mountains also on both sides of the pool table. As I got closer to the painting I noticed the desert landscape the gloomy gray sky behind the clouds. I immediately wondered how it all was able to work together perfectly. I noticed that there was no “life” in the painting. No People, animals or plant life. The wooden pool table had the usual bright green felt. It looked to be slanted as if one end off the legs were longer than the others, giving the painting a deep space kind of feel. There is one leg actually showed in the painting. It has some detail to it like a fancy carving. There were three balls on the table. One Red and two white. They seemed to be placed to shape a triangle with the point to the top right corner. Of course that all depends on how one perceives the whole thing. There were no side pockets or corner pockets on this pool table and no pool cue in sight. To me the painting makes me think non-objective and surrealism. Only in a dream state would I see such bright colored clouds and a pool table is so long that I could probably never make a ball in the pocket, if there were pockets. Like most Surrealism art I believe this piece is about being in a dream or an imaginary state. “La Fortune, Made in 1938 when he was particularly prolific as a painter, displays his engagement with Surrealist themes of dream state and game-playing.” (Description card next to painting) The painting made me feel a mixture of excitement and gloom. I was excited to see the brightly colored clouds which of course were very different than anything I had ever seen before. It was unusual to me. As I looked closer I was filled with a bit of disappointment and sadness because I noticed the gray in the sky and the dry