By Brooke Keene, Florence '14
Fun fact about Italy: there are no buses on Sunday. So as I prepared myself for the longer walk, I kept thinking that whatever we were doing was hopefully worth it. It was.
We went to see a relatively new exhibition called La Figura Della Furia: Jackson Pollock, temporarily located at the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio. The exhibition compared the styles of Jackson Pollock with the styles of Michelangelo. Jackson Pollock is best known for his technique of standing above the canvas and dropping the paint onto it, however, in this exhibit we saw a few of his sketches that resembled various scenes from Michelangelo's paintings.
I was struck by how Pollock used color and lines to express various emotions like anger, discomfort, sadness, and excitement. Similarly, I loved how Michelangelo's slaves, which we had seen earlier in the week, seemed to be breaking out from the marble. I find it fascinating that both artists became both mentally and physically involved and would lose themselves in their art. I am also inspired by how they were able to brilliantly convey feelings and motion through their art.