Museum Visit (final blog)

Teatro Amazonas is a historical landmark built in the late 1800's by the Portuguese. It is situated in the down town of Manaus and still operates as a theater.

This first photo is hard to make out, but it is the ceiling above the main stage. In the center hangs a chandelier. 

This is the ceiling in the main hall of the theater. It was hand painted and spans the length of the room.

These are various paintings that are painted directly onto the plaster walls of the main hall. There is no flash allowed in the Theater so the photos can be hard to see clearly.

This is a view of the exterior of the Teatro as seen from the square that was built around it.

O Teatro Amazonas, or the Amazon Theater, is in the city I live in; Manaus. The theater was finished in 1892 and took 15 years to complete, and those financing the construction and decoration wanted  the custom, hand painted and hand picked furniture and art. The Theater's furniture was meant to be modeled after the styles used by Louis XV in France. The Portuguese elite who would attend and fund the theater were very much in style with what was also going on back at home in Portugal and France.

Visiting the theater was like stepping back in time, and was completely unexpected as it is located in the middle of the Amazon forest. Walking through, the wood floors are still original and intact, the walls are hand painted and consist of very european renaissance themes; very romantic landscapes or mythological scenes.

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This piece represents the beginning of a whole new kind of art for society. With the invention of a new technology, camera obscura, artists were able to take the new fashion of Realism to its extreme and most pure form. I think that Realism caught on so fast because it was so new and controversial and exciting for artists in that they could now replicate what they were actually seeing, but still make the viewer see what is intended. Photographs, like any form of art, can be manipulated by the artist so the viewer will feel, understand or think in a new way. For Realism to really gain hold as a new trend in art, it required a new medium, like all other styles in the past. With photographs of actual people doing real life actions, it is hard for the artist to hide any imperfections or create perfections that were not there in reality. With painting and sculpture, it is up to the artists to best represent the subject so that when seen later, it can be recognized and analyzed. This is a very difficult thing to do when everything produced was done by individual persons with different backgrounds and styles, but with photos, the artist can be sure that who or what they are capturing will be that true representation.

I like this piece because although it is a realistic piece and produced through camera obscura, the theme still remains in history and is a moral subject that is not easily forgotten. I think that Rejilander knew that if he was going to use this new kind of medium, he was going to have to substantiate its products by proving that it can last through time also. It was a good idea to use something from the past to show skeptics and critics that the new camera obscura could relay the same messages and morals that any other type of medium could.