The Floor Scrapers

I recently visited the Frist Center for the Visual Arts to hear an art lecture on impressionism, which actually ended up being an hour-long talk about how fashion influenced the paintings of those times. Not very interesting to me… but… informative. The best thing that came out of the night was getting to actually see the impressionist paintings that the Frist had to display. With nearly a 100 paintings by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Morisot, etc… the one that caught my eye the most was an exquisite piece of work by Gustave Caillebotte entitled “The Floor Scraper.”

Caillebotte was inspired by laborers working on his home to begin working on this piece of art that portrays three men scraping up the wood off of a hard wood floor. The accurate portrayal of the men’s muscles and torsos along with the depiction of the working class during this time period show that Gustave was a realist. His primary focus in his artwork was to show things as they would really be seen in the real world. What attracted me to this painting while walking through the exhibit was not the accurate depiction of the people though, but how Gustave is able to paint the scraps of wood that have already been torn up. It is almost as if you can see each individual scrap among the hundreds that are piled upon each other. The pristine detail in this painting truly makes it a masterpiece.

It amazes me how people are able to paint things that look so realistic. As I walked through the hallways of paintings that night, I had to look closely at some of them to make sure they were not actually photographs. The fine detail that is put in to these pieces of art makes them appear as if you are staring at real life. Some of the paintings are so overtly large that it makes me wonder just how long the artist spent on it to get it finished. I know that I would have nowhere near a sufficient amount of patience to be an artist. Nevertheless, I recommend everyone go down to the First Center to partake in the joy that I found while looking through all of these paintings. No one will be disappointed with what they see.