VISUAL ANALYSIS
Amherst Campus 1
Fairfield Porter (1969)
AT FIRST GLANCE
Looking at Amherst Campus 1 (1969) by Fairfield Porter, you see a beautiful and colorful autumn landscape filled with greens, yellows, reds, oranges, and the dark pale blue of the sky. Intricacies and many varied terrain features add depth and layers. The colors mix and add a genuinely natural and realistic Northeast autumn look. This artwork can be divided into four perspective sections of varying tree color, terrain differences, and brushstroke detail. We can assume Porter is painting from a building because of how far up his perspective is in relation to the parking lot. Many elements of this painting seem to be intentionally painted in different colors to derive the most detail and depth possible of the varying landscapes.
"Porter's creative alchemy was based on the notion of the sensual and immediate, on the metaphysical experience with nature."
The University of Chicago Press
FOUR SECTIONS
FOREGROUND
First is the foreground, where the cars, parking lot, and an unnamed campus building are. This section is the most colorful and detailed part of the painting, with the grass playing host to many shades of green, blue, yellow, and gray. The parking lot is shaded in gray, green, and beige with white lines. The trees are most colorful, having green, yellow, brown, gray, and red shades. Many colors mix to recreate the incredible abundance of overlapping and contrasting colors that happen during the peak of fall, like the brownish maroon tree near the center.
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A CLOSER LOOK
This work also serves another purpose by showing how humans have expanded the built environment into many wooded areas. It also shows how small we indeed are compared to mother nature. Porter loved to paint nature with a strong sense of realism and lots of abstract elements.
This land is anything but flat due to the many hills and mountains surrounding the campus. Individual hills can be made out by looking at the color and detail variations throughout the landscape. In the foreground of our painting, the perspective is taken on hill one. Hill one gradually rises from the parking lot, through the grass and crests where the first layer of colorful trees. The first campus building is partially blocked by the hill obscuring the bottom half of the building.
Hill two encompasses the entire area of the yellow-orange trees, where many other buildings can be seen reaching above the treetops. These trees come to an abrupt end as the color turns to a greenish color indicative of Hill three. The greenish color is cast across the canvas, with a few yellow-orange towering above the rest to obscure the view. In the furthest layer of the fluctuating terrain, the trees change to a more washed-out green color with reddish patches throughout, giving way to the higher peaks of the Holyoke's.
Image of Fairfield Porter
"Order seems to come from searching for disorder, and awkwardness from searching for harmony or likeness, or the following of a system. The truest order is what you already find there, or that will be given if you don't try for it. When you arrange, you fail."
Fairfield Porter
"An intimism with the American spaciousness, a color-drunk hymn to "things as they are."
New Republic (1993)
PERFECT BLEND
The numerous hills, mountains, and fall colors of the Northeast act as a homage to the rural character of the eastern United States. Porter captures what he sees around him, providing a historic record captured in paint. The campus's landscaping blends well with more natural landscapes of the background. A bright, colorful foliage canopy conceals the student activities and the UMass campus. Natural and artificial elements blend perfectly like the grass, parking lot, and trees. No curbs or sidewalks adorn the edges of the parking lot, but there are beaten paths of trampled grass. These desire paths show the routes taken to and from the parking lot and display the seamless blend of nature into the campus. The vibrant colors of his painting may seem unreal but serve to characterize the landscapes around him.
Modern-day UMass Campus
APPROXIMATE COLOR MAKE-UP
53%
Greens
27%
Purples
11%
Blacks and Grays