Chaim Soutine

Side of Beef and Calf's Head, Chaim Soutine. Oil on canvas, 92x73cm, 1923
I wasn't sure what to think when we were presented with this painting and being told that this is what we were going to have to attempt to paint.
At first I didn't like the painting because its no something I would usually be interested in, however, once I started to look properly i really like the painting, I thought that it was a very strong and bold painting. The image of a dead animals body and head hung up is very disturbing. This is waht I think makes it bold. The colours of the blood are what stand out most to me and to some people may be quite sickening. I think it has the shock quality.
How I think it relates to my own ideas about painting and the kinds of qualities I would like to achieve in my own work is that I think it is painted very honestly, nothing is being hidden or made to look better. I think Soutine painted it how he saw the meat in the flesh. This is the kind of work I really like, things that have been honestly painted and not been made to look nicer than in the flesh.
I also like the textured look of the way that the paint has been layed down, you can almost feel the paint without even touching it. I think that I paint in a very textured way, I think that when you can see the texture of the paint and the marks of the brushstrokes it brings a painting to life, you are able to see the movement of the paint and how it has been used.
I guessed in class that the painting wasn't very huge and it turned out that it was around the size of A1. The reason I thought it wasn't very large is that if it was larger I think the way it was painted may have looked different, the texture of the paint may not have worked.
At first it was difficult to explain what the difference between making a copy of a painting and responding to a painting. To me, I think that responding to a painting isn't about making a rreplica of the whole of the painting, it's about painting the whole of the painting or a section of it in a way the you think represents the painting and how you feel about it. For instance, I think that my final piece will be of the calfs head with a bit of the carcass showing, to me the piece will be bold, textured and colourful so that it represents the gore and flesh of the dead animal.