The piece of artwork I choose was The Ascent of Ethiopia by Lois Mailou. The artwork decenters the human because the artwork depicts how Humans are not the strongest entity in the image. Humans believe themselves to be stronger, smarter, and indestructible than all other entities on the planet. However, in the artwork humans are kneeling down and praying to a figure in the sky. The humans appear to be terrified of the figure of the sky, indicating that it must be stronger or able to defeat humans. The artist also uses the colors in the image to stress the un-importance of humans in the image. The image contains many hues of blue except for the figure in the sky and the orb in the back. They are both yellow pulling in the focus of anyone looking at the image. The rest of the image has a range of different shades of blue. I believe that the lighter the blue is the more important it is to the image because the lighter the character is the easier it is to see. For example, the sky and the land have lighter shades of blue stressing how important they are compared to the humans who are the darkest shade of blue. Humans are not as important to the image decentering them.
219 words