The Bridge at Dover Beach

Andres Silva

9/16/10

Candace Nicole

Art 160

“The Bridge at Dover Beach”

            The bridge at Dover beach was created this year and can be found in the Nevada Museum of Art. With this painting, there is a bridge which covers the gap between two mountains and down below is nothing but a narrow passage way for the water to reach the ocean. Cheester Arnold is reminding us of the limited time we have to live. He made it so that the bridge at Dover Beach would have a strong and direct relationship to historical ideas of the sublime. He makes you feel as if you were trapped considering the aging bridge and the collapsing walls giving only the option to cross the bridge and hope it doesn’t cave in. His suggestion of the threat of ruin is a common method used in historical landscape paintings, also implying the presence of mortality reminding us that death is inevitable.

            As I walked around the museum to choose a painting I was l kept my eyes peeled for a drawing that would blow my mind away, but instead I found myself staring at this painting thinking of a solution of how to get down to the beach without having to cross the broken down bridge. I felt as if I was the one at one end of the mountain looking down at the beach to see my family awaiting my return. I tried imagining the two sides of the mountain, but came to a conclusion that crossing the bridge would satisfy my need for adrenaline.