Donald Sultan and Martin Puryear

When I first looked at Donald Sultan's, "Pears," even though I read the title, I was still initially stumped. It took a few more minutes for the actual forms to come through. For me, I saw the picture broken up into three pieces.

Using the original, the first form I saw was the actual orange shape. This was the first thing I saw when I looked at the piece as it really is the focal point. This is the part of the piece that is the pears, and it almost seemed like two different forms making up one form (if that makes sense). I see the pear, but the steam at the bottom almost seems like a merging of almost a reflection of the upper half of the pear.

The second form I saw, was all of the black in the background. I saw this as kind of a form all it's own, standing out almost as much as the central, orange colored pear(s). When I look at Sultan's piece, I see three different pieces, the top, the bottom left corner and the bottom right corner. I think that the black pieces can be viewed as actual forms because I see them as playing an invaluable part of the piece as a whole. If the black parts were gone, I don't think that it would have had the dimension that it does have with the black included.

The third form I saw, was the kind of shadow, or something. This stood out to me because it is what originally confused me about the "pear(s)" in the piece. Ultimately, it is also what made me think of the piece as a reflection.

In the original piece, the forms all interact with each other in different ways. The orange form, or the pear(s), interact with the black form behind/around it by making each standout in different ways. The bottom form, or the reflection, made me as the viewer see it's interaction with the orange form, or pear(s), by seemingly acting as a reflection.

When I first looked at the piece, I didn't really recognize it. But, I did see the pear(s) (I still haven't decided if there is one or two) eventually. The artist makes sure that the viewer can recognize the pear(s) by the title, and also the stems. There is also a general pear(s) shape. I don't know about the orange color, because I have never seen an orange pear.