Every Thursday, as part of my personal “enriched environment” initiative, I post a piece of art, usually from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which recently released online some 400,000 high-resolution images of its collection. All artwork will show a sun (or sunlight) somewhere.
I won’t name the piece or the artist, but instead invite you to study the art and post a comment addressing one or more of these questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
If you have another idea, run with it.
Special Update! The New York Times website does this same exercise every Monday with a news photo that is uncaptioned and contains no text (click!). The Times asks viewers the same three questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
However, at the end of the week, the Times posts the background information on the picture. So, I’ve decided to do the same. I’ll still post an unlabeled piece of art on Thursday. But return on Sunday (for the Sunny Sundays post!) and you’ll find an update on the artwork here.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
Le Château, fin Octobre, le soir, effet d’orage, vue prise du Parterre du Nord
Artist: Eugène Atget (French, Libourne 1857–1927 Paris)
Date: 1903
Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions: Image: 17.4 × 21.6 cm (6 7/8 × 8 1/2 in.) Sheet: 17.6 × 21.6 cm (6 15/16 × 8 1/2 in.)
Classification: Photographs
Interesting layers of dark and light. Also there are straight lines and angles (especially with the building and the horizontal line of dark clouds above it) as well as curves, such as the rim of the fountain’s pool. The four statues lying down in the fountain are light but their reflections in the water are dark. I think the photograph provokes the viewer into switching back and forth between dark and light and the intermediate gray.
What is the building in the background? I can’t believe how intricately ornate it is. Who puts columns on buildings where the columns run just from the 2nd floor to the 3rd? They’re essentially useless, as they are not holding anything up. Way interesting photo!
The mermaid on the left is looking up at the sky hoping it will rain because someone shut off the fountain !!!!