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 in the picture?
- What does it make you think of?
- What observations can you make?
Note: To examine the picture in full size, click on the image.
There is shade in the lower foreground, and it looks like a bus is framing the lower foreground on the left, and some other square object on the lower right. There are seven men in the picture, maybe the pants of an eighth. Three men are sitting on a bench in the sunlight, right in the picture’s center. All the men are wearing hats. I like the white hat with the black band of the man on the far right the best. The sign painted on the upper left says “EATS & GROC.” But the beginning of the sign is outside the picture. Maybe the full sign reads “MEATS & GROC.” I find that interesting that groceries are something different than “eats” or “meats.” There is an awning over the center store but it is not opened, which makes me think that the owner wants the sun to shine on the building. Perhaps it’s a cool spring or fall day and the sun’s warmth is welcome. The fact that the men are wearing heavy clothes supports this idea. I wonder what type of business the center place is. Maybe its a bar.
There are many things to look at in this picture. My eye is first drawn to the men sitting in front of the store and entering the door. Why is it only men? Where are the women and children. The third man from the right is blurry and has a sharp white line running across his legs.. This creates multiple impressions. Finally, there’s a wheel barrow with what looks to be a large cardboard box holding many smaller boxes. What is it doingn there? What’s its relation with the men? Did it bring things that were unloaded inside the building? I see there’s a lot to examine iin this photograph.
A collection of boxes. A collection of men. A collection of posters and lettering on the walls. A collection of bricks neatly ordered to make the walls. A collection of different windows and doors. A collection of hats. And so on !!!
Annd the men are either facing towards the camera or have t heir backs to the camera. No profiles, no sides of the body, only front and back.
Busy picture almost too much to describe. Yes, too much.
Look inside the open door where the men are congregating, entering. There’s a window inside and on the window sill is what looks like a shoebox standing upright and it has two lit-up eyes. It’s not a shoe box. It’s an alien from Planet Qalfri and it’s receiving information from the men who have been scouting out this blighted urban landscape and bringing in, in that large wheelbarrow, more boxes that are not really boxes but the corpses of earlier visitors from Planet Qalfri who came here hundreds of years ago hoping to make friends with the humans but instead found that all humanity was a mixed bag of nuts. And don’t these men know it, what with the poor city services to their neighborhoods, the underfunded schools, the callous politicians and religious leaders. The men are waiting to be teletransported to Qalfri where in fact the rest of their families already are, where the fruit trees impart eternal youth, vigor and beauty, and hatred, fear and jealousy are completely unknown. Earth could be like this but politics (that is, hatred, fear and jealousy) get in the way and have mired any hope of amelioration in a cement-like muck that is quickly hardening to set stone that will crumble into dust eons from now.
The end !!!
Based on the clothing styles, I suggest this photo was taken back when Jim Crow reigned supreme, and I shiver.