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.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
Bowser is pausing while scratching his right ear, to notice that the setting sun is roughly the same color as his shoulder. Woof! Gina thinks she is a panda and she’s eating bamboo shoots. Meanwhile the pine tree stands eternal while black soot clouds slowly surround the setting sun. Everyone is going to choke on the soot and everyone, dog and human alike will cough like barking hounds.
what is going on in this picture? Two dogs are in the lower right corner. The one on the right is, as Gaggy wrote, practically the same color as the rising or setting sun on the left side of the picture. It is scratching itself with its hind leg and appears to be looking at the sun. As a human being, I ascribe human mental and emotional processes to animals. In this case I would say that the dog on the right is looking at the moon with a certain knowingness. The dog’s eyes are almond shaped which makes it look like it is slightly squinting at the sun as if contemplating something.
The other dog is white and has more rounded eyes, It is has a bamboo branch in its mouth. Gabby claims the dog is eating the bamboo but we can’t really say that, only that the branch is in its mouth. The white dog is the brightest thing in this picture, along with the white bamboo branch.
Is this picture making a statement? That half of us are concerned merely with daily living tasks like eating (and being so shiningly white, that part of the picture is strongest), and the other half, while scratching ourselves, look to larger issues in the universe – issues that are partially obscured by a black dust cloud?
Very interesting as this is basically a dark picture in two panels. The brightest spot is the white dog in the lower right corner, who is concerned with the white branch it’s tussling with and, it seems, is completely unaware of the darkness, the rising or setting sun, the darkness.
I think people aren’t seeing everything that’s there. I see some – – specifically three – – horizontal lines running through the picture, and the top and bottom edges are curved. This makes me think this is a photo of two sides – – front and backk – – of the same stacked round boxes – – 4 round boxes stacked one on the other – – they’re probably lacquer boxes. You can tell this because if you look at the far right just next to the orange dog’s head you’ll see a branch of the pine tree that exists on the far left.
If I AM right – – that these are four stackable round boxes – – then I find it strange that the orange dog is looking to the left in the picture, because if I’m right, the rising or setting sun is actually much closer to him if he turns his head the other way. So actually he’s looking awa\y from the sun, not directly at it.
I think I’m right about this. No, I’m sure of it.