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!
Silent Dawn
Artist: Walter Launt Palmer (American, Albany, New York 1854–1932 Albany, New York)
Date: by 1919
Medium: Oil on canvas
You ask “what is going on in this picture.” Everything looks frozen and still. The brook looks solid, like it’s frozen, too. Maybe the water is moving under the ice but I don’t see any ripples on the surface that would indicate movement. Although maybe this is more of a swamp and the water, even in summer, is not actually moving anywhere.
There is light in the painting, of course. Light is movement. And really now that I think of it the “movement” in this picture is actually the light emanating out from my computer screen and striking my retinas at a speed so fast you couldn’t really measure it.
Frozen. Just like much of the USA right now.
The left side of the painting is both heavy and dark. The right side is light, in both senses of the word. The water reminds me of the Jack London short story, “To Build a Fire.” Which harrowed me in high school and makes me shudder to this day.
I wonder if most people feel fear when gazing at this painting, or contentment ?