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!
Cape Horn near Celilo
Artist: Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829–1916)
Date: 1867
Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions: Image: 40 x 52.4cm (15 3/4 x 20 5/8in.)
Classification: Photographs
When Watkins traveled up the Columbia River, he photographed both the natural and manmade landmarks-the rocky outcrops and cascades, and the small towns, mills, and docks along the way. His path followed that of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, and as he photographed not only the company’s route but also its facilities, he may have been working either on commission or with a speculative eye for the company’s business. One hundred miles upstream from Portland, Celilo was the farthest reach of Watkins’ travels during the four-month excursion. It would be easy to surmise that the centrality of the rails in this photograph is evidence of Watkins’ business agenda. But in the absence of confirming data, one might instead interpret the picture as a visual metaphor for Manifest Destiny, the belief that the United States was destined to span the continent with its sovereignty. The artful balance Watkins achieves between nature and man’s incursion into nature-between the valley etched in the land by the river and the railroad laid down alongside it-suggests that whether he saw Cape Horn as a commercial opportunity or as a symbolic representation of a national doctrine, he also recognized it as a providential place of aesthetic and moral harmony that provided the opportunity for a pictorial expression of a perfect state of grace.
This looks like a backdrop for a scene from a Road Runner cartoon.
This reminds me of primary school art class, where we learned how to draw parallel lines, like train tracks, that met at a single point on the horizon.
This photo leaves me speechless. It is so barren and so severe, expecially in black and white.
I printed this out for my grandson and he went to town with markers and pens. The big cliff on the right now looks like a slice of chocolate cake. And the streamlet on the left is yellow, looking like ….. well, I’ll let you decide!