Your brain: use it or lose it!
Special Note: As we head towards the upcoming World Parkinson Congress in Kyoto, Japan, I will try to post as much Japanese artwork as possible.
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!
Motomura no yūdachi
Evening Glow at Motomura [Two Englishmen looking at the sunset]
Artist: Utagawa Yoshitora (Japanese, active ca. 1850–80)
Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
Date: 1st month, 1861
Culture: Japan
Medium: Polychrome woodblock print; ink and color on paper
Dimensions: Image: 14 1/8 x 9 3/4 in. (35.9 x 24.8 cm)
Classification: Prints
The picture shows what I presume to be two Japanese gentlemen with beards and dressed in Western-style clothes in the foreground, and two Japanese women in kimonos in the background. All four are standing at the edge of a building and are looking at things which we can’t see because they’re to the left of the frame. Is the building big or not, I don’t know. It may be just a small shrine. I wonder if when the Japanese started converting from traditional clothes to Western garb, it was the men who did it first…the women continued to wear kimono for a long time.
I have a lot of questions as I study this picture. First, are we sure the two men are Japanese in Western dress? They have enormous noses and round eyes and a lot of facial hair. (I realize I may be typecasting, but I think the question is still valid.) Second, are the two men related in any way to the two women? Or are they all just visitors to whatever building this is? Third, what is the enormous blue circle in the upper left corner? Fourth, don’t you think the pink cane that the taller man is carrying is a little too short for him? And why is he carrying a cane, anyway? Is that part of this story?
I find it exasperating that all four people in this picture are staring intently at something off to the left that I can’t see. What is this – a study in staring?
I see that the two gentlemen in Western clothes are standing inside the fence surrounding whatever building this is, and the two women are standing outside. Like another person who commented above, I wonder what the big blue ball is up in the upper left corner. Is this sunrise or sunset? I interpret the redness on the horizon as indication that the sun is just below the tree line. Do sunrises and sunsets carry different meanings in a picture such as this?