Your brain: enjoy it and 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!
Sunrise with Fisherman in Boat, 1795, Year of the Rabbit
Kubo Shunman Japanese
This image of sunrise at the New Year is accompanied by a kyōka (31-syllable witty verse) by the noted poet Sōyōan Hikaru (桑楊庵光) and two of his pupils.
Artist: Kubo Shunman (Japanese, 1757–1820)
Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
Date: 1795, year of the rabbit
Culture: Japan
Medium: Polychrome woodblock print (surimono); ink and color on paper
Dimensions: 5 5/8 x 7 3/8 in. (14.3 x 18.7 cm)
Classification: Prints
The tip of the sun is so big that it makes me think the water that the boat is on is going to bubble and boil. The two fishermen are going to turn red as cooked lobsters.
That’s not the sun coming up over the horizon. It’s a giant egg yolk. The sun’s taking a day off. It’s Sunday.
It’s fascinating to compare the left side of this artwork, with the vertical lines of calligraphy, to the right side, where the picture is. In the lower right corner you have the boat with the two humans, the pine tree that looks like bonzai, the dead branches, and the wavelets that taper off in the distance. Then you have the upper right corner where a series of low-slung island create a horizontal sense, and the monstrosity of the rising sun. All in all it’s both simple and complex. I wish you could have supplied what the calligraphy is all about.
In response to Chris Tempe’s comment, to my eyes the bulk of this painting is in the lower right corner.