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 in the picture?
- What does it make you think of?
- What observations can you make?
Note: To examine the picture in full size, click on the image.
These ladies don’t seem to be paying attention to the rising sun, even though the url aaddress says they are worshiping it. They’re more wrapped up in themselves and their toes!
Thank you for this picture of the Japanese ladies having fun at the beach! I love their kimonos and wonder if they’ll be really heavy if they get wet in the surf. And is it cold at dawn?
You have a horizontal line off in the distance – the horizon itself. And then you have the rollercoaster ride of the ladies’ heads. From left to right you have four heads angling downwards (Heads 1, 2, 3, 4), then a mountainous bump (Heads 5, 6, 7) then a downward slant again (Heads 8 and 9). Three heads are looking to the right (Heads 1, 5 and 7) and the other heads are facing to the left. The bodies are all in a line, not bunched up, so the composition looks staged, or posed, like that stagy composition of the boy sleeping besides a herd of cows, the cows all arranged “just so”. (That was another Thursday throwback painting from the summer).
These Japanese women have such tiny feet. It must be beautiful in that culture for a woman to have delicate feet. (Not in mine.)
Their flowing robes, the lines of their flowing robes, seem in concert with the flowing lines of the water and waves.
That looks like a triptych as it’s made of three panels of paper. Each panel has three people. In the left panel the three women ‘s heads go down; in the middle panel the three heads slope up; in the right panel the three heads slope down again. Each panel is distinct and separate from the others. However there is that rope thing stretched between the two upright rocks. The rope is the only thing that stretches from one of the panels to another.
These woman better watch out. That’s not the sun rising over the water but the radioactive egg of a new Mothra. Its red hot and about to hatch. Everyone thinks they’re safe because they have that silly rope net between the two sentinel rocks that symbolicly wards off dangers, but in fact those rocks are homing devices for monsters from the deep and as soon as Mothra #2 hatches they’ll be sorry. Meanwhile the women are navel gazing at their toes-in-the-waters and tittering and gossiping about hottie samurai’s and they don’t know that when the monsters’ egg shell breaks it will create a tsunami of epic proportions. Even the artist who’s painting the scene from a “secure ” spot on the sandy beach will be subsumed and consumed by the icky monster. Its’ all horrible. Horrible. Watch out !!!!!
I’ve never been to Japan,, or any country in Asia. When I look at this picture I think it would be fun to go. These geisha ladies seem to be having a silly go at things as they frolick at the waters’ edge. As the sun is coming up, maybe that means they’ve been out all night, perhaps they were entertaining men, and now they are taking a lackadaisical walk on the beach, just being silly.
Is that a really old painting? It looks faded. I always thought Japanese kimono were bright and vivid.
I agree with the other comments that the curling waves are reflected in the swirling kimono folds and the falling/rising line of the heads; also the curved slope of the rope in the background. And the mounds of rounded hills on the far right.
On the other hand,you have the straight line of the horizon corresponding with the straight chopstick – like objects in the women’s hair. Except none of those sticks are exactly horizaontal themselves. They all are angle every which way.
It makes me a little sea sick ( queasy )to study this painting, thanks to what the comments are pointing out to me. !
Those kimono robes look like a lot to wear and to pay attention to, their many layers and their loose folds and their long long sleeves, all of which that the women keep having to hold together. And the bustle like great big sashes or belts that they wear around their waists and are gathered in the back, they look like they could come loose and fall down any minute. They have to spend so much time paying attention to their clothes while they wear them. I think, at least.
In contrast to these many layered folds of robes, the sandals on their feet are the simplest of flipflops. I wonder how much they cost and how long they last.