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 embiggen the image, click on it!
Sunlight and Shade.
In the background I see a magnificent flowering plant that’s big, red and round like the top of a huge muffin. And it is in the sunlight.
But I also see three humans who are shade bound. The woman in back is holding a parasol to keep her out of the light. And the woman and man in front are relaxing in the cool shade.
The woman in back is dressed in light blue colors, or may be they’re grey. But the two people in front are dressed in black and gray and white. They have no color and are very dark in general, compared to the colorful background behind them.
Finally, the faces of the two people in front are sombre and sad. Their mood is depressed. Which contrasts with the bright shiny flowers in the background.
I think this painting is very curious and strange to think about, if we’re focusing on sunlight and shadow. The shadow is dominant and drab.
And the bench the woman is sitting on. It’s black and has bars like the windows of a prison.
The picture is really all about sadness overpowering sunlight and color, and it is all in the state of mind of the artist (Monet) and the viewer.
I agree with Chris. The front part of this painting is all gray and colorless and morose. The facial expressions aren’t happy. The bench is made of prison bars. Over the man’s head is a branch of dark leaves, just to make sure you get the idea. Shade. Shadow. Sadness.
In the background you have sunlight. You have color. You have flowers. You have joie de vivre.
Why is the artist emphasizing shadow?
OK, well…this is a very morose picture. I don’t get it.
Hi everyone,
In terms of “quadrants” (which people talked about before), the happy quadrant with the sunshine is the upper left. The other three quadrants are mostly shadow.
And the sun is in the usual position, off to the left of the frame.
Happy Holidays !
Collin
Come on! It’s very clear what’s going on here! The woman on the bench is being forced into an arranged marriage with a man twice her age. He’s leaning over her on the bench and making lascivious throat noises which only remind her that he’s got bad breadth from smoking crappy cigars and drinking tiny shots of whiskey all day from before breakfast until he climbs into bed wearing a nightshirt that’s soiled in more ways and in more places than one. He gave her the bouquet of flowers which she leaves lying on the bench, because face it, they’re dead, they’re decapitated, when in fact her younger sister, who is also her best friend, is off in the sunshine attending the huge bed of flowers that the two of them have grown since they were children, and those flowers are living, growing, breathing things. Her (the woman on the bench) problem is that public opinion states as fact t hat she has a horsey, masculine, ugly face with raccoon eyes, and she has to get married first so that her younger sister can marry the handsome and dashing man of her dreams, a prince, yes a real prince with a straight spine and a sparkling smile and a silver sword. The woman on the bench however has an IQ of 180 and speakes six languages fluently and would have run off to a nunnery except that would have killed her father who has a weak heart and is as sombre as the gray shadows under the tree ever since his wife – their mother – died of a collapsed lung when a rabid horse trampled her ruthlessly in the park.
This picture is a tragedy and a travesty .
You gotta lighten up !!! A Lot of these post s. Are downers !!!? Where’s’ the happy Thanksgiving? Happy Christmas. ? And Donald Trump really ??!?!
It’s funny to see a beautiful work of art by a major artist, Monet, that is so sad.
Too, the right side of the painting is dark, and I can detect a lot of dark arcs shaped like backwards C.
1. The bench is curved like a backwards C.
2. The woman in the dark clothes is hunched over like another backwards C.
3. So is the man, the way his body is curved.
4. So is the dark leafed tree branch overhead curving down around the man’s torso and ending with the shadows on the ground that extend out to the left toward the woman with the parasol.
These arcs are all concave, symbolizing emptiness or maybe containers.
On the contrary, the curving shape of the red flower bed in the sunshine is convex. In other words, the opposite.
The parasol is both concave and convex, which is curious except it reinforces the theme; concavity is dark, shadows, sadness. Convexity is light, warmth, living.
So this is really a painting about death? Really?
Thank you for sharing this curious painting.
I like this! I sure don’t know the relationship among these three persons or why the bouquet of flowers is tossed aside on the bench, but I’m willing to sit down in my favorite coffee house and think it over!
Thank you!!!
The French lead such complex lives. They have a beautiful human-made environment and delicious cuisine, but are saddened by so much drama and despair.