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!
I see a few men climbing up or down this pyramid and I wonder what makes them do so.
Are they workers?
Do they climb for religious reasons?
Are they doing it for fun or sport?
The birds look huge and they are having an easier time rising up to the top.
Well you have the sun shining on the left face of the pyramid, the right face is in shadow.
And similarly you have the moon shining on the left side, but the right side is in shadow.
It appears that two men are in the sun, two men are definitely in the shadow, and one man is straddling light/ shadow.
The birds seem to me in shadow.
The sunlit face of the pyramid also has many small shadows from where the rock bolders jut out. Otherwise I wo0ulkd say that the painting shows more sunshine than shadow.
This is realllly BIG. !!!$$$$
I never realized the blocks they used to build those pyramids were so big !
In desperate search of the grain within!! 😉
I love examining the brush strokes that created the individual blocks, especially the ones at the bottom of the pyramid, when you “embiggen” the picture. They look almost gooey.
The man in the foreground who is climbing up the pyramid has an interesting shadow. It looks like the shadow of a child, sitting on the edge of the stone block and watching the man move.
In general I would have to say that this is an impressive painting because it really makes the viewers feel the height of this structure and the heat of the sun.
Too, the birds flying as kind of shadows on the right add a sense of possible foreboding.
Hi Everybody,
I am reminded of what some people said about earlier THrowback Thursday art, that the default position of the sun in many of these photographs and paintings is off screen and to the left. It’s the same thing, here.
What I find also of interest is that this is on the one hand a very simplistic picture, two sides of a pyramid, blue sky, a few humans and birds. but then I get drawn into a close examination of the blocks that make up the pyramid. I am glad that people point out that you can click on the painting and make it bigger, then click on it again to magnify the details. When I do this with this picture my computer screen becomes an abstract painting of brown geometric shapes.
WIth best greetings for your holiday seasoning,
Collin