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.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
Holy moly !!! A lot in this picture ! The focus is on a man standing in a shaft of sunlight and he is holding open a large bag and white poweder – flour probably — is falling into it. But this is such a busy picture !! There are birds – pigeons probably — or maybe doves ??? — flying and perching on a coop in the upper left corner. There are men outside loading full sacks onto a wagon. And a dog seems to be sleeping or maybe gnawing on something in the doorway. A water mill wheel seems to be tuning and I see water splashing and a old fashion pump near the wheel, waiting for some action. Altogether its a busy detailed scene !!
For starters…the sun this time is shining off screen BUT to the right. The rays of light shining through the door give the picture a fresh feeling, such as “am I born again? am I a new man this day?”
The man in the sunlight is holding up a bag, and white ground flour is pouring into it. The bags of ground flour are being loaded onto a wagon, will head off to market, and maybe by dinner time warm bread will be placed upon dinning tables around the region.
I like that the doorway with the man standing in the sunlight shafts is not in the dead center of the art, but off to the right. I like that in the dark the water wheel is turning, splashing, churning. I wonder what the purpose is of the bird house in the upper left – will those birds someday grace the miller’s table top?
I can’t figure out the dog’s expression.
The light in this picture is so important, but so is what’s going on more in the shadows.
I think the artist is making a st atement about the eternal value of flour for making bread, which might be thought of as the source of life. It’s the flour falling into the bag and lit by sunshine which doesn’t seem present any place else except for the brilliant blast of light beaming through the doorway. Its an editorial.
If you take the wall of the building as a plane that is ‘point zero’, then you can make some interesting comparisons about what’s in the picture.
Everything on the left side of the picture is protruding from the wall towards the viewer. So is some of the right side. The bird coop, the water wheel, the verdant vines and shrubs, the dog. These things are close to you as you look at the picture.
All the ‘human’ activity takes place in the background, farther back then the plane that is the building’s wall. The man standing in the sunbeams filling the sack with falling flour. The men outside loading the sacks onto a wagon.
In this sense, human activity is removed from nature. Even the flour, which was once a stalk of wheat (natural) has been changed into a ground powder (not really found in nature) to be consumed by humans.
To get to the humans, you have to pass from the natural world (that which is close to you), through the open door into the world of human industry.
I say, 1. bake some bread with the flour, 2. roast some of those birds, 3. stir fry some of the greens growing by the water, 4. is that a grapevine over the door? peel me a grape, 5. Serve it to me for dinner. Everything.
7:30 p.m.