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!
I see a woman with slicked-back black hair parted in the middle. She is sitting with her right shoulder closer to the camera, and her left hand held up behind her jaw. A big beam of sun is shining brightly on her, although most of the picture is dark. And most of the sunlight is on the wall or sheet behind her. She is wearing a dark dress with many buttons up the front. Her right eye is completely in shadow.
This is an unusual photo for me. Because it’s brownish, not black and white. And because the sunlight is glaring so much.
iIS THIS A DAGUERREOTYPE? ssSEEM S KIND A OLD FASHION THAT WAY !!!
The darkest parts of the photo are her hair and the back of the chair that she’s leaning against.
Mysterious photo !!!
I wonder if she feels hot, because she is sitting in bright sun and wearing heavy, long-sleeved dress. The sun seems intense, like in summer, not weak and tepid as in winter. This is just a guess on my part.
This is the brown cow in the foreground of last week’s painting depicting the brutal massacre of a bovine herd. Bessie escaped the slaughter by transforming herself into a human who hides in a crevice that the afternoon sun penetrates, she has a sleek smile on her face as she contemplates how she will avenge the deaths of her sisters, and boy, ,will she make us pay.
The patch of sunlight on the curtain behind her, kind of a trapezoid shape, is mirrored in the patch of sunlight on her dress.
I applaud Paulette for always coming up with something original and twisted to say about all these works of art. Wow! Just wow !!!
It’s hard to tell if she’s smiling or smirking, or if she’s just squinting in the strong sunlight.
Furthermore her face is either shining brightly or in complete shadow. There’s almost no middle ground there.
Additionally, despite the tight confines of the main part of her dress, the sleeves appear to be bell sleeves, in other words, loose at the wrists. I always find bell sleeves a difficult choice if you have to do housework, for example dusting or washing dishes or cooking on the stove top, because they get in the way. They get singed if you have a gas burner, and they droop into a dishpan if you are washing dishes in a plastic washing bin filled with water. And if you’re dusting furniture they drag along the furniture and pick up dust themelves. I find them stupid, I guess is what I’m saying.
The who0le outfit appears exasperating! And maybe she also feels that way sitting in the bright sun and squinting.