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.
Special Update! The New York Times website does this same exercise every Monday with a news photo that is uncaptioned and contains no text (click! also click!). The Times asks viewers the same three questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
However, at the end of the week, the Times posts the background information on the picture. Since one of my own viewers did this with last week’s Throwback Thursday Art (thank you, Randolph!), I’ve decided to do the same. I’ll still post an unlabeled piece of art on Thursday. But return on Sunday (for the Sunny Sundays post!) and you’ll find an update on the artwork here.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
Update: Sunday, October 30, 2016
As promised, here’s the info on the above picture. Thanks to everyone who commented in the space below.
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art Website:
Title of Picture: The Open Door
Artist: William Henry Fox Talbot
Date: before May, 1844
Medium: Salted paper print from paper negative
Among the most widely admired of Talbot’s compositions, The Open Door is a conscious attempt to create a photographic image in accord with the renewed British taste for Dutch genre painting of the seventeenth century. In his commentary in The Pencil of Nature, where this image appeared as plate 6, Talbot wrote, “We have sufficient authority in the Dutch school of art, for taking as subjects of representation scenes of daily and familiar occurrence. A painter’s eye will often be arrested where ordinary people see nothing remarkable.” With this concept in mind, Talbot turned away from the historic buildings of Lacock Abbey and focused instead on the old stone doorframe and simple wooden door of the stable and on the humble broom, harness, and lantern as vehicles for an essay on light and shadow, interior and exterior, form and texture.
From Wikipedia:
William Henry Fox Talbot (11 February 1800 – 17 September 1877) was a British scientist, inventor and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. His work in the 1840s on photomechanical reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure. He was the holder of a controversial patent which affected the early development of commercial photography in Britain. He was also a noted photographer who contributed to the development of photography as an artistic medium. He published The Pencil of Nature (1844–46), which was illustrated with original salted paper prints from his calotype negatives, and made some important early photographs of Oxford, Paris, Reading, and York.
Ha Ha ! It’s Halloween and a witch has her broomstick ready for take off as soon as the night comes. The sun seems high in the sky right now so it’s gonna be a while!
Now that Halloween is over, what do you think the witch will do next? Thanks for writing, Amy.
The sun seems to be almost directly overhead. An old-fashioned broom leans against an open door. A lamp hangs on the wall to the right of the door. Some creepy-looking vines, devoid of leaves but with sharp thorn-like points, work their way up the left side of the door and maybe on the right. ( The vines on the right don’t seem to have thorns. ) What looks scary is the shackle–like object hanging on the door. It looks like a torture device.
As we are approaching Halloween, of course this picture makes me think of witches and evil. But I realize now – why are witches automatically considered evil? Do they automatically do evil things, or are they sources of fear merely because they don’t follow societal norms, especially around religious mythology. Are witches viewed the same in many/most cultures around the world?
Great question about how witches are viewed around the world. Thanks for writing, Chris.
Yes. Look inside the door. If you download UltraSharpImagingFocus you’ll see it’s not a witch but a Grand Wizard waiting for night to fall. And then what? You’ll see it on CNN at 2:43 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, but broadcast only on the island of Far Tortuga. The Grand Wizard is going to hitch a ride on this broomstick, left there before dawn by the witch from next door, and THROW THE ELECTION. UNDER THE BUS. U
Whoa!
What I find curious about this picture is the fact that it looks like nothing is really supporting the broom as it leans against the door frame. Maybe the shadow of the post in the wall indicates that it’s also propping the broom up. But the argument could also be made that the broom is not slipping down and lying on the ground because of magic.
And I agree with the person who said the neck brace thing hanging in the doorway on the upper right looks like an instrument of torture.
Happy Halloween !!!!
Thanks for commenting, Trish!
Leave the door open and butterflies will fly in. They are the original witches
Thanks for the reminder, Phillipe!
Today, Oct 29, 1929, is the day that the New York Stock Market crashed, leading to the G reat Depression. If it happens again we may all revert to making our own broomsticks like this.
Wow, thanks Afua. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen!