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!). 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. So, 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!
Oedipus and the Sphinx
Artist: Gustave Moreau (French, Paris 1826–1898 Paris)
Date: 1864
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 81 1/4 x 41 1/4 in. (206.4 x 104.8 cm)
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 800
Moreau, at mid-career, made his mark with this painting at the Salon of 1864. It represents the Greek hero Oedipus confronting the Sphinx outside Thebes: he must solve her riddle to save his life and those of the besieged Thebans. Remains of victims who failed the test appear at bottom right. Moreau’s mythological theme and archaizing style reflect his admiration for Ingres’s 1808 version of the same subject and for the work of the early Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna. In emulating these exemplars, Moreau diverged from the Realist sensibilities shaping French art in the 1860s.
More from Wikipedia:
The painting depicts Oedipus meeting the Sphinx at the crossroads on his journey between Thebes and Delphi. Oedipus must answer the Sphinx’s riddle correctly in order to pass. Failure means his own death and that of the besieged Thebans. The riddle was: “What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?” Oedipus answered: “Man: as an infant, he crawls on all fours; as an adult, he walks on two legs and; in old age, he uses a walking stick”. Oedipus was the first to answer the riddle correctly and, having heard Oedipus’ answer, the Sphinx was astounded and inexplicably killed herself by throwing herself into the sea. Oedipus thereby won the freedom of the Thebans, the kingdom of that city and a wife Jocasta, who it was later revealed was his mother.
Is there sunlight in this picture? the clouds are a shadowy gray and the figures seem to be producing their own light, including whoever is climbing out of the crevice at the bottom of the picture.
I don’t know what myth this is supposed to represent. If it’s supposed to represent a myth at all. The images are hyper-realistic and I agree with the previous comment that the man, the gryphon (if that’s what it is) and the body climbing out of the ditch all seem to exude light on their own.
I also see that the gryphon’s wings are grey like the clouds. That seems significant.
I would really like to know the story that this picture represents. Hope you can find it !!!
I agree that the half woman/half beast’s wings match the gray clouds, and so does her tiara. She is looking so intently into the eyes of the man – and he’s looking just as intently into hers. The look in her face is one of surprise. The look in his face seems to be disdain or condescending bemused interest.
Everything seems to be building up to the heights on the right side of the painting. The walls of the canyon are higher on the right than on the left. The man is taller than the half woman/half beast. The staff he is holding builds up at an angle to the right. And then you have that post or that white pole doing the same.
Even the body climbing out of the hole in the ground is higher on the right (the toes of the foot) than on the left (the fingers of the hand). The viewer’s eyes are pushed and squished up against the right side of the painting.
And if you enlarge the painting, you’ll see three birds flying in the canyon. The bird on the right is flying the highest.
Weird , just weird.