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!
Santa Maria della Salute, Sunset
Artist: William Stanley Haseltine (1835–1900)
Date: 1870–85
Medium: Oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 774
If I had been there at this location at this moment, it would have been one of the highlights of my life.
At first glance this picture is merely a flashy land-and-seascape with the dramatic, almost unbelievable glowing sun behind the main building’s dome, and the equally dramatic sails rising vertically to the left and the right of the main action (the sunset). Then when you enlarge the picture you see humans, many of whom seem to be staring at the sunset along with me. I like Carey’s statement that if he/she had been there, it would have been a highlight of his/her life. It really is spectacular.
I notice that the clouds seem to be encircling the sun, and there is garbage floating in the water in the lower left corner. This makes the painting a combination of the sacred and the profane. Although isn’t it projecting on my/our part if we declare that a magnificent sunset is somehow sacred?
This is the US Capitol building in about 20 years after global warming has raised the sea levels so much that most of the coastline along the East Coast is now underwater. We’ve reverted to sail boats for transportation because it’s impossible to create other forms of fuel.