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!
A Giant Seated in a Landscape, sometimes called ‘The Colossus’
Artist: Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) (Spanish, Fuendetodos 1746–1828 Bordeaux)
Date: by 1818
Medium: Burnished aquatint with scraping and strokes of ‘lavis’ added along the top of the landscape and within the landscape
Dimensions: Plate: 11 3/16 × 8 3/16 in. (28.4 × 20.8 cm)
Classification: Prints
Description
One of Goya’s most striking images, the implicit subject of this work is unclear. A giant seated in a landscape turns his head over his shoulder as if he has been disturbed from thought. Perhaps he had been awaiting the dawning of a new day and turns because the moment has come. The Spanish master produced this print using burnished aquatint to achieve subtle effects of light and dark—an apt technique for depicting a crepuscular atmosphere and conveying the sense of unease that pervades the composition.
It is not known exactly when Goya made this print. It has been dated to around 1800 or ‘by 1818′. There is a close relationship between the print and the famous painting of the ‘Colossus’ in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Both works show the same figure. The painting has always been attributed to Goya, but in 2008 it was assigned by the Prado Museum as a studio work and not by the master himself. There is no consensus and disagreement continues. The print is critical in the debate about the authorship of the painting. If the painting is a studio work then the artist borrowed the figure of Colossus from Goya’s print. Given his imagination and originality, it seems highly unlikely that Goya would borrow the figure from someone else’s painting to use in his print.
I’ve seen this before but I forget who the artist is and who the person sitting there is. What confuses me is that I’m not sure if the figure is turning his face up over his right shoulder and looking at the sky above, or if his face is in shadow and looking down in front of him. The more I look at it the more I believe it’s the former.
I’m glad you posted this in the hot summer and not the bitter winter. He can stay out there naked as long as he wants.
I think it’s clear that he’s facing up over his right shoulder, but it’s true that the shadow of his head makes it look like his face is in profile and his nose is pointing to the right.
Stark picture.
The moon is in the upper right corner, and from the way it’s lit, and from the way the light shines on the muscular man’s shoulders, the sun is off screen on the left. But the bottom half of the man’s torso is in shadow – there must be something behind him that we can’t see, and he’s turning his head to look at it. … I can’t figure out if he’s sitting on a log or just a long slab of rock, and I wonder if that’s water at the very bottom of the picture.
Nobody has mentioned the look on his face. To me, it’s a look of anguish. Or surprise.