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!
Unusual, I think.
Four women are sort of lounging in the shade of a roofed-over porch. Three seem to be clearly lounging, one looks like she is ironing. Is she relaxed as she does this? My mom and aunts always said that ironing was a relaxing chore.
A fifth woman is doing something off in the distance, although she is still in the shade of the porch roof. She has her back to us so I don’t know what she is doing. She seems to be sitting on a gray lump of blanket or something, and there’s something to her right that I can’t figure out. I assume she’s a woman because of her pony tail, although she is wearing what looks like a man’s hat.
I say this painting is unusual because the woman closest to us, who I’d say is the main figure in the painting, has her back to us. And when I stare at her it is her rump that stands out the most. It is bulbous and a vivid dark blue with striking white designs on it. Most of the other colors in the painting are a bit dulled in comparison. Even the woman on the left, who is wearing a dark blue skirt, too; even her skirt seems dull compared to the woman in the foreground.
I’d say this must be in the tropics, maybe a Pacific island nation like Tahiti. The five people seem to be in the shade out of the hot sun, and yet they are wearing so much clothing: long sleeves, long dresses, high necked blouses. Maybe it’s someplace lovely and fresh where the sun is strong when it hits you directly, but the air is not humid and when you are out of the sun you don’t feel like you’re baking in an oven.
Right now in the United States much of the country is having an incredible heat wave. Even if you are sitting in the shade, it still feels uncomfortable, like a pizza oven or a sauna.
The picture is strange to me because the main figure has her back to us, and everyone else seems to be off in their own private world. The artist does not exist.
I see pink floorboards. The woman in the foreground who has her back to us seems to have a huge foot. The picture “leans” to the right, where all the people are in the shade. Everything seems “contained ” in the shade and leaning rightward. I feel the picture is missing something important: a pitcher of some kind of drink. Glasses or cups all around.
yES , SOME ICE TEA WOULD BE PERFECTO !!! rIGHT ABOUT NOW !!
I think this is a famous painting but it has amateurish qualities about it. The colors are right out of a box of Crayola crayons. The main woman’s hand and foot seem amateurly drawn. The composition seems lopsided, with everythihg scrunched over to the right. The floorboards are pink and so is the sandy area in the sunshine to the left. It’s like what a high school or college student would create while taking a hallucenogenic drug.
That looks like a bowling ball bag on the floor next to the woman in front.
If it doesn’t contain a bowling ball, I wonder what is actually in it.