Dogbowl

After seeing the Jeff Wall exhibit at the AIC I found myself standing in front of this monumental painting by Frans Snyders - Still Life with Dead Game, Fruits and Vegetables in a Market. I marveled at the complexity and modernity of this image. It seemed familiar to me.

Indeed I had seen something similar, maybe an hour earlier. Jeff Wall’s exhibit was filled with imagery like this. Sprawling narratives in a single image. I was invited to walk up close to see the details; then drift further back to take in the whole scene. Small tableaux in the image repay an inquisitive eye. Standing in front of the Jeff Wall photograph The Destroyed Room 1978 provided me the same rewards.

The two images have a similar size, similar color palette and a similar structure with both works sweeping the eye of the viewer to the top left of the image. I don’t think that Wall had this particular image in mind when his photograph was created even as I’m sure that Frans Snyders was not prescient in the construction of his, but it is fascinating to me how the two different mediums can create the same sense of wonderment.

As a few examples of the synchronicity in these two images you can see the position of the door and the receeding alleyway; the window and the coppery collander; the diagonal of the deer and of the slashed mattress. If only there were a thief in Wall’s image then the match would be complete. Of equal interest are the professional descriptions of the works. I don’t have the same depth of knowledge of art history, so I rely on what I see rather than what I know. Still, I enjoyed these two works even more through the comparison.