The Sleeping Spinner, 2004, HTML 549 x 489 pixels

 

 

 

 

 

The Sleeping Spinner, 2004, HTML, 420 x 460 pixels

 

 

 

 

The Sleeping Spinner, 2004, HTML, 380 x 390 pixels

 

The six drawings in this short series, each identically titled The Sleeping Spinner, are all based on some aspect of composition or color in Gustave Courbet's painting, The Sleeping Spinner, 1853. Nothing too mysterious or deeply critical. One could talk about the sexual content of the picture, and the implications of class and labor, and certainly there are plenty of formalist observations to make.

Mostly, I just love the way the blue and white stripes in the shawl are painted, and the way that the red distributed in bits throughout the painting are practially identical: a very Pollock-ian allover compositional strategy. Another allover compositional device are the flower patters in her dress and the chair back, which combine with the flowers behind the spinner in a red/green unifying pattern: our eyes just pull it all together.

I like the way her left arm (on the right) arcs in an echo of the spinning wheel. I especially like her double chin, and the way that the spool of white thread mounted on the spinner just to the left of the little (tin?) water pot is impossibly misaligned with the wheel. She has beautiful hair and hands; her hands seem carefully folded around the hairy staff-like spindle on her lap; her legs are spread open. Her gesture suggests that she is either receiving it or presenting it, which implies a movement of either in out, giving or receiving- openness- which, with the trust conveyed by her closed eyes, creates a sense of intimacy, that one is not only in the room with the spinner, but that one is intimate with the spinner.