I saw the picture below about a week ago in the online edition of The New York Times, and was at immediately struck by it visually.
After looking at it a bit further, then and now, it appears to me that the composition seems to be of greater vitality than the scene depicted. In addition, the blocks of color present more descriptively as shapes than as representative of figures, either foreground or background. Even though I can see clearly that there are two figures in the picture, viewed from above, their humanness is trumped by their visuality.
Far from having much interest in the formalisitic in general, what holds me here is the strange way that I am unable to move past the pictorial. I cannot manage to convince myself to believe what I know, and there is something in that which I find both unsettling and beautiful.
Can you see past what you see?
