I discovered this piece, (originally “A Study of Two White Lilies” by french artist Antione Berjon (1754-1843)) while sifting through the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of public domain drawings. The technicolor grid, placed posthumously beside the image – likely to help “white balance” the archival photograph – caught my eye as an interesting juxtaposition: the gentleness of the artist’s rendering next to the harsh vibrancy of the geometric blocks. Nature next to technology, old next to new, seen next to unseen. Though the color grid has nothing to do with the actual artwork, I’ve found it, surprisingly, adding to my experience of the piece. In that spirit, I’ve taken the original image and modified it slightly, enlarging the grid and balancing out the composition, so that the disparate parts might exist more harmoniously.
