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>>JESSICA JONES: We like to reference
a very pivotal painting in visual art history,
that being Picasso's Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon.
I'm wondering how would you go
about describing this painting to somebody who perhaps has
low vision, has lost vision, has a visual reference
in their minds in contrast to how you would describe this
painting to someone who has never had
vision before?
>>OLIVIA SWISHER: When I found
out that question was going to be asked I was kind
of terrified because it's a really complicated painting.
(Laughter.) I was thinking about -- I've seen that painting
many times.
I studied it for years.
I was really thinking about this question.
One of my first associations I made
for myself was that it's a very -- it's a 2D work.
It's a very tactile image.
And in itself it is very multisensory.
You can imagine the smells of this location.
You can imagine these bright pinks, these dark contrasting
lines to create these figures.
And I actually thought more than that I would probably
create a collage in a way as kind of a tactile board
to be able to get the different layers
of that work because there are so many.
And using different surfaces to replicate the experience
in a way.
But I'm really going to be considering it
a lot more because I have never worked
with that painting myself.
But that was the first thing that came
to mind, as a way to create the layers in that space
and get the sense of flatness and dimension that
Picasso is working with and using.
>>MELANIE ADSIT: I actually had
the same reaction as Olivia.
I was wondering if you guys chose that
because that was a painting not in any
of our respective collections.
>> Maybe.
>>MELANIE ADSIT: Again, Danielle and I -- my colleague
at the museum, gave that an awful lot of thought.
The one thing we came up with is that Picasso,
of course, is really breaking all of the elements
of the figures down into shapes.
So thinking that one of the most fundamental ways
to describe anything is a shape.
And we don't usually think of describing
a human form in shapes.
That might be a really good way to access
all of the figures and all of the forms.
With regard to describing that painting
to someone who has never had sight as opposed
to describing it to someone who lost sight,
that actually stymied us a little bit as well
because we really try to make
all of our tours accessible to all of our visitors,
and not modify as much as possible no matter what
your level of vision is.
We were thinking that one difference we might make
is we might make fewer visual references to objects
in the world for people who have never
had sight.
So rather than saying that background looks
like a broken mirror, to really get even more
descriptive and say it looks like -- the background
of a painting looks like a broken mirror
in terms that it has lots of jagged, irregular shapes
and really make it very specific instead of using those kind
of metaphorical connotations.
>>PAMELA LAWTON: I was thinking about the rhythm
of the painting and how it's got -- like people were saying,
sharp -- it had shapes but the shapes are very sharp,
kind of staccato.
To me that painting has a lot of sound.
So I might talk about it in terms of rhythm
and repetition and sharp edges, kind of coming right
next to each other.
I was also thinking -- Rebecca and I were talking
before about how cubism unfolds -- it's time unfolded
in a single frame.
And how I often use woman in an armchair,
a Picasso painting at the Met where she's facing
the front and she's facing the side.
Her eye is upside down.
Just the idea of movement, tracing movement.
We do that -- for example, the drawing
on the lower right here.
There's a drawing on the wall
from our Seeing Through Drawing class that shows
hands in different positions.
It's almost like it shows the hand moving in space.
And how cubist paintings show people moving in space.
I love the simultaneity of Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon
and of cubism.
And I think that whole idea of compressing time
into a frame is exciting.
I also wanted to say that with our audiences,
we often don't know their story.
A person might come to us.
We don't know for how long their vision has
been impaired.
We frequently don't take that into account
because we don't ask unless the person has volunteers
that information.
>>REBECCA MCGINNIS: In that conversation, you find
out more and learn about the person's -- maybe
what they can and can't see, but also what their interests
are; what aspects of that particular painting are
they interested in?
I guess just going off what Pamela was saying
about cubism, I sometimes think of cubism
as in a way similar to touching an object.
A cubist painting shows you not only kind of multiple times,
but multiple perspectives.
And when you touch an object, you're touching it
from multiple sides.
And usually in a painting that's realistically
rendered, you get one side, one viewpoint.
But when you touch, you get multiple viewpoints,
if you like, at once.
So cubist painting to me is sort of like the experience
of touch in painted form.
It's just another perspective.
>>DEBORAH LUTZ: I would also add that if it's
a painting like this where it might be
particularly difficult to describe, I'll ask myself -- we may go so
far as to have people take
positions so you understand where each
of the figures might be in the painting.
And we would also bring along, if we can find them, any kind
of object that might allow them to touch and handle
and experience without warning them.
But that kind of jagged planar aspect that we
find in a painting like that.
We just sort of wrack our brains to seek
out anything tangible that we can add
to the verbal description.
I just wanted to add one thing relating
to materials; I would also say that when
you're describing a painting, you're describing usually paint
on the canvas that is stretched
on a wooden frame.
to add one thing relating to materials.
of a description is important.
So we might have pieces of canvas that are stretched
and unstretched.
We have them available so people can understand
the construction.
We're not looking out a window
at Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon.
We're looking at a piece of canvas with paint on it.
So just to help through handling materials
to understand the physicality of the object as well
as what it's showing.