Problem Pictures
The problem picture is a genre of art popular in late Victorian painting characterised by the deliberately ambiguous depiction of a key moment in a narrative that can be interpreted in several different ways, or which portrays an unresolved dilemma. The viewer of the picture is invited to speculate about several different possible explanations of the scene. The genre has much in common with that of book illustration then at its most popular, but with the text belonging to the illustration omitted.
We displayed a series of untitled problem pictures inviting the visitors to write their own titles according to their interpretation of the painting. Claquer Improvisers created human sculptures where the audience could not only create titles but put could ask the characters questions, put words in their mouths, move the picture forward or backwards in time. Actors could also animate the pictures, developing them into short scenes. This genre has much in common with Forum Theatre.
The painting above, "And When did you last see your Father?" by William Frederick Yeams, was one of the most famous example of the genre. It depicts a young boy during the English Civil War being interrogated by Cromwell's troops who are looking for his Royalist father. It is implied that they are asking a trick question designed to discover his location. The painting is poised at the moment the child is about to answer.
The paintings posed morally, as well as narratively, indeterminate "problems," and Edwardian viewers responded enthusiastically, debating possible "solutions" at the Academy exhibition, in letters to the artists, and in newspaper competitions. As viewers invented narratives to explain and solve individual problem pictures, they grappled with the unmapped social terrain of the early twentieth century, in particular the changing roles available for modern women.
We displayed a series of untitled problem pictures inviting the visitors to write their own titles according to their interpretation of the painting. Claquer Improvisers created human sculptures where the audience could not only create titles but put could ask the characters questions, put words in their mouths, move the picture forward or backwards in time. Actors could also animate the pictures, developing them into short scenes. This genre has much in common with Forum Theatre.
The painting above, "And When did you last see your Father?" by William Frederick Yeams, was one of the most famous example of the genre. It depicts a young boy during the English Civil War being interrogated by Cromwell's troops who are looking for his Royalist father. It is implied that they are asking a trick question designed to discover his location. The painting is poised at the moment the child is about to answer.
The paintings posed morally, as well as narratively, indeterminate "problems," and Edwardian viewers responded enthusiastically, debating possible "solutions" at the Academy exhibition, in letters to the artists, and in newspaper competitions. As viewers invented narratives to explain and solve individual problem pictures, they grappled with the unmapped social terrain of the early twentieth century, in particular the changing roles available for modern women.
