Artspeaking topic
How did the light and the girl's gaze in Vermeer's 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' earn it the nickname 'the Mona Lisa of the North'?
— Johannes Vermeer, 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' (1665)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- What is the difference between Analytic and Synthetic Cubism? Let's talk about how Picasso and Braque broke objects apart and reassembled them.
- How did Géricault's 'The Raft of the Medusa' turn a real maritime disaster into a political scandal?
- You fall in love with a chorus not the first time you hear it but the third. The brain rewards the familiar as safe. So is beauty discovery, or is it habit? Do we truly choose the things we love?
- How do the swirling sky and curling brushstrokes of Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' reflect the painter's state of mind?
- Tell a story plainly and it is forgotten; tell it in meter and rhyme and it survives for centuries. Homer's epics were passed on from memory before writing existed, because rhythm carries memory. Why does the brain keep the musical phrase and lose the dry fact?