by AY Jackson? Claude Monet?
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ART OF THE SUITE 3 AREA
AFTER THE BATH ⎔ BAIE ST. PAUL ⎔ CHIEF BEAR PAW ⎔ ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS IN 1774 ⎔ GRADY PAINTINGS ⎔ MONTREAL FROM THE MOUNTAIN ⎔ MYSTERIES ⎔ OXBOROUGH ⎔ STARLIGHT: INDIAN PAPOOSE ⎔ TOUCH OF AUTUMN ⎔ WOOD SECTION LANDSCAPE
APPEARANCE
Seen only once from 92:36-92:41 on the wall outside Danny’s bedroom, while Tony/Danny screams nine REDRUMs.
IDENTITY
This could almost be anyone, but I wanted to make two points:
After pouring through thousands of Canadian snowy house/barn/cabin paintings, I stumbled on Monet’s Houses in the Snow, 1895 (middle image on the right, above), of which there’s a dozen variants, with different sky and snow colours, suggesting he may’ve painted and repainted this scene throughout the day. I included the other two images of the red house (lower right) and haystacks (upper right; also with many variants), to show how Monet (unlike all his contemporaries, who I’ve since poured through), was interested in this general arrangement of two structures in snow, with the larger one on the right, and closer to the viewer. Also, note how in the red box (lower right), the one “red house” bears the exact same proportions as the left structure in the film version. Note how in the Houses in the Snow, 1895 piece (which I’ve cropped a little, for the record), features a background very similar to the piece in the film, with a pinky sky sailing over a bluey, shadowy set of distant hills, and white snow in the foreground. So my feeling right now is, if this isn’t Monet, this might be a reinterpretation of this piece, or of Monet’s general snowy cabins style. If this proves to be the case, the reference to “1895” could have the following significance: there’s a box of Café Vienna that appears throughout the film, which bears a shipping date (Dec 13th, 1977) that happens to coincide with Jack and Hallorann’s death day. Café Vienna was founded in 1895, and in this scene, Tony/Danny is screaming “Redrum!”
In my exhaustive, somewhat futile searches, I’ve only ever found one other series of works that have seemed to reflect the style and content of the piece in the film. AY Jackson’s works depicting Baie-St.-Paul, a city in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, Canada. It’s probably obvious why I can’t let this finding go, despite finding no Baie-St.-Paul piece that resembles this (of the dozens that exist between many artists). We’ve got a “Paul” and a “Charles voice [Charlevoix]” and a “Jackson”. That’s a Grady-Jack-McCartney hat trick, but I just don’t know if it’s right. There would be lots of neat things to point out if we can ever confirm that, but for now, I’ll resist a deeper analysis.
The vast majority of paintings I’ve seen which depict two houses or barns in snow–the left one sideways, the right one face-forwards–the perspective is almost always such that we’re seeing the lefthand barn’s righthand face, as if the artist was too close to the buildings to imagine it from afar, and decided to go with the view from up the channel between buildings. In the Monet and the Jackson, we see the lefthand face of both buildings, as if the artists were painting from further away, and the tighter framing gives the impression of the piece being more telescopic/photographic. Artists who’ve worked with technology is a running subtext of the film, so perhaps that’s why Kubrick selected this specific piece, or had it produced, to mash up these forms and concepts.
MIRRORFORM SIGNIFICANCE
This piece appears while the bashful ranger on the other side says to Wendy, “Is there anything else we can do for you Mrs. Torrance? Over.” Since I see this ranger as an extension of the Snow White subtext, it’s worth noting that this is one of his most bashful-seeming moments, overlaying these snowy cabins.
Next art reference: Irene Reid album cover
MAIN PAGE ⎔ SECTION PAGE ⎔ SITE MAP ⎔ GLOSSARY
OTHER MAIN PAGES FOR SHINING ANALYSIS
THE MIRRORFORM ⎔ THE BEATLES ⎔ THE RUM AND THE RED
BACKGROUND ART ⎔ OVERLOOK PHOTOGRAPHS ⎔ GOLDEN SPIRALS
PHI GRIDS ⎔ PATTERNS ⎔ VIOLENCE AND INDIGENA ⎔ ABSURDITIES
THE STORY ROOM ⎔ ANIMAL SYMBOLS ⎔ THE ANNOTATED SHINING
EYE SCREAM 