The tub part 3

Where you meet Winnie the Pooh and Madame Pompadour.

first part: derkert.deviantart.com/journal…
second part: derkert.deviantart.com/journal…

What about an open object that fills up space? You can live inside it like a snail in it's shell, decorate it with wallpaper and paintings. Furbish it according to your own design. Or you can shape it like a potter from the outside thus creating a solid three dimensional object that contains an empty space, the within. Which you can fill up with what ever you please! It is the sole purpose of an empty jar. That is at least what Winnie the Pooh tells Eeyore when he gives him an empty honey pot as a birthday present. Winnie is now and then real Zen, but the truth is that the honey loving bear couldn't resist the honey while on his was to  Eeyore's  birthday party. In fact the bear loves his honey so much that he gladly takes a honey bath. (fig. 1.) Space does exist in flat pictures, but only virtually! But perceiving 3-D space is hard to avoid. We naturally "think" in three dimensions, so we "see" space and volumes on the flat surface. We are that stupid - or that clever.

We like rooms, not to small so we feel cramped (like Alice when she drank of the bottle with the label that read: "drink me", or not so big that we can't observe where the room ends. We also like to have room fitted with doors and windows. (fig.2.) A room without doors or window are closed, sealed. One can neither get in our out, if the walls are not transparent which they usually aren't, you can't see either out or in. I've you are inside this room and the lights go out – you are the dark. That would make a very boring picture indeed, just like Malevich's black square.  Figure  3. shows an empty white cube and a compact, or sealed black one. The black cube. Which one would you like to live in? So you want a room that is not sealed, passageways to the outside are badly needed. So open the  ceiling or the front and you got a doll house or a theater. (fig. 2.)You can paint the walls, put in furniture, lamps, and dolls inside it. And make openings like doors, windows and chimneys.

Tubs, buckets or pots are all containers and may be filled with stuff, coal, honey, nails, proverbs or people, anything goes. Often enough water is the chosen element, and if not water at least another liquid matter. Madame Pompadour, official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death, was said to prefer champagne to water when relaxing in her tub. I could not find any paintings of her in the bath, but in figure 4. (panting F. Boucher) you can see her in her extravagant silken dress reading a letter in her boudoir. The only visual connections I could find to the Pompadour tub was two bathroom utensils (fig. 5.) decorated with the very same painting

If a pot is filled with water its content can only be observed from certain angles, or not at all if it has a lid. Closed lids are less satisfactory, they give so little away, but if it accommodate something slightly higher than the receptacle - for example; a furry animal like a rabbit - it's existence can be induced from right up front, by its ears sticking up. (fig. 6.)

This can't be said of the rabbit, neatly cut to pieces, simmering in a stew. If we now see the pot from the very same angle, no ears will be seen above the rim, but hopefully fumes will be leaving the pot in an upward dance so we can induce, especially it the pot is on a stove, that something liquid is boiling, that something is changing form, water to vapor, rabbit to food. Or at least partly so. Lets hope that our dear bear won't drown in his honey. I imagine honey swimming to be very exhausting! Change is not always good, but always interesting.