Harry Brorby's The Operation may well be a depiction of medical experimentation on a human being, or torture in the guise of medicine. But we can also interpret this image as a visual representation of emotional or dream states. Maybe this is nothing other than a conventional operation that the patient is experiencing as a nightmare. Apart from a general fear of doctors that the patient may have, what do we see the human agents (the patient and the doctors) doing in this scene that might explain why this medical procedure has spiraled into a personal hell for the patient?

  

Harry Brorby
The Operation
lithograph on paper
22 1/16 x 30 1/8 in. (55.9 x 76.5 cm)
Museum Purchase

1) Let's first talk about what we see. Describe the image together.

2) What visual information do you get from the artwork that you can interpret in multiple ways at the same time? 

3) Look at the people's eyes. Many are meeting our gaze. With which figures do we feel a kind of connection?

4) With whom is the patient communicating? What are they communicating? Are there multiple emotional states we can read in their face?

5) What are the doctors doing? How are they feeling? How are they presenting themselves to the viewer?

6) What sort of understanding or empathy do the doctors portray for the patient?

7) If this is just a normal operation, who is seeing at as a nightmare? Why? 

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Another work of art in which we can find a powerful visual and emotional dynamic produced by multi-perspectival ambiguity is Baltasar Lobo's Maternidad. 

  

Baltasar Lobo
Maternidad
lithograph on paper
13 1/8 in x 19 7/8 in (33.3 cm x 50.5 cm);22 1/16 in x 28 1/16 in (56.04 cm x 71.28 cm);15 1/16 in x 22 3/8 in (38.2 cm x 56.8 cm);12 13/16 in x 19 7/8 in (32.5 cm x 50.48 cm)
Museum Purchase

Is the child scrambling wildly to get free and reach the bird, or is it being swept up in a dangerous wind? Is the mother carefully assisting the child to reach up to the bird, or is she grasping to hold on to a child that has suddenly escaped her?

What does the visual ambiguity about these mother-child interrelations enable this image to say about maternity?