This week’s word is “Bundle”. Manet’s painting, “A Bunch of Asparagus”, immediately came to mind so I headed to my local produce department for some baby asparagus. To reinforce the theme of “bundle”, I included a second bundle, this one consisting of eleven new yellow pencils. I chose the pencils because they were roughly the same size and shape as the asparagus but lent a complementary color. My hope was that viewers would see the juxtaposition of the pencils and asparagus and immediately see that the commonality was the bundling.

Bundle of pencils with a bundle of asparagus.

I couldn’t resist a little art history joke. The picture below is an homage to Manet’s “L’asperge”. Here’s the story as told by the Musée d’Orsay:

Manet sold Charles Ephrussi “A Bunch of Asparagus” for eight hundred francs. But Ephrussi sent him a thousand francs, and Manet, who was a master of elegance and wit, painted this asparagus and sent it to him with a note saying: “There was one missing from your bunch”.

At today’s crit, I hung a few bundle ideas on the easel, returned to my seat, waited a moment, then said, “there’s one missing from the bunch” and produced this final image.

An homage to Manet’s “L’asperge”.