Scholars Mind

Art of the Waiting World

We also pass through shared liminal spaces in the real world: train stations (and trains!), airports, elevators. Consider the following works, then discuss with your team: in what sense does each of them depict a liminal setting?

Every work — at a glance

  • Rain, Steam, and Speed — J.M.W. Turner (painting)

    Turner's 1844 canvas of a Great Western Railway train crossing a bridge through a storm, everything solid dissolving into gold and grey except the black nose of the engine. A hare runs ahead on the track, easily missed. Liminal as pure motion: nobody in it has arrived or departed, they are simply mid-passage.

+ 6 more works explained inside

What to know

  1. 01
    In what sense is each of these a liminal setting? Set side by side they split two ways. Rain, Steam, and Speed and Gare Saint-Lazare give liminality as motion — Turner dissolves a train into weather, Monet paints the steam instead of the station — while Frith's platform and McCurry's Agra give it as suspension, a crowd held still between trains. The Yilan song and the Whitney elevators do both at once: you are moving, and you cannot see out.

+ 1 more insight inside

Across subjects

Before the railway, every English town kept its own noon by the sun, and Bristol ran about ten minutes behind London. A timetable cannot survive that, so in

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

These artists found beauty in the places we hurry through, across two centuries and three continents. Are they celebrating the in-between or mourning it? Turner's train is thrilling and frightening in the same brushstroke, and Monet's steam is beautiful because it is busy erasing the station behind it.

Practice — a sample

ARTWhy did Monet choose to paint the Gare Saint-Lazare about a dozen times?

  • A To catch the light
  • B To sell paintings
  • C To please the railway
  • D To record the station
  • E To copy Turner

Sign in to answer and see why each option is right or wrong.

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