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?
- J.M.W. Turner | Rain, Steam, and Speed (1844)
- William Powell Firth | The Railway Station (1862)
- Tsukioka Yoshitoshi | Picture of the Railroad at Takanawa (1871)
- Claude Monet | Gare Saint-Lazare (1877)
- Yilan Folk Song | “Drip, Drip, Drip” (c. 1924)
- Steve McCurry | Train Station, Agra, 1983 (1983)
- Richard Artschwager | Six in Four (2015)
Train stations, platforms, elevators — we share them with strangers for a few minutes, then move on. Artists have long been fascinated by these in-between places. Monet painted the steam and chaos of a Paris station a dozen times; Turner blurred a speeding train into rain and light; a modern sculptor even turned the Whitney's elevators into art you ride. Each captures a world built for passing through.
Key concepts
- The Shared Liminal Space
- Stations, trains, and elevators are public in-betweens we occupy briefly alongside strangers, all en route to somewhere else — liminality made communal.
- Modernity And Motion
- Many of these works arose with the railway age, when trains transformed how people experienced time and space, and artists raced to capture the new feeling of speed and steam.
- Transit Across Cultures
- From a Japanese woodcut to a Taiwanese tunnel song to a photo of an Indian station, the works show the liminal world of travel is global.
- Depicting The In-between
- Each renders transit differently — as blur, crowd, atmosphere, sound, or a space you physically enter — but all show a setting defined by movement and waiting.
What to know
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Each work depicts liminality in its own medium — Turner gives transit as blur, Frith as crowd, Monet as atmosphere, the Yilan song as sound, Artschwager as a space you enter — showing many ways to capture the same in-between feeling.
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