Home/Symbols/Banded, high-horizon seaBanded, high-horizon sea SymbolismVastness and time; a modern, flattened space that compresses depth and turns nature into tonal fieldsCommon ThemesLoneliness & isolationMimesis vs. abstraction (truth vs. artifice)Medium reflexivity (art about art)Leisure & recreationHuman vs. natureMelancholy & spleenArtworks Featuring This SymbolOn the BeachÉdouard Manet (1873)On the Beach captures a paused interval of modern leisure: two fashionably dressed figures sit on pale sand before a <strong>banded, high-horizon sea</strong>. Manet’s <strong>economical brushwork</strong>, restricted greys and blacks, and radical cropping stage a scene of absorption and wind‑tossed motion that feels both intimate and detached <sup>[1]</sup>.
