Reflections on common's cover art, The Angelus

I'm not going to pretend I'm an art expert or even that I was a big fan of Millet's The Angelus before I needed cover art for common.

I had seen it floating around in some art book before, but I'm certain I dismissed as just another pastoral-looking piece of sentimental bore. At the time I was probably looking for something edgier, jazzy.

This time, for a number of reasons, I think the soil of my mind was tilled just so for me to receive the work. Almost certainly age. With age has come an appreciation of simplicity, an ordered mind, and the contemplation of ordinariness. I'm also a public high school teacher, a profession that sometimes comes with its own chaotic magic, so some days I just want to look at something soothing and quietly profound as a chaser. It's the same reason my new favorite thing to do is sit on my porch and listen to birds.

Another reason this piece speaks to me now (and why it's the landing page art for common) is how it sits at the intersection of labor, human dignity, and spirituality.

From the Musée d’Orsay's (the museum that holds the painting) web description of the piece:

A man and a woman are reciting the Angelus, a prayer which commemorates the annunciation made to Mary by the angel Gabriel. They have stopped digging potatoes and all the tools used for this task – the potato fork, the basket, the sacks and the wheelbarrow – are strewn around them. In 1865, Millet said: "The idea for The Angelus came to me because I remembered that my grandmother, hearing the church bell ringing while we were working in the fields, always made us stop work to say the Angelus prayer for the poor departed". So it was a childhood memory which was behind the painting and not the desire to glorify some religious feeling; besides Millet was not a church-goer. He wanted to catch the immutable rhythms of peasant life in a simple scene. Here he has focused on a short break, a moment of respite.

For me, it's almost beside the point that Millet's intention isn't religious, because it's ritual either way. The image of these two farmers pausing momentarily from their labor in a moment of meditative prayer reminds me of the Cistercian monks at Holy Cross Abbey where I go on retreat every year in June. (This is not unique to Western monasticism by the way). It's the Benedictine way and their motto: Ora et Labora. Prayer and Work. This is a dignified life. Not easy, but dignified.

If the labor is close to your hand and heart, that is.

This is where the other inspiration for using Millet's piece comes in. After looking at many pieces of art for the common landing page, this one felt intuitively--I don't know how to say this any other way--like the most anti-AI/automation to me. The painting is so intensely human. Labor. Nature. Prayer. Relationship. All together, blended, in one image. And of course, it's a human-made work of art.

The Angelus is a quiet defiance.

A lot of my reading lately has been on A.I., histories of the Luddites, and neo-Luddism. I'm a building representative, contract negotiations team member, and delegate to the national AFT convention, with the Baltimore Teachers Union. You could say I'm pretty big on unions and unionism. My current obsession is the intersection of labor dignity, union organizing, A.I. automation, and the concentration of tech power. Here are some recommendations, which you're bound to see discussed in this space a lot: Brian Merchant's invaluable Substack and book Blood in the Machine, Gavin Mueller's book (I'm currently reading) Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Were Right About Why You Hate Your Job, the D.A.I.R. Luddite Lab's Labor Resource Hub, and Cory Doctorow's Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do about It.

Obviously, there are numerous other resources, including a good gaggle of Silicon Valley-critical podcasts.

Since I aim to keep these scribblings of a reasonable length (for you, dear reader, but as a matter of discipline), I won't go on a jag about those topics here. Trust me, you're going to hear about it.

I'll just say this: Millet's piece feels like what opposition to Big Tech feels like for me in this moment. Human. Small. Connected. Spiritual.

What it feels like to you could (should?) be different.