AUTUMN

Carter’s latest stop on his ongoing seasonal cycle offers pop-up pumpkins, corn, and other signs of mellow fruitfulness.

As in his Winter (2015) and Spring (2016), each opening presents a small, flat landscape dominated by a central pop-up, with scattered specimens of flora, insects, birds, and other wildlife—with identifying labels for most everything, even clouds—and leading questions below: “Who nibbles the water plants?” “Who hunts from the sky?” The setting is unspecified but has the look of the western United States, with glimpses of bison, California chicory, sockeye salmon, and a ringtail visible in various scenes, and a house visible in the distance that looks North American or European. Persimmons and pomegranates on the final spread broaden the general sense of locale a bit, though, and only early mention of “a chill in the air” pins the narrative to particular latitudes. Barred clouds (“altocumulus”) bloom on a soft dying day before the final observation that “Winter is coming; it’s time to harvest.”

A serene and lovely presentation.