{"id":8370,"date":"2019-02-08T21:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T21:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=8370"},"modified":"2019-01-29T01:14:21","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T01:14:21","slug":"fruit-and-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=8370","title":{"rendered":"Fruit and flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose, oil on canvas, Francisco de Zurbar\u00e1n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Zurburan\u2019s fascinating, austere Still Life with Citrons, Oranges and a Rose<\/a><\/em> <\/a>hangs directly opposite the entrance of its period room so that it commands your attention as soon as it comes into view at the Norton Simon Museum. When I saw it a few weeks ago during our visit to the museum in Pasadena, I immediately recognized the work from its visit to The Frick a decade ago. What I actually remembered was Peter Schjeldahl\u2019s review<\/a> of the show and his justly ecstatic paean to this particular painting\u2014similar to his raptures over Morandi in another essay. It\u2019s simple, spare, and as perfectly balanced and restful as a Matisse, but also full of mysterious grandeur, in an almost ironic way, since it\u2019s a depiction of the most commonplace things. It’s a surprisingly large painting by traditional still life standards, close to four feet wide, so that the depicted objects are larger than their actual size. The layers of Catholic symbolism\u2014the objects standing both for the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary\u2014has little resonance now and yet the painting\u2019s power and subdued beauty hasn\u2019t diminished. Its simplicity feels as integral as ever, as if it embodies some kind of alternate mathematical axiom\u2014five + seven + three = one. Stripped of its religious symbolism, it continues to shine with its intended spirit, as if Zurburan\u2019s religion was merely a way of climbing a ladder, as an artist, to quotidian serenity not limited to its theological expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ideas have fallen away leaving the perceptual power of the image to keep working on the viewer and marvelously urging the same orientation toward the world as the ecclesiastical one. The lesson has faded, but its wisdom remains: humility, self-abnegation, attention to the abundance of ordinary experience, and gratitude for any glimpse of ordinary goodness and truth and beauty. Both artist and viewer marvel at the generous luxury of the earth\u2019s simple gifts, its fruit and flowers. These subjects still look like offerings on an altar but at the same time seem to be just the opposite: not sacrifices, but gifts going in reverse, from<\/em> a greater to a lesser power\u2014from one who can make a lemon to one who can make a picture of one\u2014offered to whomever stands before them as sustenance for either body or spirit.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, even without all the intellectual trappings that gave Zuburan a pretext for making this painting, they pass along the same monk-like devotional intensity\u2014in the assiduously achieved formal qualities of the painting, the long hours of solitude in the studio\u2014without consideration of his religious justification for painting them.  They stand as an example of how the greatest art embodies a life that spills up over the lip of every meaning and purpose meant to contain it\u2014and meant for it to contain\u2014conveying a quality of attention that operates as a moral and spiritual corrective in and of itself. A great still life conveys psychological qualities that have moral consequences\u2014silence and calm.  The painting stands as one of the supreme justifications for the still life genre\u2014not nearly as congenial and charming as Chardin, but just as magical as the French master\u2019s best. The humblest and most commonplace objects, simply by reflecting light a certain way, seating themselves naturally in their space, bearing the pull of gravity in their own particular ways, can convey the quiddity of life itself, long before the mind has time to go to work breaking down what it sees into what it ostensibly means and, in the process, gets further and further from the actual work\u2014and life\u2014itself. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zurburan\u2019s fascinating, austere Still Life with Citrons, Oranges and a Rose hangs directly opposite the entrance of its period room so that it commands your attention as soon as it comes into view at the Norton Simon Museum. When I saw it a few weeks ago during our visit to the museum in Pasadena, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFruit and flowers - represent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=8370\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fruit and flowers - represent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Zurburan\u2019s fascinating, austere Still Life with Citrons, Oranges and a Rose hangs directly opposite the entrance of its period room so that it commands your attention as soon as it comes into view at the Norton Simon Museum. 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