Flor.Ilegium
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FLOR.ILEGIUM MF A thesis paper Monica Tap April 9, 1996 Introduction It's a curious tendency. If you ask someone to illustrate the concept "a painting," chances are they will rough-in a daisy shape or two, maybe add a vase and then frame it with a rectangle. A flower painting, (historically at the lowest end of the image hierarchy), has somehow become the visual shorthand for all painting. When I entered the MFA program in September 1994, I did not expect that a 300 year old flower painting would become the catalyst for my thesis work. That,however, is exactly what happened. The paintings in my thesis exhibition conclude a year-long investigation of six flower paintings by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist, Rachel Ruysch that began after I saw one of her works in an art history text. Focusing on Ruysch's work and my relationship to it, I was led down a garden path strewn with questions. What is the relationship of the historical work of art to the present day, and how is it relevant? What can be learned from the particular genre of seventeenth century Dutch floral still life? How did an image that once signified mortality end up on so much wallpaper? Who was Ruysch and why isn't her work better known? Can appropriation be employed as a reconstructive as well as deconstructive tool? And, given the most recent post-mortems on painting issued by the avatars of high technology, why choose to paint at all? Painting is hard to describe in words. In my experience, studio production is messy and unpredictable in more than just the material sense. I think of what I do as a kind of "pure research," that is, exploration unfettered by a fixed destination. Jasper Johns once said, "Sometimes I see it and then I paint it. Other times, I paint it and then I see it." This is the best description of painting I've ever found. Not only did one painting lead to another, but what I was learning about Dutch still life painting also found its way into the work. Studio visits and group discussions, as well as trips to Amsterdam and New York, are part of the mix of painting, history, looking and questioning that led to the finished paintings. To keep things clear ( clearer than they were while making the work) I have divided this paper into three sections. First, an introduction to Ruysch and her historical context; second, a description of my own production in response to her work; and third, some thoughts on rummaging about in the past as a legitimate task for contemporary painting. 2 Rachel Rusych and the Baroque flower piece 11••• the life of man is nothing other than the flower of the field which quickly jades,, z Rachel Ruysch, in spite of her renown in the 17th and 18th centuries, has largely fad~d from memory. She was born in Amsterdam in 1664, daughter of a professor of anatomy and botany. She apprenticed to the celebrated flower painter, Willem van Aeslt ( 1627-82), and by the age of nineteen was already very accomplished. In 1693 she married the portrait painter, Juriaen Pool, with whom she entered the Guild in the Hague in 1701. From 1708 to 1716 she was Court Painter to Elector Johann Willem van de Palts in Dusseldorf. Her achievement as a painter is all the more remarkable when one considers that she also bore and raised ten children. 2 For the first twenty five years of her career, Ruysch worked within the accepted conventions of the 17th-century flower piece. Her exceptional technical skills, however, distinguished her from other painters. By exploiting the rules of composition, colour theory and perspective she created pictures that were not only realistic, but also powerfully theatrical. Dramatic lighting signified life and death oppositions, insects alluded to the fugitive nature of this world, and wilted flowers and decaying fruit emphasized mortality. Her early pictures were loaded with allegorical significance. After 1710 her work changed from the dark backgrounds of the 17th-Century idiom to a flatter, more decorative style. Together with her contemporary Jan van Huysum, Ruysch was responsible for authoring this, the last significant innovation in the genre of the floral still life. Their new pictures were brighter in both hue and value, their compositions more formal than symbolic. The shallow space and layout of these paintings broke with the tradition that favored the portrayal of three dimensional space above all else. Illusionism was at the heart of Dutch still life painting. Seventeenth-century Dutch art theory stated that the aim of art was to deceive the eye and produce a convincing illusion of reality. Paul Taylor states in his book, Dutch Flower Painting, "One of the great insights of seventeenth-century Dutch art was that accurate description did not make for convincing illusion, that in order to translate from three dimensions to two, reality had to be transposed by a set of artificial rules."3 "[T]he painters Isweert, Emmanuel. Florilegiu111, (I6I2). quoted in Paul Taylor, Dutch Flower Painting, 1600-1720. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995, p.43 Sweert's Florilegiu111 was a floral sales catalogue that contained both detailed engravings of his floral wares and biblical quotes that referred to flowers. One wonders if he saw no contradiction in advertising expensive goods by referring to. the futility of earthly wealth. 2 Soth,by's Old Master Paintings. (catalogue) London, Wednesday 6th July, I994. p.52 3Taylor,. p.188 3 never saw the bouquets they painted, since the bouquets never existed." 4 Books like Gerhard de Lairesse's Groot Schilderboek (Big Book of Painting) contained specific instructions to assist the painter to fool her audience. Such theory was more than merely practical; it was crucial for a genre concerned with the careful "rendering" of a non-existent still life. For flower painters, the situation was anything but a bed of roses. To begin with, flowers were outrageously expensive in the Golden Age. At the height of the speculative frenzy of Tulipomania, paintings of flowers were cheaper than the flowers themselves. 5 In addition, flowers wilted and faded faster than the artists could paint them. Furthermore, as arrangements almost always included flowers that bloomed in different seasons, it was impossible to work from a complete bouquet. Consequently, the realism of the finished picture owed more to the study of composition and colour than it did to direct observational painting. By consulting books of botanical engravings, 6 copying other paintings and drawing inexpensive plants in season, flower painters created hyper-realistic pictures that were a triumph of trickery. Hidden within this painterly realism was a rich allegorical language. From the human skull in a vanitas picture to the wilting flowers, rotting fruit and buzzing insects of the flower piece, all were emblematic of the impermanence of life and worldly fortune. 'Just as flowers wither, so do the hopes of all those who wish to rise through society without the blessing of the lord."7 Psalm 103, verse 15 conveyed a specific moral message: "Beauty, riches, pomp, joy, art and the fame of majesty, indeed all things that are worldly, pass like a flower." The moral content of the Baroque flower piece was based on the allegorical reading of the cycle of bud into blossom, of ripeness to decay. Seventeenth-century allegorists viewed.history as a "process of relentless disintegration."8 This is hardly surprising given the political unrest which marked that century. Holland was in a peculiar situation, however, as a prosperous and relatively stable country. Simon Schama in his book, The Embarrassment of Riches, describes the quandary faced by the Dutch: how to reconcile earthly wealth with moral righteousness. Flower painters took advantage of this dilemma. Artists began to create 4 ibid. p.I95 5 A single bulb was once sold for fl.I3,000 --more than the price of a farm .. Live flower arrangements were not a common feature in Dutch homes due to both the high price of flowers and the sca~city of land on which to cultivate them. Far from the commonplace it is today, for the Dutch person in the Golden age , a vase of flowers could be an object "with an allure of heady luxury and faintly delicious wickedness." Taylor, p.38 6The Florilegiu111 Novum (I6I2)by Nicolas de Bry, for example, contains I I2 hand coloured engravings of various flowers, each depicted from several different angles. I examined this wonderful old book at the Rijksbibliotheek in Amsterdam this winter. Florilegium means "book of flowers." 7Taylor, p.I4 8Buck-Morss, Susan. Th, Dialectics ef Seeing. Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. Cambridge MA and London UK: MIT Press, I989.p.I6I 4 easel-sized pictures for the wealthy merchant class when religious commissions evaporated in the wake of the Reformation. The floral still life was well suited to this new market. It conveniently embodied notions of morality and piety in a beautiful, and desirable, picture of an extravagant bouquet If the paintings were extravagant, so was their symbolism. Flowers became overloaded with meanings. The rose, for example, symbolized the Virgin Mary, who was associated with the rosary, while its thorns recalled the passion of Christ. The rose also spoke of voluptuousness and earthly love, an association of pain with pleasure (the thorns, again) and, more soberly, the transience of life. It metaphorically described a lover's complexion, mouth, or breast. Simultaneously, a flower could be a token of affection and reminder of mortality, a symbol of opulence and caution against excess, an emblem of purity and a sign of immodesty.