the Blue Vase
[Oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm (24 x 19 5/8 in), Musee d'Orsay, Paris]
A new type of still life, of the mid-eighties, with luminous high-keyed colors
throughout, in the background as in the objects.
The relations of intensities and pure hues come to the fore.
In spite of the greater brightness, the small differences count for more
in the harmony and expression of the whole.
The sensitiveness is a marvel; to reproduce it perfectly is impossible.
Together with the richness of hues goes an incredibly refined gradation
of tones.
The blue dominant, which is more than a local color - it is a prevailing mood -
has a different quality in the vase, the wall, the platter, and the smaller units;
observe the flowers and the blue touches on the table, which are contrasted
with warmer neutral tones.
The blue is an exhalation upward and into depth.
The rich green is concentrated in space, the reds, yellows, and whites are
in smaller scattered bits, the blue is diffused over a large area.
The greys and neutralized tints are toned with yellow or blue in exquisite
intervals.
The arrangement is no less interesting than the color and just as refined.
It is formal, very deliberate looking, through the dominant theme of the vase,
set in the middle between verticals; and through the calculated, naively stiff
alignment of objects beside and behind the vase, as if in prescribed rows,
parallel and frontal, like pieces on a chess board.
But against this apparent rigidity plays the expansive lyrical movement
of the bouquet, with its shapeless spots, reaching out to the limits of the
space (yet the red, green, white, and blue spots maintain in their positions
the perpendicular scaffolding of the whole).
The formality is challenged, too, by the strong diagonal behind the vase,
so sensitively broken near the vase's edge, and by the details of execution
- they are amazingly free, like the details of a distant landscape, yet are so
near that one object - the bottle - is cut by the frame.
The fine scalloping of the edge of the plate is a pure painting variation in
contrast to the smooth strong curve of the vase's shoulder, but seems
inspired by the wavy mouth of the same vase.
The many tiltings and discontinuities soften the severity of the architecture
of the whole.
In the fruit, the outlines lie partly outside the object.
Such disengaged strokes deny the substance of things and make us more
aware of the artist at work - a wonderfully delicate, scrutinizing, weighing,
balancing, eye and
hand.[by Meyer Schapiro]
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