Still Life
Ben Nicholson
Description
March 28, 2009
Ben Nicholson used his painting as a vehicle to bring the most advanced developments in modern art from Paris to his native England. In the 1920s his work engaged with Cubism’s new understanding of how people see the world and Post-Impressionists’ focus on the expressive function of color. In the 1930s Nicholson adopted the mathematical precision, clean lines, and absence of ornament that distinguished the style of geometric abstraction. This still life from 1945 synthesizes these various lessons into a style all his own. The overlapping of objects in space has been translated into a complex configuration of flat planes. The arc of a teacup’s saucer and apostrophe-shaped handles “punctuate” the rectilinear composition. Color is not associated with things but stands alone as pure color. This delight in formal invention over accuracy of description is a hallmark of the modernist tradition of painting.
Subject Matter:
A Cubist still life, depicting a bottle and drinking cups. The perspective is mildly fragmented and, through the use of the blocks of color as well as the blocky objects, the space is flattened into discrete planes.
Physical Description:
An angular bottle executed in two tones of white stands tall just to the (viewer's) right of center. To its left is a stack of gray drinking cups. Irregular blocks of various sizes and colors make up the rest of the field.
Usage Rights:
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