Your wonderful crunchy, tangy, sweet, sour, red and green are all ready for the holidays. All of them are so great. I sure would hate to be choosing. Happy Christmas Julian and Ruth.
This work really deserves ten pages of study. I just want to say for instance that the scarring on the apple at the back right vertically echoes Julian signature: the symbolic feature of just that detail deserves one page of analysis.
All Julian is in this shimmering work of apples like Christmas baubles....
I love the variety of colors you used in this group - "what an eye." Alain was also very perceptive about the scarring on the the apple and your signature.
Dear Alain,I agree "the apples" needs ten pages of study. I would love to read an in depth analysis. From a French perspective, hint! Why, because I feel rightly or wrongly,that there exists a special appreciation of colour, form etc. in art that is unique to French culture.
Anna.
Dear Anna, the act of writing requires so many qualities that I prefer to paint. Now about the appreciation of colours, forms etc, there is not a French cultural specificity. My way to comment pictures began when at the Louvre museum, I saw for the first time the biggest paintings ("Weddings at Cana" by Veronese, "The wedding banquet" by Jan Breughel the Elder for instance or Rubens works and so on), and suddenly I said to myself: " O My God how is it possible to paint all these details, shapes, tones, hues... How is it possible to possess all that sense of anatomical relationships, to master the whole coherence of light in a same painting, so big, so wide!" At this moment, I began to put under the microscope each painting I looked at: a kind of artistic dysmorphophobia that unfortunately ruins my own pictorial process! Because I am never happy with the results!
Do you realize, Anna, how difficult it must be to draw and paint twenty figures together in a same big painting! Look at for instance Franz Hals paintings of life size group scenes: it is uncredible; but even more incredible when you look at them for real!
Thanks for the response Alain, on the whole I share your sentiments. I don't like to generalise, only I still like to cling to the notion that the French have as special flair for artistic expression! At least in "modern times". The reason could be that I was spoon fed impressionism and other modern "isms" by an art loving mother! Who suffered with Soutine, would have mothered Utrillo and cooked Van Gogh a hearty hot meal!
Of course you are correct about the old masters and their monumental achievements! That is precisely why, for some time, I was uncertain about modern painting, I have since become as the English saying goes, more catholic in my tastes! More inclusive.
By the way, have you come across the blog Venetian Red? For your reading pleasure.
Merry Christmas to you and yours. Anna.
In other words, there is room for all.
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