Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Experiment Station

Photographs by Sharon Core currently on view at the Phillips

My very first experience in a museum was, as far as I can remember, intimidating. I over-distanced myself from Auguste Rodin’s exquisite bronze sculptures for fear that I would fail to resist the impulse to touch them and get myself into trouble.

I felt a similar impulse when I ran into Sharon Core’s series of works in a second floor gallery at the Phillips today. Although the experience wasn’t intimidating this time, the temptation to touch the work was as hard to resist. This time, it wasn’t a sculpture; yet as solid and life-like. The photographs’ three-dimensional quality and tangibility tricked my eyes into thinking that what I saw was a real object.

Sharon Core, Peaches and Blackberries, 2008. Chromogenic print, 13 1/2 x 17 1/2 x 1 3/4 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Gift of The Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, 2015

I had to stare at the works for a while to decide whether these were photos or paintings; their subject, composition, and painterly quality instantly reminded me of still life paintings from the 19th century. As speculated, Core was inspired by the compositions of 19th century American still life painter Raphaelle Peale. By meticulously rendering details and emphasizing texture, Core overcomes the limitations of photography and captures features that would have been hard to see even in real life. In fact, the highly contrasting lights, vibrant coloration, and the lustrous texture of the objects are all pictorial elements that could have only been achieved through the labor-intensive process of assembling the materials and arranging the setting.

Across the room hangs a row of still life paintings by post-Impressionist artists. One of them is Paul Cézanne’s Glass and Apples, which is rather muted in tone with no striking tactile appeal. With the emergence and development of photography in his time, Cézanne would have found no point in creating a photo-realistic representation; rather, he was more concerned with capturing the very essence of painting and conveying his own perception of the subject.

Ironically enough, Core’s vibrantly colored, highly-staged photographs that imitate the style of still life painters predating Cézanne, hang right across from his rather simple composition.

As FotoWeek is approaching, come visit the Phillips and take a look into Core’s work that jumps across the boundary between painting and photography. What about Core’s prints is similar to Cézanne’s painting? What’s different?

Summer Park, Marketing & Communications Intern

The Particular Fishiness of Fish

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Experiment Station

William Merritt Chase, Still Life–Fish, c. 1900. Oil on canvas, 44 1/2 x 56 1/8 in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Hayden Collection–Charles Henry Hayden Fund

In the early 20th century, William Merritt Chase returned with renewed vigor to still life painting, a genre he had pursued since the beginning of his career. Most but not all of these works were given over to fish, due at once to their popularity with collectors and museums and Chase’s great pleasure in their making. For this reason, Chase jokingly quipped, “It may be that I will be remembered as a painter of fish.” He explained at the end of his life his attraction to the “subtle and exquisitely colored tones of the flesh fresh from the water, the way their surfaces reflect the light.” When museum founder Duncan Phillips paid tribute to the artist upon his death, he singled Chase out as being “unequalled by any other painter in the representation of the shiny, slippery, fishiness of fish.”

Elsa Smithgall, Exhibition Curator

Artists in Italy: Giorgio Morandi

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Experiment Station

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life, 1953. Oil on canvas, 8 x 15 7/8 in. (20.3 x 40.3 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., Acquired 1954.

Read part one and part two in this series.

Lastly, the native Italian Giorgio Morandi, born in Bologna in 1890, studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Bologna where he trained in the classical Italian and Flemish styles of painting. During his last years there, his style began to change, having been briefly influenced by futurism and other modern trends. The arrangements of objects seen in Still Life, 1953 (shown above) and Still Life, 1950 (shown below) reflect his mature style. His earthy and subdued palette corresponds in tone to the Prendergast piece, which draws a connection between the oldest and the newest work on display here, highlighting the continual influence Italy exerted on these artists who depicted its beauty.

Drew Lash, Curatorial Intern

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life, 1950. Oil on canvas, 14 1/8 x 18 5/8 in. (35.9 x 47.3 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., Acquired 1957.