Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1964, © 2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Warhol drew upon images from a photograph of seven hibiscus flowers taken by Patricia Caulfield for June 1964’s issue of Modern Photography.
In 2005, the Fondation Beyeler devoted a comprehensive exhibition to the meaning of the motif of the flower in art from Impressionism to the present day. Here we have repeated the exercise as we share our selections to include notable artworks under this theme, and a bit more detail about each. Enjoy our selections as we explore this art historical motif that has been so prevalent over time until today.
Paul Klee, Flower Myth, 1918, Watercolor and pastel on fabric and newsprint mounted on board, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2013
Image courtesy of Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany
Klee’s painting expresses ideas about the relationship between art and nature that are related to his deep reservoir of knowledge about the works of art and literature that define the German Romantic spirit. Klee evokes a dream world, an otherworldly nocturnal adventure by the Romantic author Novalis that features a blue flower as a symbol representing a search for spiritual truth.
Max Ernst, Snow Flowers, 1929, oil on canvas, 51″ X 51″
Image courtesy of Foundation Beyeler, Basel
German-born Max Ernst was a provocateur, an innovative artist who mined his unconscious for dreamlike imagery that mocked social conventions. A pioneer of both Dada and Surrealism, he said “Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.”
A soldier in World War I, Ernst emerged deeply traumatized and highly critical of western culture. He questioned the sanctity of art by creating non-representational works without clear narratives, by making sport of religious icons, and by formulating new means of creating artworks to express the modern condition.
Interested in locating the origin of his own creativity, Ernst attempted to freely paint from his inner psyche and in an attempt to reach a pre-verbal state of being. Through “Automatic painting”, he unleashed his primal emotions and revealed his personal traumas as the subject of his collages and paintings.
Joan Mitchell (American, 1925-1992), Sunflowers, 1990–91, Oil on canvas (diptych), 102 1/4″ x 157 1/2″
Collection of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York. © Estate of Joan Mitchell. Image and quote courtesy the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
“My paintings repeat a feeling about Lake Michigan, or water, or fields…it’s more like a poem…and that’s what I want to paint.” The myriad of things that comprised and moved within Mitchell’s world – water, sky, trees, flowers, weather, dogs – created images and memories from which she worked. These things are often named in her titles, which were always attributed after a painting’s completion. She observed her landscape intensely, and her acute visual observations of form, space and color in life are part of the visual memories she drew upon while painting. Mitchell worked primarily at night and rarely if ever painted from life. In order to prepare herself for painting, she might read poetry or listen to music.