Quick Print: “Still Life with Wild Flowers” by Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh, Still Life with Wild Flowers, 1890, Oil on canvas. Source: Teal Quill

I am deeply fascinated right now by Van Gogh’s Still Life with Wild Flowers. The 1890s seemed to have been Van Gogh’s retrograde into ukiyo-e and Japanism. Inventive and daring, Van Gogh’s absorption in the scene gave way to a great degree of discrepant abstraction–or proto abstraction, at the very least. The vase, standing against an a blue sky abstraction, emphasizes through elegant stativity the puff’s sheared edges.

At places, a rudimentary grid composed of dry, furtive strokes resembles rising kanji. What’s more, the bold outlines of the wild flowers–in classic ukiyo-e style–appear to snap off from their bamboo-like branches, little v-wings flapping towards the sky.

Texture-wise, Van Gogh severely restricts his tendency to thickly impasto the canvas to great effect, limiting the medium’s boldness to the braided weed strong at center.

Had Van Gogh lived longer, one wonders if he would have found his way towards full abstraction.