Rococo meets contemporary

Rachel Feinstein
Eva (parasol), 2005
pastel on paper
39 x 27-1/2 inches
Courtesy Marianne Boesky
*image from http://artcritical.com

A chat with a new colleague at the museum got me thinking about the artists I wrote about in my thesis oh so many 7 years ago. The artist who prompted my interest of Rococo and Baroque art in contemporary art was Rachel Feinstein. I saw a show of hers in a gallery when I was thinking about topics and I was hooked. This pastel has always been one of my favorites. Feinstein works in a variety of media including sculpture. It's quite hard to a do a quick search of her on the web because her and her husband, the artist John Currin, are quite the socialites and most of what one immediately finds are glamour shots and lot of articles sans images.

cup and flower

Cup of Water and Rose on a Silver Plate c. 1630
Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664)
Oil on canvas, 21,2 x 30,1 cm
National Gallery, London
image: Web Gallery of Art

I'm back! with a still-life. I did a lot of cataloging this week and built up a list of artists to share. Today's is Baroque Spanish painter, Francisco de Zurbaran. Zurbaran was not known for still-lifes and I was not originally intending on sharing one, but when I was looking for a work, I fell for this simple yet beautiful painting.

This same motif is in a few of Zurbaran's other paintings. "Here the objects may be intended to have a symbolic character: the water in the cup perhaps refers to the Virgin's purity and the flower recalls her title of 'Mystic Rose'." (nationalgallery caption). Most of Zurbaran's works were focused on religious themes.