Porcelain and Flowers

Porcelain and Flowers

Golovin Aleksandr Yakovlevich
1915. Tempera on plywood. 87.5 х 74.1 cm. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

The artist paints the still-life as if creating a mise en scène for a wonderful show. Magnificent porcelain vases, decorated with gold, blue cobalt, flowers and figurines of Cupids ready to fly up, fringe the composition like side-scenes. Next to fancifully ornamented vases, other simpler subjects, such as teapots and cups, seem to also gain stylish look. The picture embodies the aesthetics of Art Nouveau, love for exquisite attributes, desire to revive artistic atmosphere. The image tonality is set by the items in the Rococo style. Golovin's stylization is based on unshaded drawing, which rules over flat colour patches. That makes the still-life resemble a sumptuously ornamented carpet. The world of flowers and porcelain lives its own life in a magic kingdom, where vases simultaneously resemble fairytale trees and towers of an enchanted castle

Russian Art of the 20th Century

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