Flat Truths and Floral Patterns

Paul Ranson painted Picking Flowers because he was bored with the way art tried to lie to people. In 1890 the French art world was still obsessed with depth and perspective. Ranson and his circle of friends had other ideas. They called themselves the Nabis and they met in the studio of Ranson which they called The Temple. They were looking for a new way to see the world that did not involve pretending a flat canvas was a window.

This work is the sound of a hammer hitting a mirror. Ranson looked at Japanese woodblock prints and saw the future. He stripped away the traditional modeling that made bodies look heavy. There are no shadows here to help you find your way around the figures. Everything is flat and decorative. The patterns of the dresses and the flowers bleed into each other until the whole thing feels like a tapestry or a high-end wallpaper.

He was bridging a gap that most people did not even know existed yet. He was taking fine art and pushing it toward modern design. He understood that a painting could be beautiful just by existing as a series of shapes and colors on a surface. It did not need to be a lecture on anatomy. Ranson died in 1909 but this piece remains a witness to the moment when art stopped trying to be a photograph and started trying to be a vibe.

References

Frèches-Thory, Claire and Antoine Terrasse. The Nabis: Bonnard, Vuillard, and Their Circle. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991.

Kostenevich, Albert. French Art from the Middle of the Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century in the Hermitage Museum. Florence: Bonechi, 2008.