Elmer Bischoff
Untitled--Still Life, 1941
oil on canvas
18 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches
EBp 3
It is interesting to compare this work to its ostensible inspiration, Picasso's table-top paintings of the 1920s, notably "Ram's Head" (1925), which Bischoff singled out as especially influential.... But Bischoff's painting has none of the rugged brutality of Picasso's. In "Untitled (Still-Life)" (1941), Bischoff replaced the severed head and gnashing teeth with a stately cluster of objects: an amphoralike jug, an elegant accordion fan (Picasso's fans, by comparison, menace the viewer like so many slashing knives), and a plant whose delicately veined leaves mirror each other in near-symmetrical harmony (see fig. 22). The vaguely Ionic motif beneath the table reinforces the classical feeling of this painting. In its restrained palette, invisible brushwork, and fastidious contrapuntal balance, the work is closer in spirit to the Purism of Le Corbusier than to what Meyer Shapiro call Picasso's "still-lifes of cruelty."
--Susan Landauer, Elmer Bischoff: The Ethics of Paint, University of California Press, Berkeley and the Oakland Museum of California, 2001 |
