“I could paint flowers all day long. I thought it was interesting to add a straw like someone was trying to suck the water out of the vase. If you look at that painting as memento mori then the addition of the straw is almost an accelerator to kill the flowers faster. In another still life, I cut all the buds off the top so it’s like a murdered bouquet with just beheaded stems sticking out and a sharp knife resting on the table beside them. Of course, all cut flowers are dead and there’s an inherent violence in how they became so. The first flower painting I ever showed with Blum & Poe was called “JAWS.” It was such a traditional painting that I found it unnerving. And I always liked that line from the movie about there’s something in the water. The sinister can often be masked by beauty or even tranquility.”
B orn in Calgary, Canada, Anna Weyant paints still lifes and portraits of young women and girls with a distinctive mix of playfulness and somber melancholy. Made popular via instagrams , Weyant’s meteoric rise to fame has led to her being named the millennial Botticelli by The Wall Street Journal. Graduating from Rhode Island School of Design in 2017, the artist relocated to Hangzhou and studied painting at the China Academy of Art before moving back to New York City. Drawing influence from the Dutch Golden Age painters, Weyant expertly blends historical elements with contemporary movies, novels, and children’s books, her paintings depicting charming and mysterious characters in variously comic and tragic situations and her luminous stills lifes portraying objects in uncanny and disconcerting scenes. The youngest artist to be internationally represented by Gagosian Gallery, Untitled (Flowers) is an example of Weyant’s figurative tableaux.
With its signature sepia tone and muted palette, the present work embodies the cerebral amalgam of historical influences that suffuse Weyant’s contemporary narrative scenes. Replete with softly rendered edges and warm tones, Untitled (Flowers) emanates an internal luminosity which immediately evokes the Dutch Masters, of which Gerrit van Honthorst, Gerard ter Borch the Younger and Judith Leyster Weyant has described as greatly influencing her. With its perfect balance of light and shadow, humour and earnestness, the present work demonstrates Weyant’s distinctive portrayal of the codified rituals of femininity.
「我可以一整天都繪畫花朵。當時我在想，多加一根吸管在畫面會很有趣，仿佛有人想把花瓶裏的水全部吸光。如果將這幅畫視為提醒大家『人終需一死』的警世作品，畫中所加上的吸管，便近乎是將花朵推向死亡的加速劑。在另一幅靜物畫中，我讓花上所有花蕾都被剪下來，只有一支支剩下的花莖伸出來，一把鋒利的刀放在桌上，就在花蕾的旁邊，看起來恰似有一束花被謀殺。當然，所有被剪下來的花都已死去，而它們死去的過程在本質上是隱含某種暴力的。我曾經在Blum & Poe畫廊展出過的第一幅花卉畫作名為《大白鯊》。那是一幅很傳統的畫，傳統得讓我覺得它很詭異。我一直很喜歡《大白鯊》電影中說水裡有動靜的那句對白。凶兆往往都潛藏在美麗、甚至祥和的表象之下。」
安 娜・維揚特生於加拿大卡加里，她的靜物畫和年輕女子和女孩的肖像畫，在戲謔有趣中摻雜晦暗陰鬱感，風格獨樹一幟。維揚特最初在instagrams 走紅，一下子躍升為藝術新星，獲《華爾街日報》譽為千禧世代的波提切利。2017年，她從羅德島設計學院畢業，之後轉往杭州，在中國美術學院習畫，後來又回到紐約。維揚特受到荷蘭黃金時代畫家的影響，同時將歷史元素與當代電影、小說和兒童讀本交錯混合，手法高明。她筆下神秘又迷人的人物，往往置身於帶喜感的悲劇情境中；她的靜物畫雖然畫面明亮，卻又令人困惑不安。維揚特是高古軒畫廊全球代理下最年輕的藝術家，《無題（花卉）》正是她的具象作品例子。
此畫作運用極具個人特色的棕褐色調，配合含蓄的柔和配色，體現糅合前人藝術影響的智慧結晶，而後者則貫穿維揚特那些洋溢當代色彩的故事場景。《無題（花卉）》中所有物件的邊緣被仔細地修飾得柔和圓潤，畫面滲透著暖色調，光芒自內在溢出，展現荷蘭古典油畫大師的風範，媲美赫里特・凡・洪特霍斯特、赫拉德・特爾・博爾奇及朱迪思・萊斯特，而維揚特也曾經說過這些前人對她的影響非常深。本作在光明和陰影、幽默與直白之間拿捏得當，以別樹一幟的方式展現被傳統規範定型的女性特質。