“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Intensity of Bonnard


@anjabee on Twitter reminded me of how much I love Bonnard. I haven't looked at his work very much in the last few years but clearly it's time to revisit him. The way objects and patterns in his work seem to intertwine, wavering between post-impressionism and Matisse, whom I also love a lot. The way objects seem to be vibrating in an electromagnetic field—well almost precisely, since he's one of those guys for whom there is no black...the warm inward stillness of the paintings' femininity.

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