Figure with Flowers, Paul John Wonner

Artwork Overview

Paul John Wonner, Figure with Flowers
Paul John Wonner, Figure with Flowers
Paul John Wonner
Figure with Flowers
1961
Paul John Wonner, artist
1920–2008
Figure with Flowers, 1961
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: canvas; oil
Dimensions:
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 125.1 x 90.2 cm
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 49 1/4 x 35 1/2 in
Credit line: Museum purchase: National Endowment for the Arts and Friends of the Museum
Accession number: 1972.0070
Not on display
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Images

Label texts

Archive Label 2009:
Wonner’s image is a combination of two subjects common is Western art: the nude and the vanitas. The term vanitas refers to a collection of objects chosen and arranged to remind the spectator of the transience and uncertainty of mortal life. Skulls, mirrors, and flowers are normally found in the vanitas; the presence of a nude figure, however, is less common.

The thick application of paint and visible brushstrokes are typical of abstract American painting of the 1950s and early 1960s; notice that color and texture are favored over line and detail, especially in the background. By depicting representational subject matter with a style more commonly used in purely abstract paintings, Wonner achieves a tension between figurative content and abstraction

Exhibitions

Decade of Transformation: American Art of the 1960s
David Cateforis, curator
1999
Celebrating the Spencer: Friends Acquisitions
Beverly Joyce, curator
Jean Rosenthal, curator
1997–1998
20/21
Susan Earle, curator
2016–2021
20/21
Susan Earle, curator
2009–2015
20/21
Susan Earle, curator
2016–2021
Painting from the San Francisco Bay Area
1988
Painting from the San Francisco Bay Area
1988
Painting from the San Francisco Bay Area
1989
Paintings by Paul Wonner
1962
Post War and Contemporary Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Prints
1972

Resources

Audio

Didactic – Art Minute
Didactic – Art Minute
Episode 197. I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Painters of the San Francisco Bay Area Figurative movement of the 1950s and 1960s applied the gestural brushwork and bold colors of New York abstract expressionism to depictions of the human body and its environment. A strong example of Bay Area figurative painting in the Spencer collection is Paul Wonner’s 1961 canvas, Figure with Flowers. Its palette dominated by layered blues, greens, and whites, Wonner’s painting features thick brushstrokes and paint drips that emphasize the materiality of the medium. Its subject is a nude woman standing before a mirror. In her left hand she holds a bouquet of flowers slightly extended toward her reflection, while her right hand rests on a skull placed on a small table. The skull, flowers, and mirror derive from the artistic tradition of vanitas - Latin for emptiness - meant to remind the viewer of the ephemerality of life, and they give Wonner’s painting a layer of philosophical meaning not found in standard images of the studio nude. With thanks to Megan Ampe for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.
Audio Tour – Bulldog Podcast
Audio Tour – Bulldog Podcast
Audio Tour – Bulldog Podcast
Audio Tour – Bulldog Podcast