Figure with Flowers, Paul John Wonner

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.