The Flower as Image

Yes, they're beautiful, but this catalogue for the show The Flower as Image asks a thornier question at its core: Why has the flower motif fascinated all sorts of artists through the ages, from Van Gogh to Mapplethorpe? The answer is twofold. For one, it's an easily accessible motif that simply provides a pretext for the artist to create a work. In addition, the flower brings with it a rich history as a symbol of sensuality, beauty, transience, love, sexuality, innocence, and Paradise. In fact, the flower is such a familiar symbol that an artist, in tackling the subject, is driven back to the very the question of what it means to create a work of art. Fifty artists are featured in this impressive collection, including Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, O'Keeffe, Picasso, Emil Nolde, Sigmar Polke, Andy Warhol, Pipilotti Rist, and Nobuyoshi Araki.

Henri Matisse was born in 1869 and grew up in northern France, near Belgium. As a young man he studied law and worked in the courts until, convalescing after appendicitis, he began to paint. His work became some of the most important art made in the twentieth century. It is intensely composed and colored; he was the leader of the Fauvists and soon an acknowledged leader across the arts. His career was powerful and enduring by any standard, and 50 years after death in 1954, his work continues to rise in value. In 2003, The Museum of Modern Art organized 'Matisse Picasso,' a show setting the two artists' work side by side, and in 2005 Matisses' son's collection of his work appeared at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Beatriz Milhazes was born in 1960 in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, where she lives and works today. Solo exhibitions of her paintings have been mounted worldwide, including shows in the United States, Portugal, Great Britain, Spain, Holland, and at the Venice Biennale in 2003.

"EugEne Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848. He lived in Peru as a young child, and then in OrlEans. After a few years as a sailor, during which he traveled around the world, he started to work as a brokeris agent in Paris. His first known drawings are dated soon thereafter. In 1873, Gauguin married a Dane, Mette Sophie Gad, who gave birth to his five children. In 1874, Gauguin met Pissaro and other Impressionists, and over the next few years, debuted at the Salon and participated in Impressionist exhibitions. In 1883, Gauguin quit the stock exchange, and later left his family to live in Brittany, where he executed some of his most expressive works. His first trip to Tahiti was in 1891, and he returned a few years later, in search of the primitive and the savage, not to mention the colorful, staying almost up until the time of his death in 1903."