Still Life 1920

Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky made this still life painting with oil paints, probably sometime in the early 20th century. Look at how the objects almost dissolve into the background! The texture is built up with these short, dab-like brushstrokes in all sorts of directions, and there's this wild tension between the flat patterned surfaces and the attempt to give everything a 3-D form. See the red rose in the lower left? It's like a big, juicy brushstroke that also happens to be a flower. The colors are muted, but somehow still luminous. It reminds me of Vuillard, with that same feeling of intimate domestic space. The painting feels like a conversation between different kinds of seeing, thinking and painting. This is a kind of conversation that is very much still alive today.