Blaue Vase mit Orangen 1908

This still life with the blue vase and oranges emerges as a field of layered strokes, laid down by Alexej von Jawlensky. I can almost feel him there, in the studio, turning the canvas, deciding on the placement of each object with a few, very assured brushstrokes. Look at the way he’s built up the painting’s surface, the way the blocks of color generate an odd spatial tension. Is the table cloth about to slip? Are the oranges about to roll off? There’s something so luscious and joyful about the color choices here. That jarring pink is so wrong that it’s right. It's like he is daring us to look closer. I bet that vase was actually clear glass, but it looks like blue velvet in Jawlensky’s hands. It's paintings like these that remind me, as a painter, that we are all in conversation with one another across time.