Poire verte et couteau 1941

This is Louis Marcoussis's Poire verte et couteau, and it looks like it was made with oil paint, though I'm not totally sure when. What strikes me about it is the way the painting is built up like a collage, with flat planes of colour and areas of texture. It’s almost like the painting is built from paper cut-outs, but that's just an illusion. The artist is drawing with the paint. There’s a lot of visual information packed into this still life, but I’m especially drawn to the knife blade and how the grey paint is gradated to suggest a mirrored surface. It’s a simple effect, but it really sings. It is almost like looking at a Morandi, a contemporary of Marcoussis. Both artists were pursuing the same quiet revolution of seeing the world anew. Ambiguity is embraced here. Art as an ongoing conversation across time, indeed.