From Spain to Virginia The Life and Times of Pierre Daura - Catalog - Page 26
Still Lifes and Pure Abstractions:
Scents and Senses
The affinities between Daura’s work in still life and the
Post-Impressionist compositions of Paul Cezanne have often
been recognized – and there are clear similarities of subject
matter. The array of common fruits and kitchen crockery
scattered across tabletops artfully draped with a white
cloth is common to the still life painting of both artists.
For Daura, as for Cezanne before him, the translucency of
the watercolor medium appears all important – creating a
surface in which the whiteness of the paper support shows
through to produce a colorful sketchiness that is itself
a hallmark of modernist aesthetics. As the nineteenthcentury French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire was early
to recognize, a modernist sensibility in painting is very
much aligned with an appreciation of the quick drawing,
the initial sketch, and the rapid notation. For Baudelaire,
a certain swift speed of execution most vividly captured
the initial idea of a motif. The sketch itself maintained
the first impression of a subject that was all important to
conveying the pace and acceleration of contemporary life.
That hallmark look of the quick and instantaneous came
together with a certain unfinished quality to convey a sense
Fruit, 1955-1974
Watercolor on paper
Taubman Museum of Art
Gift of Martha Randolph Daura, 2003.039
of the immediate experience, of fleeting momentum, of
momentary transience that so characterized modern life and
existence.
Still Life with Blue Vase (detail), 1939-1945, Tempera on paper, Daura Museum of Art, University of Lynchburg, Gift of Martha R. Daura
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