Flowers and Fruit 1912

Konstantin Korovin made this oil painting called *Flowers and Fruit*, though the exact date remains a mystery. Just look at the thick application of paint, like icing on a cake, or maybe mortar between bricks. The way Korovin builds up the surface makes me think about the physicality of the world. This isn’t a painting that pretends to be a window onto reality. Rather, it's all about the stuff of painting itself. Take the white bottle on the left, for example. It’s barely there, just a ghost of a bottle made from slabs of white and grey. It almost disappears into the tablecloth, which is itself a frenzy of brushstrokes. For me, these dabs and dashes and daubs aren’t just descriptive; they’re expressive, emotional. Korovin is less interested in what things look like and more interested in how they feel. This reminds me of some of Manet's paintings. Like him, Korovin seems to embrace ambiguity, leaving room for our own interpretations and feelings to fill the canvas.