Still Life with Flowers 1916

Curator: What strikes me immediately about Mommie Schwarz’s "Still Life with Flowers," painted in 1916, is its audacious simplicity, a real kind of joy in the everyday, isn’t it? It’s like a snapshot of pure exuberance. Editor: Exuberance perhaps born out of fraught historical circumstances. Remember, 1916 was the height of World War I. So, this fauvist rendering of a simple potted geranium could also be read as a powerful act of resistance, a quiet refusal to succumb to the violence engulfing Europe. Curator: Ah, I love that! Like defiantly saying, "Amidst all this, beauty endures. Look! Flowers!" And those colours, almost childlike in their directness. I love the way she has placed pure, unmodulated blues and reds against each other...It creates such a vibrant almost chaotic sense of…home. Editor: Yes, this idea of “home” or the domestic sphere as a sanctuary from wider social issues absolutely resonates. The Fauvist use of non-naturalistic colour, in this instance, becomes more than mere aesthetics, but also a tool that she and other woman artists in the 19th and 20th centuries utilized as resistance, or to disrupt traditional depictions of women's domestic work. Curator: It also makes me think, you know, sometimes a flower IS just a flower. Perhaps that defiance wasn’t so deeply coded. Maybe she just saw a lovely pot of geraniums. What I'm getting from this art piece, to put it simply, is she created art for herself. As a queer woman, Mommie Schwarz never quite found belonging or equity and suffered deeply from this alienation, yet you wouldn't sense her sadness in this beautiful art piece. Editor: I am also not sure this art has to be categorized and framed within the sadness and struggle that an artist experienced; but to divorce the work entirely from its socio-historical moment feels somewhat incomplete. The rise of Fauvism was undeniably linked to broader shifts in artistic, social and political thought during a period of immense upheaval and uncertainty. Curator: True enough! It’s funny isn’t it, how a simple still life can hold so many complex ideas. It feels deeply emotional, incredibly accessible but at the same time, has been shaped by social upheavals that impacted on Mommie Schwarz. I am always floored at what artworks from different movements, especially pieces like this, can suggest. Editor: Exactly! This is not "just" a flower. But it can be, which shows the beauty in Fauvism's power to be aesthetically beautiful yet challenge assumptions.