Landscape 1912

Curator: Oh, my. I’m suddenly craving citrus! Before us is David Burliuk’s “Landscape,” painted in 1912. It's currently held at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. It looks like an oil-on-canvas exploration of fauvist landscapes, bursting with unapologetically bold color choices. Editor: My first impression is…dynamic. There is a distinct lack of subtlety—it is emotionally direct and vibrates with color and energetic lines. Are we meant to see it as a forest mirrored on the surface of the lake? It seems somewhat abstracted, the colors are expressive and vivid. Curator: It really pushes at the boundaries of what landscape painting could be, doesn't it? He almost seems to want to capture the feeling of a landscape instead of trying to accurately represent how it looks. You see that intense combination of blues, greens and yellows? It feels almost rebellious! I read it as his visual poem—on nature itself! Editor: And within this landscape, there's a definite focus on geometric forms: triangles, ovals. Considering that many traditional cultural understandings see geometric shapes as possessing a natural spiritual power, do you think Burliuk was deliberately invoking that connection to nature through geometric shapes? Curator: It’s entirely possible. There is an energy to that idea. He may be suggesting that geometry *is* nature, a more primitive, distilled interpretation, maybe. Also, I can't help but think about Burliuk’s later involvement in the development of Futurism. I suspect that fascination with shape might well be an overture towards what would soon come. Editor: Fascinating! It also makes me reflect on how this piece is related to cultural memory, both nature's symbolism across cultures but also as an expression of nature's symbolic force *in and of itself*, as you say. What do you make of how later generations would receive it? Curator: Well, I like to imagine viewers walking through modern-day cities and being momentarily reminded of a hidden, raw world beneath the concrete – a world still pulsing with untamed life. I see that reflected back from the painting. I'll confess that Burliuk makes me wonder if abstract art is our truest, most accurate mirror of reality. Editor: That makes so much sense; “Landscape” isn’t just depicting a place, but, even more, it represents how we, in our human condition, truly internalize nature and its profound force in memory and symbolic language.