Vanitas! by Jeanne Silverthorne is a fun, refreshing, and smart exhibit at the
Phillips Collection. Vanitas! is part of the Intersections series which features up and coming artists who's work intersects in some way with permanent collection of the Phillips. With some intersection artists, the connection to the permanent collection has sometimes felt forced, diluting the quality of the art (in my opinion) whereas Silverthorne's work is independently meaningful but is enhanced when placed in conversation with masterworks in the collection. I love her work because it is playful and darkly comedic- using brightly colored rubber as a medium automatically gives her work a childlike and comical quality and the inclusion of highly realistic bugs imbues the work with a sense of life and death (vanitas!). In addition, it has deep art historical references so it is not only whimsical but also comments on the vanitas tradition, pop art, and our reverence of certain 'important' artists. The first time I saw this exhibit I spent about 40 minutes looking, laughing and discussing with great enthusiasm her work with on of the museum attendants and even reorganized my the tour I was giving that day to include the exhibit. I love it and I think you might too.
Here are a few pictures I took at the exhibit:
A rubber relief of blue rounded flowers replete with insects crawling on them in conversation with a more traditional still life.
A fantastic flower and venus flytrap grouping setting innocently on a mantlepiece near the famous Georges Braque bird.
The absolutely magnificent and confounding configuration of an electrical candelabra with ill balanced candles that are twisted into a double helix formation and are imprinted with the letters of our genetic code. And it's, of course, surrounded by more traditional still life paintings (Chardin and Gris).
I love the twisted and melting appearance of the candles, reminiscent of Dali or Alice in Wonderland.
The bundle of "electrical" cords at the base of the sculpture. Why is the candelabra electric? Why are the cords so unnecessarily long?
Lovely rose relief with flies and a caterpillar.
One of my favorite pairings (pun intended!), a melting unplugged desk lamp hovering over sliced pears right below an absolutely gorgeous and luminous Marjorie Phillips painting of pears.
This one takes the cake for me. An elegant, sophisticated, and revered Cezanne Still Life placed next to some ugly flowers (on mantle) and a gross rubber plant that is leaking a milky substance and covered in synthetic ants, flies and other insects.
I also really enjoyed that there were two dead bird paintings (featured in an earlier post) on the stairwell leading to the exhibit, practically hitting you over the head with the vanitas theme. While I might have viewed the dead birds as depressing on their own, in conversation with the Silverthorne, the over the top macabre nature of the paintings made me smile.
This exhibit is a must see if you are in the DC area.
