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STILL-LIFES WITH
FISH
1949 - 1951
During the autumn
of 1949 and the following year Skov painted a series of still-lifes with
fish on a table. His color schemes in these paintings are generally
subdued, even monochrome occasionally, reflecting the low Danish winter
light attenuated through layers of cloud cover. Yet it also seems likely
that a need for moderation regarding the use of colors in complex
compositions may have been a cause, since it apparently is less troublesome
to achieve the appropriate consistency and concordance between space and
plane, in accordance with the Cubist aesthetics, when the object, space and
background are subdued and similar of color and texture. Hence also the
monochrome periods of many of the previous Cubist painters apparently
during the explorative phases of their development.
The shallow seas
around Denmark have a large variety of fish, and they a staple
food of most menus, usually served several times a week in the homes of
most Danish families. Skov’s motifs were in some cases a single fish,
sometimes three or more, often presented together with other every-day
household objects such as a knife, onions, a glass or a bottle. In the
paintings it is not difficult to discern the common cod, haddock, herring,
flounders, sole and eel.
From Skov’s point
of view, almost any object could be a suitable motif, albeit some presented
pictorial challenges that others might lack, but in the context of
visualization of space in a non-illusionary manner, all objects were
equivalent targets. Perhaps to
emphasize that he did not look for the visually charming or superficially
tasteful aspects of the motif, he chose in several paintings to focus on
just the separated head of a large haddock [the part that obviously also
had no schedule to meet in the kitchen].
It is quite clear,
however, that more than the objects by themselves, the real motifs of these
paintings were essentially the entire compositions of the still-lifes. That
is, the combination of the motif, the composition and the requirements of
the Cubist approach to the rendition of space and form, taken together,
were Skov’s motif.
Seen in this
context, from a painterly viewpoint, there well may be
a special challenge in the shape of a fish which from its head to
its tail fin represents a continuous transition from a cone to cylindrical
to flat, but is
without facets and planes to start off from in order to depict
dimensionality.
It was obviously this challenge of visualization that interested
Skov. He
continued to return to variations of this motif numerous times
during the
following five years and actually completed more than twenty
paintings in
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