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flowing arabesque lines, of the individual components of the
composition with the spatial elements, the depicted objects and the
horizontal and vertical planes.
Several versions of
“Still-life with Water Pitcher and
Fruit Bowl” from 1957 [for example, Catalogue #57-29, 57-30, 57-33, and
57-34] together show the evolution of the design pattern which evidently
was a stepwise process. The rhythmic feeling of the composition reflects
both the physical movements of the artists hand in the actual drawing of the
lines and the involuntary movements of the viewer’s eyes along the path of
the strongest rhythmic line-elements of the drawing, such as the outlines
of ovals, uneven spirals interacting with figures-of-eight, circles, etc.
The few straight
lines in evidence, used for characterizing the motif, provide support for
the composition, and, perhaps most importantly, also serve as contrasting
vectors to the arabesques. The overall effect is an extraordinary spatial
integration of the picture back-to-front, and a pictorial solution that
allows the viewers considerable latitude to flip-flop the depicted planes
into concave and convex objects and spatial elements according to their
visual intuition. The resulting painting therefore provides a maximum
number of visual degrees-of-freedom for the eye to revisit and recreate.
The creativity of the visual invention of the painting is shared by the
artist with the viewer to a very significant degree. And to further enhance
this effect in some of the early paintings of this series, they are
maintained in quasi-monochrome colors which also facilitates the perception
of the depicted objects projecting dynamically out towards the observer.
Immediately
preceding the flowing-line series of still-lifes, Skov completed several paintings
that must be ranked among his best work because of their clarity and
overall balance. One of these entitled “Sunflowers
and Chinese Sculpture” features a table with a transparent crystal vase
containing two yellow sunflowers standing next to a sculpture of a Buddha
seated on a pyramidal plinth, both designed in graphic outline as seen
against a brightly lit window. While the table seems to be completely well
defined by more than a dozen individual lines that seem to segment it into
several sections of light and shadow, its objective location, and the
perception of its substance, are still left mostly to the imagination of
the viewer. Light is seen refracted in the crystal vase to the left,
revealing facets of pure white and black; and to the right, the organic
out-lines of the wooden sculpture provide strong visual contrasts to the
angular lines describing the sunflowers. The serenity of this still-life is
echoed by the monochrome color scheme which is dominated by yellow and
white and accented in black against gray.
Another painting
from the same period is “Truscan
Sculpture with
Fruit and Flower” which also was finished before the Water Pitcher
series.
In this still-life, Skov placed a flower vase to the right of a
sculpture of a
head on a square pedestal, seen against an orange sundown that is
reflected either by a window in the background. The sculpture, which
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