Jean-Michel Othoniel: The Secret Language of Flowers
Notes on the Hidden Meanings of Flowers in Art
An intimate herbarium of flowers in the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
During his 2012 residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel (born 1964) delved into the archives of the magnificent garden that Isabella Stewart Gardner, the first American woman to graduate with a degree in horticulture, cultivated around her residence. Othoniel examined the museum (where nothing has been moved since its owners died) and photographed the flowers in the tapestries, ironwork, architecture, furnishings and paintings, in such masterpieces as van Dyck's "Portrait of a Woman" with its innocuous rose, Piermatteo d'Amelia's "Annunciation" with its majestic lily and Bartolomé Bermejo's "Saint Engracia" with its enigmatic palm. This giftworthy volume presents his art-historical ABC of these flowers, from Acanthus to Zea Mays.
Featured image, the entry for "Bellis perennis, English daisy," is reproduced from Jean-Michel Othoniel: The Secret Language of Flowers.
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"My first works played with anemones buried in sulfur, cut and dissected pomegranates, flower petals pinned to walls," Jean-Michel Othoniel writes in The Secret Language of Flowers: Notes on the Hidden Meanings of Flowers in Art, which he created from works at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. "I loved Federico García Lorca's poetry, the wind in the poplars, the oracle in their foliage; I conscientiously pinned leaves from the álamo (poplar) onto maps of Spain. I burned matches—I was intoxicated by the sulfur fumes—and I plunged laurel branches into pink wax. I drew female sexual organs on dandelion heads. I harvested chestnut burrs in the park of Jouy-en-Josas." Featured image, of the rose flower as portrayed in a detail from Anthony van Dyck's "Portrait of a Woman with a Rose" (ca. 1635-39), is captioned, "The pink rose is linked to Saint Therese of Lisieux: 'I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens.'" continue to blog
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FORMAT: Hbk, 5.25 x 8.25 in. / 192 pgs / 120 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $47.5 ISBN: 9782330048129 PUBLISHER: Actes Sud AVAILABLE: 10/27/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AU/NZ AFR
Jean-Michel Othoniel: The Secret Language of Flowers Notes on the Hidden Meanings of Flowers in Art
An intimate herbarium of flowers in the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Published by Actes Sud.
During his 2012 residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel (born 1964) delved into the archives of the magnificent garden that Isabella Stewart Gardner, the first American woman to graduate with a degree in horticulture, cultivated around her residence. Othoniel examined the museum (where nothing has been moved since its owners died) and photographed the flowers in the tapestries, ironwork, architecture, furnishings and paintings, in such masterpieces as van Dyck's "Portrait of a Woman" with its innocuous rose, Piermatteo d'Amelia's "Annunciation" with its majestic lily and Bartolomé Bermejo's "Saint Engracia" with its enigmatic palm. This giftworthy volume presents his art-historical ABC of these flowers, from Acanthus to Zea Mays.
