Florine Stettheimer is an American modernist painter. She developed a feminine, theatrical painting style depicting her friends and experiences of New York City. She painted the first feminist nude self-portrait. Her paintings depict controversial issues about race and sexual preference and the parties of her family and friends that she and her sister hosted for members of the Avant- Garde. She is best known for her works illustrating what she considered to be New York City’s “Cathedrals” which are Broadway, Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, and New York’s three major art museums.
The artwork I chose is called Family Portrait, II (1933). The artwork shows people dressed in elegant clothing and lounging around in an elegant room from the decor. As I readed more about the painting, the people in the painting are actually the artist herself holding the palette, her mother sitting in the gold armchair and her sisters Ettie, sitting in the other chair, and Carrie holding a cigarette in between her fingers. There is a view of the city since the Chrysler Building can be seen in the background. There are flowers in the middle of the painting that interrupt the scene in the painting since it comes out of nowhere. It bring life to the painting since everyone in the painting is idling around, the leaves on the flowers brings movement to the painting.
This work reflects the aesthetic preferences associated with Modernism because the painting is depicting her experiences. This painting would be considered modernism since in the way the artist expresses her family portrait in an unconventional way with the flowers blooming front and center of the painting. I wouldn’t consider this a traditional painting. Also, the colors she chooses to depict the painting in is very calming since she uses subtle colors. The blue and warm colors enhance the tone of the painting as stress-free and relax. They look like they are enjoying their pastime.
I encountered this work on the 5th floor of the Museum of Modern Art in gallery 504 as I was walking around. It is very colorful and bright compare to other paintings in the exhibit, so it caught my eye immediately. The placement of the flowers drew me to the painting since it had a very abnormal placement for the flowers when looking at the painting closely. My question is why the decide to put the flowers in the middle in the foreground rather than in the background of the painting?
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78392?classifications=any&date_begin=Pre-1850&date_end=2021&on_view=1&q=manhattan&utf8=%E2%9C%93
I love this painting. Like you, I am curious about the large flowers in the foreground. What are they doing there? What does the scale of the flowers do here? Think about their size in relation to the human figures. And what are those dangling roots? I am also curious about the way that she has painted the background. The flatness of the background seems quite Modernist to me – and she has added the outline of a building, another flower, etc… Such an interesting work!