Brian Coppola :: Fine Art (Off Topic)

"Still Life with South Korean Bowl with Asian Pears" by Abbey Ryan

Artist: Abbey Ryan (All)

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Still Life with South Korean Bowl with Asian Pears by Abbey Ryan Comic Art

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Artwork Details

Title:	"Still Life with South Korean Bowl with Asian Pears" by Abbey Ryan
Artist:	Abbey Ryan (All)
Media Type:	Paint - Oil
Art Type:	Illustration
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	845
Likes on CAF:	0 1
Comments:	0
Added to Site:	2/24/2017
Comic Art Archive:

Description

"Still Life with South Korean Bowl with Asian Pears" (2017)
by Abbey Ryan (ryanstudio.blogspot.com)
9 � 12 in., oil on linen on a thick (3/8 in.) panel

Now this painting is an example of why I collect and support Ms. Ryan. I do not think there is a painter out there who can capture a classic mood, space, texture, and tone of worldly objects the way that she can.

I sometimes think what she is able to do is to hit the �uncanny valley� as it applies to painting. She is clearly not in the realm of the photo-realist painters whose work can look like pictures of plastic objects; but there is not a lick of impressionism here, either. You know it is a painting, but it includes a possibly discomforting reality at the same time.

That notion of being simultaneously opposite opens an interesting window onto all art that is famously associated with Magritte�s sense of surrealism.

In Magritte�s �Treachery of Images,� with the inscription �this is not a pipe� written onto the canvas, it does not negate the pipe completely, despite one of Magritte�s favorite responses to people�s upset: �you think that�s a pipe, well you�re going to have a hard time filling it with tobacco.� (something like that)

More to the point, perhaps, and I have not seen this written anywhere but it might not be a new thought at all: the surrealists were growing up in the same era as the development of quantum mechanics, and in every respect seeing the results from the double-slit experiment on the interference patterns of light and declaring �this is not a particle� created the exam same surrealistic tension in the science community that �this is not a pipe� created in the art community.

Moreover! Schr�dinger�s declaration that the cat is both alive and dead until you act upon it may have some bearing on Magritte. Magritte�s pipe both is and is not a pipe, simultaneously, until you try to act upon it to differentiate its reality from its representationalism. This issue is getting more relevant today as representational reality becomes more �virtual� by adding 3D and tactile components. You might be able to stuff virtual tobacco into Magritte�s virtual pipe while wearing your headset, and one day you might even get some satisfaction from puffing on it, but you�ll not develop the throat cancer.

If the key to understanding Magritte�s surrealism is that his pipe both is and is not a pipe simultaneously, precisely because the image itself is anchored in our sense of realism, then don�t Abbey�s pears accomplish this to a perhaps even greater degree?

Perhaps it is the surrealism in these paintings that I am attracted to. You can dismiss the impressionistic easily enough as a cartoon, and the photo-realistic painters are (I would argue) as easily dismissed because you can readily dissociate them from reality. Hence my comment about these paintings sitting in the uncanny valley � both dead and alive, like Schr�dinger�s cat, but outside of the box.

Well, there�s a thought for you: �quantum surrealism� from the art side of things.

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About the Owner

	Brian Coppola Premium Gallery Owner
Joined:	March 2009
Last Login:	January 2026
Country:	UNITED STATES
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