Human Flower Project

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Joseph Stella’s Resolution

Restart—whether with flowers or dumb bells. It’s the season of discipline.

Abstraction
by Joseph Stella
Image: via Pomegranate

“...that my every working day might begin and end, as a good omen, with the light, gay painting of a flower.”

Joseph Stella called this his “devout wish” (My Painting, 1946)—synonymous, we’d say, with a resolution.

Have you made one? It’s already January 3rd and we’re still vacillating between grandiosity (to join a gospel choir, learn Japanese) and timidity (keep on flossing).

We came upon Joseph Stella’s resolution this fall, visiting the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His articulation of a human flower project was printed on the wall label below Neapolitan Song, painted in 1926 – four years after Stella had revisited his beloved Italian homeland.

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