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Flack painted both canvases after completing three works which are known collectively as her Vanitas series. Unlike the seventeenth-century Dutch still life paintings that inspired them, the Vanitas paintings and Bounty are monumental in scale. In addition, she used saturated colors, exaggerated size, selection and arrangement of personally significant objects and traditional vanitas emblems to symbolize the brevity of beauty and life, creating great visual impact and provoking emotional responses from the viewer. Although not identified in the title as a Vanitas painting, Bounty belongs with other works in this category.
The artist’s grouping features personal but ordinary objects on a larger-than-life scale and in high-intensity colors. Flack has expressed a preference for being called a Superrealist, rather than a Photorealist, explaining “I will often exaggerate reality, bringing it into sharp focus at some points and blurring it at others. An apple is never red enough, nor a sky blue enough.” [1] In Bounty Flack floats a ceramic parrot, a cut lemon, and a pair of maraschino cherries before an unraveling spiral of pink satin ribbon that winds through the composition. The background is comprised of additional fruits and vegetables, repoussé silver bowls, a partially full wine glass, a lit candle, a snapshot, and a hand mirror, all of which appeared in the other Vanitas paintings. For these works, Flack began by staging elaborate arrangements of objects, which she then photographed numerous times. Ultimately selecting one image to develop as a slide, she projected it directly onto the canvas, painting in the dim light of the projector. Flack learned how to mix her colors so that they would appear as she wished when seen under normal lighting conditions.
In both the preliminary photographs and final paintings, Flack establishes foreground, middle ground, and background within an overall densely packed and shallow composition. In Bounty the ground plane is tilted up, and some objects—most notably the faux parrot, lemon, and cherries—float towards the implied picture plane as if in a non-gravitational environment. Flack also extends her objects beyond the picture plane, as the slightly decaying carrots, out of focus, seem to extend into our space.
Following traditional still life painting, the assembled objects in Flack’s Vanitas series symbolize the brevity of life and the inevitability of death. Physical beauty and materialism are balanced against age and decay, the pain and struggle of life against wisdom and faith. Objects such as the hand mirror, a partially filled wine glass, burning candle, and an abundance of lush fruits and overripe vegetables are exemplars of bounty as well as tangible reminders of the passage of time. The reflection in the mirror might be an image of the artist herself, a mere mortal. Flack seems to rebel against the inevitability of mortality with wit and determination as she mixes artificial with real objects. The symbolism of the artificial parrot, as suggested by the title of the related painting, Parrots Live Forever, might be that this particular bird, having never lived, is at least immune from pain and death. There is further irony in the fact that the parrot, artificial grapes, and other plastic items so common in today’s materialistic society may indeed “live forever” or at least not decay for a very long time.
Bounty, as the title implies, is ultimately a positive work, one that suggests that family ties transcend death and decay. Flack conveys this message by including portraits of her own family and contrasts them with items that will decay. In Bounty, she includes a picture of one of her daughters, as she had in earlier compositions. The artist has survived both personal challenges and art world criticism; her paintings stand as a strong and lasting counterargument to the theme of human transience.
Notes:
[1] Audrey Flack, Audrey Flack on Painting (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1981), 28.
Provenance1978
Louis K. Meisel Gallery (est. 1965), New York, NY [1]
Betsy Main Babcock (1937-2001), Winston-Salem, NC, purchased from the Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York. [2]
From 1980/1996
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Betsy Main Babcock in February 1980/March 28, 1996. [3]
Notes:
[1] Joan Durana, Provenance Research, 1983. See also coversheet circa 1996.
[2] Joan Durana, Provenance Research, 1983. Also, Deed of Gift.
[3] See note 2.
Exhibition History1978-1979
American Paintings of the 1970’s
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (12/8/1978-1/14/1979)
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA (2/2/1979-3/18/1979)
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA (4/10/1979-5/20/1979)
1979-1980
American Paintings of the 1970’s
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (7/6/1979)
Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX (9/9/1979-10/21/1979)
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL (11/11/1979-1/2/1980)
1991-1992
Photorealism Revisited
Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL (11/24/1991-1/19/1992)
1996
Audrey Flack exhibition
Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA (3/12/1996-5/24/1996)
2022
Chrome Dreams and Infinite Reflections: American Photorealsim
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (7/15/2022-12/31/2022)
Published ReferencesPhotorealism New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1980.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017).
pg. 168, 169, 248
DepartmentAmerican Art
Bounty
Artist
Audrey Flack
(American, 1931 - 2024)
Date1978
Mediumoil and acrylic paint on canvas
Dimensions80 1/4 x 67 1/4 x 1 3/8 in. (203.8 x 170.8 x 3.5 cm)
Signed<unsigned>
Credit LineGift of Betsy Main Babcock
Copyright© Audrey Flack / Louis K. Meisel Gallery
Object number1980.2.2
DescriptionAudrey Flack’s Bounty, from 1978, is an extraordinarily colorful and imposing composition typical of her work as a leading exponent of Photorealism. A large rectangular canvas painted in oil over airbrushed acrylic, it relates closely to a previous work of the same year, Parrots Live Forever, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. They do not match exactly; small modifications include the removal of a red lipstick, adding a burning candle and a color photograph, shifting the placement of the hand mirror, lime wedge, apple, and carrots, and changing the shape from square to rectangle. Flack painted both canvases after completing three works which are known collectively as her Vanitas series. Unlike the seventeenth-century Dutch still life paintings that inspired them, the Vanitas paintings and Bounty are monumental in scale. In addition, she used saturated colors, exaggerated size, selection and arrangement of personally significant objects and traditional vanitas emblems to symbolize the brevity of beauty and life, creating great visual impact and provoking emotional responses from the viewer. Although not identified in the title as a Vanitas painting, Bounty belongs with other works in this category.
The artist’s grouping features personal but ordinary objects on a larger-than-life scale and in high-intensity colors. Flack has expressed a preference for being called a Superrealist, rather than a Photorealist, explaining “I will often exaggerate reality, bringing it into sharp focus at some points and blurring it at others. An apple is never red enough, nor a sky blue enough.” [1] In Bounty Flack floats a ceramic parrot, a cut lemon, and a pair of maraschino cherries before an unraveling spiral of pink satin ribbon that winds through the composition. The background is comprised of additional fruits and vegetables, repoussé silver bowls, a partially full wine glass, a lit candle, a snapshot, and a hand mirror, all of which appeared in the other Vanitas paintings. For these works, Flack began by staging elaborate arrangements of objects, which she then photographed numerous times. Ultimately selecting one image to develop as a slide, she projected it directly onto the canvas, painting in the dim light of the projector. Flack learned how to mix her colors so that they would appear as she wished when seen under normal lighting conditions.
In both the preliminary photographs and final paintings, Flack establishes foreground, middle ground, and background within an overall densely packed and shallow composition. In Bounty the ground plane is tilted up, and some objects—most notably the faux parrot, lemon, and cherries—float towards the implied picture plane as if in a non-gravitational environment. Flack also extends her objects beyond the picture plane, as the slightly decaying carrots, out of focus, seem to extend into our space.
Following traditional still life painting, the assembled objects in Flack’s Vanitas series symbolize the brevity of life and the inevitability of death. Physical beauty and materialism are balanced against age and decay, the pain and struggle of life against wisdom and faith. Objects such as the hand mirror, a partially filled wine glass, burning candle, and an abundance of lush fruits and overripe vegetables are exemplars of bounty as well as tangible reminders of the passage of time. The reflection in the mirror might be an image of the artist herself, a mere mortal. Flack seems to rebel against the inevitability of mortality with wit and determination as she mixes artificial with real objects. The symbolism of the artificial parrot, as suggested by the title of the related painting, Parrots Live Forever, might be that this particular bird, having never lived, is at least immune from pain and death. There is further irony in the fact that the parrot, artificial grapes, and other plastic items so common in today’s materialistic society may indeed “live forever” or at least not decay for a very long time.
Bounty, as the title implies, is ultimately a positive work, one that suggests that family ties transcend death and decay. Flack conveys this message by including portraits of her own family and contrasts them with items that will decay. In Bounty, she includes a picture of one of her daughters, as she had in earlier compositions. The artist has survived both personal challenges and art world criticism; her paintings stand as a strong and lasting counterargument to the theme of human transience.
Notes:
[1] Audrey Flack, Audrey Flack on Painting (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1981), 28.
Provenance1978
Louis K. Meisel Gallery (est. 1965), New York, NY [1]
Betsy Main Babcock (1937-2001), Winston-Salem, NC, purchased from the Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York. [2]
From 1980/1996
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Betsy Main Babcock in February 1980/March 28, 1996. [3]
Notes:
[1] Joan Durana, Provenance Research, 1983. See also coversheet circa 1996.
[2] Joan Durana, Provenance Research, 1983. Also, Deed of Gift.
[3] See note 2.
Exhibition History1978-1979
American Paintings of the 1970’s
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (12/8/1978-1/14/1979)
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA (2/2/1979-3/18/1979)
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA (4/10/1979-5/20/1979)
1979-1980
American Paintings of the 1970’s
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (7/6/1979)
Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX (9/9/1979-10/21/1979)
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL (11/11/1979-1/2/1980)
1991-1992
Photorealism Revisited
Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL (11/24/1991-1/19/1992)
1996
Audrey Flack exhibition
Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA (3/12/1996-5/24/1996)
2022
Chrome Dreams and Infinite Reflections: American Photorealsim
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (7/15/2022-12/31/2022)
Published ReferencesPhotorealism New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1980.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017).
pg. 168, 169, 248
Status
Not on view