Still Life with Chair, 1912

With hallucinatory imagination, Albert Paris Gütersloh (1887–1973) painted his Still Life with Chair in 1912. Its perspective is hard to read, and it seems as if the tabletop with the crumpled pink tablecloth were being shoved forth dynamically toward the viewer from behind the back of the chair. A gap in the tablecloth reveals some cane work. The arrangement of colorfully shaded pears, apples, and empty glasses also poses an unsolvable mystery. Like in Self-Portrait with Glasses, the tablecloth with its translucent light coloring is constructed like a stained-glass church window is of colorful pieces of glass that create an overall impression of harmony.

RR, 2021