Altering Perceptions I

“I paint [flowers] because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move."

– Georgia O’Keeffe
N.Y. Herald, 1954

The Un-still Life
As Georgia O’Keeffe’s sarcastic comment to a reporter implies, many of us think of plants as inanimate. We treat them like decorative objects in our gardens and homes, arranging and positioning them to please our aesthetic sensibilities. However, plants are alive and aware, reacting at speeds too slow for us to notice. They respond even as we manipulate them and their environment.

Red Tulips in Vase, Roger Hangarter,
time-lapse movie, grocery-store tulips (Tulipa sp.)

Vase of Flowers exemplifies a favorite subject of still-life painters during the seventeenth century. Flowers were typically depicted as if they were frozen in place and time. A bouquet of fresh tulips will appear just as deceptively still in your living room. But viewed by time-lapse imaging, these flowers reveal just how “un-still” they really are.

Red Tulips in Vase exposes the secret life of flowers. The tulips rhythmically, hypnotically sway, rearranging themselves in the vase through a form of movement called nutation. Finally, exhausted, they collapse and succumb to death.