Withering

 A few days ago I went to the Marmottan museum and saw, nestled in a hollow slightly away from all of the Monets, this little room of sunflowers by Françoise Pétrovitch. Titled Soleil, they appear to show a cycle of decay, or rather, the unorganised stages of a sunflower on its way to death, and I like how bright and alive the perfect, wide, healthy ones are - almost a marvel among the crunched and drooping flowers.

Me and them.

Sunflowers have taken on a great symbolism in my family lately. They were a particular favourite of my grandma (she used a sunflower photo as her avatar on WhatsApp, so if you texted her you would be texting the sunflower), and so every so often one of us will send a picture of some sunflower or other, with the understanding: we're thinking of Norma.

And it is, it cannot be denied, a good flower. The ultimate big, juicy, tall one, and such a reminder of childhood (growing a sunflower is still, I think, a common kids' first gardening project). We named it after the sun itself! What a thing!

The healthy sunflower.

The sick ladies.

 What I love about these paintings most is that intense purple disc of florets that brings an almost otherworldy richness to the flower. It's like something you'd see when crossing into an afterlife. I think it's the technique that really brings it this quality, almost pearlescent in that stark difference made by pooling water left to sit on the paper. This beautiful pooling is present in lots of Pétrovitch's other work, and it adds such a big, ethereal texture to every piece it touches.

Other work from Pétrovitch's website.

 

Love that.

 

 Seeing the sunflowers together, I'm struck by the aesthetic gorgeousness of the emblems of vibrant, peak, bouyant life, and the markers of death alike. Some of these fuckers look mouldy. The colour leaches from them, leaving a sallow ghost. And she's gorgeous too, in her decrepitude.

Look at that nasty one. Mmm.

Of course, life and death is hardly a unique theme, and I even feel dull describing it here, but nevertheless the crunch of it, that transient drooping, remains touching. The texture of it all. The ugly mess. It's all clumped together into a perfect, grainy collection.

I love that these are on paper. I love the torn edges. Live forever, sunflowers. Die forever too.