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Lot Essay
A colourful synthesis of styles, perspectives and formal surprises, Black Cherries (2017) exemplifies the compelling interior scenes that have propelled Jonathan Gardner to international acclaim in recent years. A yellow table stands on a multi-coloured floor, laid with striped placemats, a lemon on a plate, and a stone bust. A green urn and a plate of cherries perch in the foreground. An alternate view sits over the table like a paper cut-out, casting a shadow onto the wall behind. It variously occludes and alters the objects like a trick mirror, reflecting them upside-down in different positions. In the background are sections of rippling wood-grain, a figure outlined as if chalked on a blackboard, and a border that looks like the stylised reverse of a stretched canvas. Gardner seamlessly combines echoes ranging from Cubism, Surrealism and geometric abstraction to the 1980s Memphis design group, assembling a still-life that unfolds layers of rich visual intrigue.
Today based in New York, Gardner was born in Lexington, Kentucky and studied at New York’s School of Visual Arts, later earning his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His teachers there included the artist Jim Nutt, a founding member of the influential Chicago group the Hairy Who, whose surreal, witty and psychedelic works were underpinned by great formal refinement. Nutt’s class would visit the Art Institute museum weekly to study the composition of a single painting in depth. These lessons can be felt in the tight, methodical arrangements of Gardner’s mature works. He begins with drawings that he enlarges using tracing paper, experimenting with, combining and moving around different components until the picture resolves. ‘Mr. Gardner’s engineering grants each element as much autonomy as possible’, notes Roberta Smith. ‘Plated food and grouped objects form small, independent still lifes … All the paintings’ parts are kept in check, just this side of mutiny’ (R. Smith, ‘Galleries’, The New York Times, 22 March 2019, section C, p. 16).
Gardner enfolds a diversity of influences into his work. Notes of Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger join the dreamlike surrealism of Giorgio de Chirico. His flattened pictorial spaces take cues from Indian miniature painting as well as Nutt’s Chicago Imagism. Gardner sees a back-and-forth between art and design: the Memphis Group, he says, ‘had a very seductive use of geometry that I love … the designs that they created were influenced by some of my favourite painters, such as Giorgio de Chirico. I guess it makes sense to me that they would cyclically influence painters’ (J. Gardner, quoted in S. Short, ‘In the Studio: Q&A with Artist Jonathan Gardner’, Christie’s International Real Estate Magazine, 21 February 2020). In Black Cherries, Gardner brings together these ideas into a marvel of quiet complexity. Its pieces slot together with the inevitability of a puzzle, and the satisfaction of its resolution.
Today based in New York, Gardner was born in Lexington, Kentucky and studied at New York’s School of Visual Arts, later earning his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His teachers there included the artist Jim Nutt, a founding member of the influential Chicago group the Hairy Who, whose surreal, witty and psychedelic works were underpinned by great formal refinement. Nutt’s class would visit the Art Institute museum weekly to study the composition of a single painting in depth. These lessons can be felt in the tight, methodical arrangements of Gardner’s mature works. He begins with drawings that he enlarges using tracing paper, experimenting with, combining and moving around different components until the picture resolves. ‘Mr. Gardner’s engineering grants each element as much autonomy as possible’, notes Roberta Smith. ‘Plated food and grouped objects form small, independent still lifes … All the paintings’ parts are kept in check, just this side of mutiny’ (R. Smith, ‘Galleries’, The New York Times, 22 March 2019, section C, p. 16).
Gardner enfolds a diversity of influences into his work. Notes of Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger join the dreamlike surrealism of Giorgio de Chirico. His flattened pictorial spaces take cues from Indian miniature painting as well as Nutt’s Chicago Imagism. Gardner sees a back-and-forth between art and design: the Memphis Group, he says, ‘had a very seductive use of geometry that I love … the designs that they created were influenced by some of my favourite painters, such as Giorgio de Chirico. I guess it makes sense to me that they would cyclically influence painters’ (J. Gardner, quoted in S. Short, ‘In the Studio: Q&A with Artist Jonathan Gardner’, Christie’s International Real Estate Magazine, 21 February 2020). In Black Cherries, Gardner brings together these ideas into a marvel of quiet complexity. Its pieces slot together with the inevitability of a puzzle, and the satisfaction of its resolution.