Still-life
with Cactus
circa 1925
With the Asian script
and the floral tracery comes a hint of the Orient. Glazed in a cool tourquoise,
the vase looks meditative, smooth; it holds a pine cone-shaped cactus that,
because of its casual lean to the left, also looks relaxed. They are opposites
that attract: the prickly quality of the plant looms over the notebooks'
supple, limp pages while the vase's pale glaze compliments the redness of the
cloth.
The coupling of these colours brings to
mind a komon (a type of kimono) that
is brightly embroidered with fiery silks and flowering tassels. It is worn by a
young woman, one who walks slowly, oil-paper parasol in hand, through a small garden
bathed in a midday sun. Maybe she is thinking; maybe she sets aside her shade
to write down her thoughts onto a similar pad as this dark green one, with its
ivory paper and string-bound spine, while her long shadow trickles across the
garden's sandy path in a neat arc, like a sun-dial, marking the beginning of
her thoughts to their ends, once they are pencilled on paper. The folds of her
robes remain stiff and formal, but they occasionally yield to a low breeze
which fills and billows them outwards into the shape of a lantern, or a heavy
bubble, only to escape into the surrounding hedges again and leave behind a
trail of incense. The scent is as dark and as deep as the woman's hair, the
tips of which attempt to escape from the tight coil pinned to the crown of her
head. All of this imagery, however personal, comes from this picture - a
picture that was not drawn by a Japanese, but by a Dutch.
