‘The earth laughs in flowers’

In 1891 Artur Loureiro (the Portuguese-born, but Melbourne-residing artist) painted his vision of ‘Spring’ in Kew, Melbourne. In a lush, verdant and peaceful sylvan setting a young woman stands next to a tree bursting with blossoms. Dressed in a long white flowing robe, with a swath of pale pink fabric wrapped around her waist, she holds a spray of flowers and gazes pensively into the distance while another young woman kneels in front of her and fashions a floral garland. In the background, separated from the women by a rill, two youngsters recline beneath a tree enjoying the tranquillity of the moment.

This idyllic scene is typical of the representation of ‘Spring’ commonly painted from the 15^th century onwards. ‘Spring’ is often personified as the ancient goddess of flowers – Chloris (in Greece) or Flora (in Italy) and is most famously depicted in Primavera c. 1482 by Botticelli. In Botticelli’s painting we see Chloris being abducted by Zephyrus (god of the west wind) and morphing into Flora as the union is consummated.

In his ‘Fasti’ the poet Ovid tells of Flora’s garden, a gift from her husband Zephyrus which he filled with flowers. Flowers are the hallmark of spring and remind us of awakening and rebirth. In ancient mythology, Flora is implicated in the transformations of Crocus, Hyacinthus and Narcissus into flowers – some of the earliest manifestations of the arrival of this fecund season.

Apart from the gentle and lyrical depiction of revitalization, Loureiro’s painting has another reference to the season. He was insistent that the painting have a particular frame by the local framer, John Thallon. Wide flat frames were being used in Melbourne in the last years of the 19^th century and for Spring Loureiro chose to ornament the frame applying sprays of wattle- blossom and clematis, and twigs and leaves from river red gums, which were then gilded over. By incorporating local spring foliage around a classical depiction of the season, Loureiro may have been uniting his European heritage with his more recent life in Australia as he acknowledged the universality of seasonal transformation.

Not surprisingly, the foliage on the frame was fragile and there are numerous losses in the remaining twigs and leaves. While this is unfortunate, it does remind us of the delicate and ephemeral nature of flowers which bloom so urgently and then fade.

The issue of transience, decay, death, and preservation is something that has obsessed the British artist, Marc Quinn, whose vibrant and ‘insistent’ floral photographs are also in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 1998, Quinn began to freeze live flowers (including roses, lilies and sunflowers) to explore the presence of life out of a process of death. Quinn found that freezing a flower caused it to shrivel from dehydration, while immersing a flower in liquid silicone would preserve it forever in ‘immaculate perfection’. This resulted in a number of artworks exploring botanical rebirth where the ‘death’ of a flower through freezing results in its ‘eternal life’. Quinn describes it as: ‘Flowers when they freeze, become pure image … they become an image of [the] perfect flower. Because in reality their matter is dead and they are suspended in a state of transformation between pure image and pure matter’.

In 2000, Quinn exhibited ‘Garden’ in the Fondazione Prada in Milan. ‘Garden’ is a 12-metre-long and 3-metre-high sculpture in which thousands of flowers were frozen in silicone. The flowers used could never bloom at the same time of the year, or in the same parts of the world. For Quinn the installation was his idea of the ‘perfect paradise’. Despite the ‘seeming immortality’ of the installation, it relied on a number of technical and engineering interventions to exist – the plants were maintained in 25 tons of liquid silicone at a temperature of -20°C.

‘Garden’ became the impetus for several series of two-dimensional works by Quinn including ‘Winter Garden‘. In ‘Winter Garden‘, 2004 we see images of a glorious and deliriously colourful floral world. The enormous, larger than life flowers, nestled in the snow, crowd the picture plane.  Irises, Singapore orchids, gerberas, and anthuriums among others, proudly and brazenly ‘strut their stuff’ in an artificially created environment.

These large-scale photographs dwarf and engulf those who stand in front of them. Quinn’s intention is to reduce the viewer ‘to the experience of an insect’ and for us to consider our place in nature. He says: “There is no such thing as nature anymore. It’s all culture now. Every landscape you see is a manipulated landscape, every flower has been genetically modified through breeding to be like it is, so these pictures are about The Garden being constructed, not grown”.

While reminding us of the extraordinary beauty and diversity of the real world, Quinn’s flowers also challenge us to consider the possibility of future manufactured worlds where seasons as we know them may sadly no longer exist.