HOLLAND
Bas Meeuws’ Flower Still Lifes
In Meeuws’ flower still lifes, it’s about the pleasure of observation. The superfine photos lead the eye to the most fascinating details. “I want my onlookers to wonder again,” says Meeuws. “Wonder was very important in the art of flower painting in the Golden Age. Flowers like tulips are now very common in every garden or flower shop. We forget that, in the seventeenth century, a tulip was something exotic which had just started to be imported from Islamic Turkey to the Netherlands. A Dutch person from that time would have stared their eyes out at the unfamiliar and the then unprecedented beauty of the colours and forms of the flowers. I want my work to elicit that wonder again”.
Dr. Maartje van den Heuvel (Art historian)
University Library Leiden
