American Art Collaborative

Louis Bouché painted this image in New York, a few years after he returned from Paris. He was inspired by the work of the cubist painters, who reduced nature to simple geometric forms. Here, he fragmented the shapes in this still life to create a distorted view of a tabletop. The dark colors and sharp angles create an almost threatening atmosphere that underlies the ordinariness of the objects.

". . . nature is so much more exciting than art. I've thought in terms of art all my life, but nature is actually much more thrilling." Louis Bouché , Oral History, August 7, 1959, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution