A Clamouring and Chromatic Noise

 Coke Bottles

16" x 20"

oil on canvas, 2012

In this painting I ask, what would happen if Andy Warhol met Claudio Bravo (whose work continues to interest me).  In other words, how could  the flat graphic style of Warhol's depictions of coke bottles be rendered in the three dimensional illusionism of realist painting. 

These Coke bottles (detail to the left) were from a special edition where the original bottles were wrapped in different plastic designs.

I tried to counter-balance the symmetrical composition with the dynamic graphics of the bottles.  I couldn't help but think a little bit about Morandi and his humble arrangements of bottles and how these are quite a contrast with the global branding and consumerism associated with Coca-Cola.

In an article in The Nation, the writer asks:

How can small paintings of a few simple bottles and boxes be so irresistible? Why did Morandi return to these objects over and over, and without the gloss of routine ever dulling his art? The literature about Morandi almost universally answers these questions with recourse to two metaphors: his pictures are poems in paint, or they are studies in stillness and silence. 


Although these objects have a clamouring and chromatic noise about them, I too want to evoke the silence inherent in the genre of still life. Maybe in part their simple arrangement symbolizes the desire of this age - to retreat from the noise and yet, still to possess the benefits of our consumerist society.