Pierre Bonnard: Still Life with Tablecloth 1914
According to Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard had a serious flaw: he did not drink alcohol at all. The wine bottle is indeed missing from the table. We see a soup bowl, a small china plate, and a wicker basket of cherries freshly picked from the tree. And of course we see the tablecloth, an ordinary, white-red tablecloth.
Bonnard immortalized his tablecloth in many paintings. It must represent simple, beautiful life, which was important to him. It is white like a clear, pure life. It has the red of the vital force. The pattern is flowing across the cloth like blood vain in human body. This red is what fascinates me, its simple power over the whole still life painting, only this red is not still at all: it holds the most living sensation, like it would be LIFE itself.
Memories run into my mind about my grandpa’s garden, summertime dinners under the old plum tree, china plates on a similar tablecloth, cherry pickings with my grandpa and cherry nibbling until my belly looked like a balloon that flew me to the nearby meadow above the houses to watch my waving grandparents. Now my grandparents look at me from above for a long time, from heaven.