Buddha

In this still life, a beaded necklace and a ribbon project outward across a painted gray frame. In the words of the artist, Audrey Flack, this arrangement violates “the sanctity of the two-dimensional picture plane.” Flack worked from color photographs, using an airbrush to render the complex, reflective surfaces of a green Buddha statuette and an array of lustrous objects. She rejected the typical subject matter of photorealism—automobiles and store window displays—for stereotypically feminine objects such as jewelry, porcelain, and perfume vials, arranged in altar-like compositions.