The Easel | Art journalism

9th September 2025

Van Gogh and the secret meanings of plants

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 1st September 2025

A new book describing the symbolic meaning of plants and flowers in art. It emphasises happy connotations. Flowers have variously signalled purity (lily), love (rose) and wisdom (iris). Yet less happy associations abound. Van Gogh painted the poisonous oleander as a warning of danger. The palm, common is medieval art, signalled the choice of death over a pagan marriage. And mushrooms living in the dank undergrowth represented “sinfulness at the base of humanity”. Not quite a breezy summer read.

2nd September 2025

One painting at a time: ‘The Little Pastry Chef’ by Chaïm Soutine

Susan Gray | Prospect | 26th August 2025

Soutine’s work ramps up the emotions, sometimes almost to a level of visual violence. Emotional intensity is one ingredient of Little Pastry Chef (1927). The pose communicates “concentrated energy and vitality” while also hinting at the insecurities of youth. Soutine has chosen as his subject a hospitality worker, a new class of urban worker in an urbanising society. Individual insecurity, social turbulence – Soutine knew how to unsettle. Decades hence, Willem de Kooning took note.

De Kooning Willem portraiture post-impressionism Soutine Chaim Van Gogh Vincent

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