I’m drawn to artwork that is historically referential, that subtly tips its hat to the artists and works that came before it and helped breathe it into being. This photograph by Ryan Schude, Pepper Tree, does just that. What, at first blush, appears to be a woman, reading under the shade of a California Pepper tree in her backyard, upon closer inspection reveals a deeper, more intricate message.
To me, the image recalls a painting by Jean Augusté Ingres called La Grande Odalisque, from nearly 200 years ago, 1814. This painting, considered hideously erotic and inappropriate in its day, features a naked woman with her back turned to us. She is surrounded by sumptuous textiles and lavishly adorned accessories, and she is neither ashamed of her nudity, nor particularly interested in the reason you, the viewer, have interrupted her reverie. In the 1800s, Schude’s female protagonist’s bowl of fruit, some of which has been peeled and left, carelessly, to spoil, would have been an outrageous extravagance, even more so by the fact that it is wasted. The misty, foggy atmosphere of Schude’s photograph imparts an aura of the mysterious to the image, similar to the atmosphere of Ingres’ painting, in which the odalisque has surely been smoking hookah or opium as evidenced by the pipe sitting by her left foot. That’s why Pepper Tree is my Pick of the Week.
Jean Augusté Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814, Oil on canvas, 35 x 64 inches | Image courtesy of the Louvre