Helene’s Florist
Richard Estes
RICHARD ESTE, 1932. OIL ON CANVAS.
Perfectly empty, eerily perfect - Estes’ worlds are devoid of people and rendered in such remarkable detail as to almost appear as photographs. Yet it is their perfection that belies their truth, for no camera at the time would have been able to capture such even focus across such a vast depth of field as Estes could do with oil and a brush. His works are uncanny and uncomfortable, the abandoned spaces give us nothing to grab onto. He paints the visual complexity of urban life and reveals it for its difficulties by removing the human, leaving us only able to stare in aesthetic appreciation or horror at the world we inhabit. In this way, Este asks us to slow down with his work, to show that all around us there is room for visual appreciation for those with the eyes to see. To see through the noise of city life, details begin to emerge everywhere - the beauty of typography on a sign, the arrangement of flowers and paving stones, the subtle architecture of storefronts. In Este’s hands, the mundane comes to life on the page and in the viewers mind.