Art Imitating Life,

or life imitating art?

 Van Gogh, Picasso, Redon and Renoir the list goes as to the number of famous painters that have used flowers as a subject, so what did these artistic minds see in the bouquet? this is the question that led Japanese flower artist Makoto Azuma on an investigative series, and for the past 3 years he’s been creating exact replicas of famous flower paintings but using real flowers, above sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh,

 wildflowers in a long neck vase by Odilon Redon

 vase of flowers by Pablo Picasso

roses in a copper vase by Claude Monet, Azuma’s real-life flower bouquets of famous paintings naturally took on an element of time as his creations would wilt. Now, in a collaboration with the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, Azuma has recreated 3 bouquets from paintings housed in the museum’s collection: one by the French impressionist Auguste Renoir, another by the French painter Odilon Redon and a third by the Japanese painter Kuroda Seiki, Azuma filmed each bouquet and then created a composite video that begins with the painting and then morphs into the actual bouquet as it begins to wilt, the exhibition, titled “Drop Time” is on display at the Pola Museum of Art now through March 17, 2019, so is it life depicting art or the other way around?