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David Summers: Nothing but Light
29 August, 2020 - 4 October, 2020
Island Still Life with Calm Sea, 2020. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36″
Big Still Life with Mirrors, Homage to Van Eyck (for D.W.), 2020. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36″
Sunny Studio Still Life with Still Life, 2020. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36″
Big Light, Calm Sea, 2020. Oil on panel, 24 x 36″
Play of Light in the Net of Indra, (2 Blue Pitchers) 2020. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36″
Amaryllis (the Reader), 2019. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36″
Venus Rising from the Foam, 2019. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36″
Mondrian’s Recycling, 2020. Oil on canvas, 32 x 24″ Sold
Still Life with Several Flavors, 2020. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20″
Sky, Sun/Light, Stone. Fragment of A Net of Indra, 2019. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36″
Flora in the Wide Wide World, 2020. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24″
Flora the Great, 2019. Oil on panel, 24 x 18″
Square Still Life with Passing Swan, 2020. Oil on canvas, 20 x 20”
Fragment of the Net of Indra (Night), 2018. Oil on panel, 18 x 36” sold
The Light in my own Backyard, 2020. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36″
Cornucopia, 2020. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24″
Reality is Abstract, 2019. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24″
White on White (Kasimir’s Dream of Home), canvas, 12 x 16″ Sold
Petunias, Candle,2020. Oil on canvas, 12 x 24″
Nothing but Light, 2020. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20″
Still Life with Million-Dollar Balloon Dog, 2019. Oil on canvas, 12 x 16″ sold
Still Life with Sunrise, 2020. Oil on canvas, 12 x 24”. sold
Modern Plate with Votive Candles, 2020. Oil on panel, 12 x 16” sold
The Gourds of 2019. Oil on canvas, 10 x 20″
An Entanglement of Gourds, 2019. Oil on canvas, 10 x 20”
Sunny Gourds, 2019. Oil on canvas, 12 x 24”
World among Stars and Onions I, 2018. Oil on panel, 16 x 20”
World among Stars and Onions II, 2018. Oil on panel, 16 x 20”
Commodity Ghosts Dancing in the Sun, 2020. Oil on canvas, 12 x 24″
Nine Pomegranates, 2019. Oil on panel, 16 x 20”
A Second Pitcher of Baubles, 2020. Oil on canvas, 12 x 24″ sold
Still Life with Apothecary Jar, 2020. Oil on panel, 16 x 20″
Small Net of Indra, Text, 2020. Oil on canvas, 12 x 24″
Still Life with Silver Bowl, Blue Shadow, 2020. Oil on panel, 18 x 24”
A Bowl of Light, 2020. Oil on canvas, 9 x 12″ sold
Small Birth, 2020. Oil on canvas, 10 x 10” sold
Titanium, Cobalt, Cadmium, Silicon, Silver, Aluminum, 2020. Oil on panel, 8 x 10″ sold
A Cube of Baubles, 2020. Oil on canvas, 10 x 8″
The Myth of Narcissus, 2019. Oil on canvas, 8 x 10” sold
A Lesser Judgment of Paris, 2019. Oil on canvas, 7 x 5” sold
David Summers: Nothing but Light will initiate the fall season at Les Yeux du Monde, opening on Saturday, August 29 and running through Sunday October 4, 2020. In this unprecedented time of worldwide pandemic and social injustice, this show seems particularly relevant. Summers, Professor Emeritus Professor of Art Theory and Italian Renaissance art at UVa, is well known for his scholarship, such as his 2003 tome, Real Spaces. World Art History… and his more recent “Manifesto to a World Art museum” for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, that levels the differences between and among civilizations and diverse histories to reveal what is common to them all. His preoccupation with Light and his vast knowledge of history and philosophy inform not just his writing but every painting he makes. For example, his Net of Indra paintings which consist of rows of reflecting bottles and surfaces repeating across the canvas, reference the ancient Buddhist/Hindu story about the Net of Indra—a net of jewels that hangs over Indra’s palace (symbolic of the center of the universe) and in each jewel are reflections of the others.
Summers’ still life paintings range from wonderfully humorous recreations of ancient myths such as Narcissus seeing its reflection in shiny coffee cans, to impressive paintings of paintings within paintings, as in Sunny Studio Still Life with Still LIfe. They are exquisitely painted oils on canvas or panel of seemingly “ordinary” objects or bottles or items often discarded or recycled (Mondrian’s Recycling wittily combines his chosen subjects with the early modern pioneer of geometric abstract art, Piet Mondrian). His seemingly everyday characters and objects of observation, be they gourds on a reflective surface or vases of flowers, sprouting onions, bottles and orbs all acknowledge the Light and, even if performing as humble characters in a play, may be seen as symbolic of the interpenetration and interconnectedness of all phenomena and humanity. Also in his rare land and waterscape paintings, such as The Light in my own Backyard, Light is the central character.
