More work by the Czech artist who did the engraved hairscapes. I especially love the one below. It’s a lithograph called French Conversation, 1979, dedicted to Anne and Jacques Baruch, on whose Baruch Foundation website it and other works by Eastern and Central European artists can be found. I came across it first on Marcelo Gallegos’ Monsterism blog — well worth checking out for its eclectic collection of uncanny and fantastical art, including Gallegos’ own.
The copious but softened detail and the depth of the landscape appeal to me, as does the dreamy oddness of the towering bouquets, seemingly weightless, one without a bowl, looking as if it might slowly float away — it’s an image that suggests a whole world, and a story. (Cick for bigger size.)

It seemingly alludes to the Last Supper and the fête champêtre genre, and one can look at the bouquets as floral still-lives returned to nature, the outdoors-brought-indoors brought outdoors again — but while these are a few lines of thought to take as a sort of initial pamphlet guide into the landscape/garden, I think they are only suggestions; the picture transcends its allusions. I see it as an invitation to converse, explore, imagine, discover, and to experience mysteries. The woman might be a muse, a friend, a goddess, a lover, a guide, or an interesting stranger. We’re free to respond in our own way. It’s a generous picture, in the way that good conversation is generous.
It’s also a bit botheringly asymmetrical: my eye wants more landscape on the left, though my mind disagrees and says the asymmetry is a factor in the image’s eerie charm. (As far as I can tell, the woman is in the middle of the picture but not the middle of the table; the off-centre perspective of the table is subtle and I think my brain keeps auto-correcting it so that I don’t see exactly what’s there.)