Flower Study by Nunzio La Spina

This composition occupies a sort of uncanny valley in painting: its vase and flowers use one regime of three-dimensionality; its plant stand uses a different regime, or perhaps the same from a different vantage point. No viewing point can make those two cohere. La Spina’s still life is not cubist in its treatment of space, yet results in an object not simply floating in space, but tethered to another perspective. Compare the aesthetic here to his more traditional “October Bouqet.”