Limone
(2010)

Here, the artist resumes an older genre of painting: painters of the Baroque period demonstrated their skill in magnificent dining still lives, in which the aim was to paint dishes and food in a deceptively authentic manner. With pomp, but also by representing the fleeting stages of food preparation, they also commemorated transience. In her video, Judith Albert presents but one single lemon as well as the acts of peeling and slicing. “Limone” actually runs backwards: beginning with individual slices fanned out on a plate and by finally showing the whole fruit. Lemons are also found in 17th century still lives. The painters found delight in depicting peels standing out in fine curls, in the opened-up fruit flesh or in the large-pored surfaces. Éduard Manet placed himself in this tradition with his small oil painting entitled “Le Citron” (1880), which focuses on a single fruit in a delicate impressionistic painting style. Judith Albert refers back to these precursors in her video.

Where does the significance of citrus fruits come from? The fruit, which is widely used in the kitchen today, is valued for its vitamin C content and fresh sour taste. In the Renaissance gardens of Italy, lemon trees were first cultivated as decorative plants. With seafaring and the deficiency symptoms of scurvy, the health-promoting effect was discovered. Why does the artist from Central Switzerland choose the Italian word connotation as her title? Italy is known as the country “where the lemons bloom” and is a place of touristic yearning. The Italian word refers to an exotic origin. It is borrowed from the Arab ‘lemon’ and probably came from the north of India. Around the year 1000, the first reliable evidence can be found both in China and in the Mediterranean region. In Sicily, the centre of lemon cultivation in the 19th century, the overseas trade sprouted at the same time as the Mafia: protection rackets arose pertaining to water access and shipping. Vying claims to power, differing methods of dependency and exploitation are all entwined around the lemon.

The cinematic reconstruction of the ‘limone’ back to the whole fruit can be read as an examination of its cultural history and can be understood as a de-construction of Italianesque clichés. Still life pictures have served artists since antiquity as proof of their artifice. Judith Albert takes up the gauntlet. As if she were conjuring with the help of the video, she recreates the unison of the individual pieces of fruit. As if nullifying the vanitas might be achieved by taking it apart?

Andrea Domesle, translated by Christopher Haley Simpson