Royal Flush
Royal Flush, 1973
Audrey Flack (American, born 1931)
#1985.0011.0004
From 1993–1998, Audrey Flack was a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. A student of Josef Albers, Audrey Flack received her BFA from Yale University in 1952, and was awarded an honorary degree from Cooper Union. She has the distinction of being the only Photo-Realist artist whose work is represented in the collections of New York’s four major museums. Her paintings and photographs function as a self-aware pastiche of kitschy pop culture themes and classical allusions.
In Royal Flush the viewer sees cards strewn upon a table at the conclusion of a poker game. The composition, however, is much more complicated than initially perceived. In the tradition of Flack’s work, it is a highly symbolic photograph that could be interpreted as a modern day Vanitas derived from the Dutch visual tradition. The photograph is heavily masculine and lively, the whiskey of one of the losing players is being refilled, a cigarette burns down in the foreground and the pot has yet to be claimed by the winner. The player in the background has a full house, usually a winning hand with a pair of queens and three aces. However, the player directly in front of the viewer has a Royal Flush, literally the highest hand possible. Meant to be a reflection on the momentary successes of life, the image contains other symbolic imagery of winning and losing. The dice directly in front of the viewer is set to seven – a winning number if thrown on the first roll. Ironically, after the first turn, seven automatically loses.
