Patrick Caulfield – Lamp and Lung Ch’uan Ware

A standout from Caulfield’s refined White Ware series, Lamp and Lung Ch’uan Ware distills the essence of still life into something cool, crisp, and deeply graphic. A white ceramic vessel—referencing Lung Ch’uan porcelain from Song Dynasty China—sits beneath a shaft of stark white light, while a lampshade hovers beside it, barely distinguishable from the dark background. Shadow and silhouette take centre stage, reducing form and space to near-abstraction.

Inspired by East Asian ceramics catalogued by the V&A, Caulfield used light not to mimic nature but to build structure. “I’m not actually painting from observation,” he said. “I’m making up an idea of how light could appear to be.” The result is a body of work that’s both philosophical and visual—thinking hard about what it means to see, while staying visually irresistible.