Research into Still life genre

Still life of the sixteenth century

There is a vast amount of historical information available on the still life genre, and to understand mind-set of the artists, and it’s important to put it in the context of the times the artists lived. However I’m focusing mainly on my own feelings when looking the paintings and trying to understand what the artist was trying to say.

Although still life paintings appeared occasionally in antiquity, still life as an independent genre really occurred in the renaissance period; the 16th and 17th centuries. The period following the reformation saw the rise of a wealthy middle class, and a new market for secular subjects rather than religious art and portraiture to decorate homes.

Although there were early German, French, Italian and Spanish artists producing still life paintings, the genre flourished most particularly in the Netherlands in the early 1600s, where realistic still life paintings portraying objects from all aspects of everyday life were extremely popular. Paintings full of symbolism and messages; with skulls, dead animals, candles, sandglasses and the like as allegories of mortality, in combination with flowers and fruits to represent the natural cycle, and these works are categorised as Vanitas, or symbolic works.

Looking at examples of still life work by Dutch artists of the sixteenth and seventeen century I notice that they are very detailed and highly realistic, mostly painted with a full background giving the subject a sense of depth, place and space, all painted at eye level, and mostly with a dark palette, particularly the background.

Examples:

This painting, Vanitas Still life by Jacques de Gheyn, is very skilfully painted, but it makes me feel depressed and somewhat frightened.

The dark background, the skull, the flower and the vases at each side, all allegories of our own mortality. The figures high up on each side pointing to the skull, all seem to be reminding us the one day we too will be dead. And the coins scattered at the bottom, reminding us that won’t be taking anything with us when we go.

This painting, Falconer’s Bag by Jan Weenix, is also beautifully executed, and so full of detail that every time I look at it something new appears.

However my eye is drawn to the dead birds, which makes me feel very sad and frightened, and the very dramatic and dynamic clouds give me the impression that something very bad has just happened. All this tragedy, combined with the symbolism the artist has included, of the flowers, the bell and the marble sculpture are there to transmit a moral message to the viewer.

When I saw this painting, Banquet Still life by Abraham van Beyeren, I was initially struck by the colourful pallet the artist used. Full of detail and beautifully done, it is a much more cheerful painting of a table crammed with seafood, fruits and luxurious objects; the table cloth, the gold and silverware, all of which individually appeal to me.

However somehow it makes me feel uneasy, it’s all too much, suggestive of gluttony and excess, an orgiastic party about to happen, and a moral message on greed.

I later found this painting of the same name by the same artist Banquet Still life by Abraham van Beyeren, this time evidently after the party, showing the wasted remains of the food and fruit, the soiled tablecloth and the tipped vase, all of which reinforces the feeling I gained from the other work and confirms the moral message.

My conclusion is that after the reformation, through the new market for secular subjects, the artists of the era felt a responsibility to use their paintings to pass moral messages to society … reminding their audience of mortality and the results of giving in to excess.

Still life - Nineteenth century

The two major artistic movements which dominated the second half of the century were Impressionism and Post-impressionism.

The Impressionists were a group of painters who took up themes from modern life, executing primarily landscape and genre subjects, with broken colour and loose brushwork which reflected the transitory nature of the images they depicted. In response, the Post-Impressionists developed independent styles of painting which rejected the objective naturalism of the Impressionists. (In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000).

Paul Cezanne (French, 1839-1906) exhibited with the Impressionists but is generally categorized as a Post-Impressionist. From mid-1870 Cézanne changed his artistic approach of thickly encrusted surfaces, and developed a style of building forms completely from colour, creating scenes with distorted perspectival space. His unique method of building form with colour, and his analytical approach to nature influenced the art of Cubists, Fauvists. (https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pcez/hd_pcez.htm)

Examples of Cézanne’s work -

‘Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses’ is a very engaging and relaxing painting due to the colours that he used, and although it has many objects it is a very simple composition. What I see clearly in this painting is that there is not the usual perspective, his vantage point is above the horizontal, and/or the table is tilted towards the viewer, so we see much more of the groups of fruit, the folds in the cloth, and the leaves and flowers in the pot than if he was level with the table, as if he wants us to see the painting from different angles at the same time.

In this earlier Cezanne work, ‘Dish of Apples’, what I find interesting is his use of bright colours, which gives the painting a very happy feeling, and his creation of form, light and shadow. The apples look very realistic, and yet at the same time impressionistic. The background however is clearly impressionistic, and the space between the objects gives it a sense of calm.

Modern Art - The Cubism movement

Cubism was invented by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) and George Braque (French, 1882-1963) who were influence by Cezanne’s idea that nature could be represented by the cylinder, the sphere and the cone.

The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modelling, and foreshortening. They instead wanted to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas and they reduced and fractured objects to geometric forms which they realigned within a shallow, relief-like space, using multiple or contrasting vantage points. (Sabine Rewald, 2014 The Met. Museum of Art)

Examples of Picasso and Braque paintings -

Picasso ‘Fruit dishes’ - In this painting we can clearly see the influence of Cezanne in Picasso’s artwork, the use of perspective to show different angles, the tilted table, the fruits spread on the table. However it is not a realistic or impressionistic representation of nature, he uses basic shapes, lines and sharp angles. I like this painting very much because is created with simple shapes in an unusual way, and yet despite the unusual perspective it nevertheless has depth.

Pablo Picasso, ‘Bowl of Fruit, Violin, Bottle and (painted) Newspaper’ - This painting resembles to a collage, and the name is very intriguing as apart from the violin and the newspaper I cannot see a representation of the bowl or the bottle. It may be that Picasso intended the viewer to keep looking to try to find the connection, and then start noticing the shapes, the letters and the harmonious colours which give the painting a pleasant feeling.

George Braque, Glass on a Table - In contrast to the Picasso examples, this painting makes me feel nervous. Though the shapes are easily recognisable the composition appears chaotic, and although the browns combined with the greys and blues don’t clash, I find the combination unpleasant. The lower part looks as if the plate is on the top of a pier and there are waves about to rise over it.

Still life and Contemporary Artists

Gabriel Orozco, Black Kites (Mexican 1997) - Is a very powerful painting of a skull, and in contrast to the usual feeling of fear I experience with traditional skull paintings, this painting doesn’t scare me, despite the black background. The painting makes me think about what is inside our heads; the black and white square patterns remind me of a chessboard, and on a chessboard each square has a purpose in the game just as all the parts of our brain have a purpose in our life.

Rebecca Scott, The Perfect Hostess - is a beautiful and very detailed painting, almost in the Impressionist genre. The portrait format of the painting gives a very dynamic feeling, as if the plates, the glasses and the cutlery are about to be laid out at any moment. Perhaps for that reason, although the colours are soft I do not get a sense of calm, the untidy state of the plates and cutlery gives me a sense of expectation that they should be laid out now, maybe by the person in the background.

My observation from this research is that the still life genre has evolved from symbolism, which flourished in the sixteenth century, to experimentation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and is now focussed on senses and feelings in this our contemporary era.

References:

Sara Cornell, Art - A History of Changing Styles 1993, Phaidon Press Limited,

https://www.britannica.com/art/still-life-painting

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nstl/hd_nstl.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/reformation_overview_01.shtml

The Guadian, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2013/oct/19/10-best-contemporary-still-lifes

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Essays :

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cube/hd_cube.htm

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poim/hd_poim.htm