A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF STILL LIFE PAINTING
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on). With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Graeco-Roman art, still-life painting emerged as a distinct genre and professional specialization in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has remained significant since then.
Still life gives the artist more freedom in the arrangement of elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of subjects such as landscape or portraiture. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted.
Still-life paintings often adorned the interiors of ancient Egyptian tombs. It was believed that food objects and other items depicted there would, in the afterlife, become real and available for use by the deceased. Ancient Greek vase paintings also demonstrate great skill in depicting everyday objects and animals. Similar still life paintings, more decorative in intent, but with realistic perspective, have also been found in the Roman wall paintings and floor mosaics unearthed at Pompeii. Decorative mosaics termed ‘emblema’, found in the homes of wealthy Roman aristocrats, demonstrated the range of food enjoyed by the upper classes, and also functioned as signs of hospitality and celebration. By the 16th century, food and flowers would frequently appear as symbols of the seasons and of the five senses. Also starting in Roman times is the tradition of the use of the skull in paintings as a symbol of mortality and earthly remains, often with the accompanying phrase ‘Omnia mors aequat’ (Death makes all equal). These vanitas images have been recycled throughout the last 400 years of art history, starting with Dutch painters around the 1600s.
By 1300, starting with Giotto di Bondone (an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages, generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Renaissance) and his pupils, still-life painting was revived in the form of fictional niches on religious wall paintings which depicted everyday objects. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, still life in Western art remained primarily an adjunct to Christian religious subjects, and convened religious and allegorical meaning. This was particularly true in the work of Northern European artists, whose fascination with highly detailed optical realism and symbolism led them to pay great attention to the way still life affected their paintings’ overall message.
The development of oil painting techniques by Jan van Eyck and other Northern European artists made it possible to paint everyday objects in a hyper-realistic fashion, due to the slow drying, mixing, and layering capabilities of oil paints. Among the first artists to separate still life painting from religious meaning were Leonardo da Vinci, who created watercolor studies of fruit as part of his restless examination of nature, and Albrecht Dürer who also made precise ink drawings of various flora and fauna.
Prominent scholars of the early 17th century, such as Andrea Sacchi, felt that still-life painting did not carry the “gravitas” merited for a painting to be considered great. A statement in 1667 by André Félibien, (a leading theoretician of French classicism) became the accepted theory concerning the hierarchy of genres for 17th century painting:
“He who produces perfect landscapes is above another who only produces fruit, flowers or seafood. He who paints living animals is more estimable than those who only represent dead things without movement, and as man is the most perfect work of God on the earth, it is also certain that he who becomes an imitator of God in representing human figures, is much more excellent than all the others…”
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, European artists developed trends within still life painting that were unique to the culture in the countries in which they lived. Starting in the Baroque period, bodegón paintings became very popular in Spain. A bodegón is a still-life painting depicting pantry items, such as food and drink, often arranged on a simple stone slab, or with one or more figures, but significant still-life elements, typically set in a kitchen or tavern.
Meanwhile, floral paintings in oil were becoming increasingly popular in Dutch & Flemish countries. Northern artists found limited opportunity to produce the religious iconography which had long been their staple since images of religious subjects were forbidden by the governing Dutch Reformed Protestant Church. The continuing Northern tradition of detailed realism and hidden symbols remained popular and appealed to the growing Dutch middle class, who was replacing the Church as the principal patron of art in the Netherlands. Adding to this was the Dutch mania for horticulture, particularly the tulip. Flowers were viewed as both aesthetic objects and as religious symbols. These views merged to create a very strong market for this type of still life painting. So popular was this type of still-life painting in fact, that much of the technique of Dutch flower painting was codified in the 1740 treatise Groot Schilderboeck by Gerard de Lairesse, which gave wide-ranging advice on color, arrangement, brushwork, preparation of floral specimens, tonal harmony, composition, and perspective.
Even though Italian still-life painting was gaining in popularity, it remained less respected than paintings of historical, religious, and mythic subjects. Many leading Italian artists in these genres, also produced some still-life paintings. For example, Caravaggio applied his influential perspective of naturalism to still life. His ‘Basket of Fruit’ (1595) is one of the first examples of pure still life, precisely rendered and set at eye level.
With the rise of the European Academies, most notably the Académie française which held a central role in Academic art, still life began to fall from favor. The Academies taught a hierarchy of subject matter which held that a painting’s artistic merit was based primarily on its subject. In the Academic system, the highest form of painting consisted of images of historical, Biblical or mythological significance, with still-life subjects relegated to the very lowest order of artistic recognition. Instead of using still life to glorify nature, many artists, includingJohn Constable and Camille Corot, began to use landscape painting instead.
With the decline of Neo-Classicism by the early 1800s, still life and portrait painting became the focus for the Realist and Romantic artistic movements. Many of the great artists of that period included still life in their body of work. The still-life paintings of Francisco Goya,Gustave Courbet, and Eugène Delacroix convey a strong emotional current, and are less concerned with exactitude and more interested in mood. Though patterned on earlier still-life subjects, Édouard Manet painted still lifes that were strongly tonal and clearly headed toward Impressionism.
However, it was not until the final decline of the Academic hierarchy in Europe, and the rise of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, that technique and color harmony triumphed over subject matter, and that still life was once again avidly practiced by artists. With Impressionist still life paintings, allegorical and mythological content is completely absent, as is meticulously detailed brush work. Impressionists instead focused on experimentation in broad, dabbing brush strokes, tonal values, and experimental color placement. The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists were inspired by nature’s color schemes but reinterpreted them with their own color harmonies, which sometimes proved startlingly unrealistic. As Gauguin once stated, “Colors have their own meanings”. Variations in perspective were also used, such as tight cropping and high angles, as with ‘Fruit Displayed on a Stand’ by Gustave Caillebotte, a painting which was mocked at the time as a “display of fruit in a bird’s-eye view.”
Vincent van Gogh‘s sunflower paintings are some of the best-known 19th-century still-life paintings. Van Gogh used mostly tones of yellow and rather flat rendering to make a memorable contribution to still-life history. His ‘Still Life with Drawing Board’ (1889) is a self-portrait in still-life form, with Van Gogh depicting many items of his personal life, including his pipe, simple foods, an inspirational book, and a letter from his brother, all laid out on his table, without his own image present. He also painted his own version of a vanitas painting ‘Still Life with Open Bible, Candle, and Book’ (1885).[57]
In the United States during Revolutionary times, American artists who trained abroad applied European styles to American portrait painting and still life. Charles Willson Peale founded a school of prominent American painters, and as a major leader in the American art community, also founded a society for the training of artists as well as a famous museum of natural curiosities. His son Raphaelle Peale was one of a group of early American still-life artists, which also included John F. Francis, Charles Bird King, and John Johnston.
The first four decades of the 20th century formed an exceptional period of artistic ferment and revolution. Avant-garde movements rapidly evolved and overlapped in a march towards non-figurative painting and total abstraction. The still life, as well as other representational art forms, continued to evolve and adjust until the mid-century when the abstract expressionists eliminated all recognizable content from painting.
The century began with several trends taking hold in art. In 1901, Paul Gauguin painted ‘Still Life with Sunflowers’, his homage to Van Gogh who had died eleven years earlier. The group known as Les Nabis, including Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, took up Gauguin’s harmonic theories and added elements inspired by Japanese woodcuts to their still-life paintings.
Henri Matisse reduced the rendering of still-life objects even further to little more than bold, flat outlines filled with bright colors. He also simplified perspective and introduced multi-color backgrounds. In some of his still-life paintings, such as ‘Still Life with Eggplants’, his table of objects is nearly lost amidst the other colorful patterns filling the rest of the room. Other Fauvist artists, such as Maurice de Vlaminck andAndré Derain, further explored pure color and abstraction in their still life paintings.
Paul Cézanne found in still life the perfect vehicle for his revolutionary explorations in geometric spatial organization. For Cézanne, still life was a primary means of taking painting away from an illustrative or mimetic function to one demonstrating independently the elements of color, form, and line, a major step towards abstract art. Cézanne’s experiments can be seen as leading directly to the development of Cubist still life painting in the early 20th century.
Adapting Cézanne’s shifting of planes, the Cubists subdued the color palette of the Fauves and focused instead on deconstructing objects into pure geometrical forms and planes. Between 1910 and 1920, Cubist artists like Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris painted many still-life compositions, often including musical instruments, bringing still life to the forefront of artistic innovation, almost for the first time. Still life was also the subject matter in the first Cubist collage works, such as Picasso’s oval ‘Still Life with Chair Caning’ (1912). In these works, still-life objects overlap and intermingle barely maintaining identifiable two-dimensional forms, losing individual surface texture, and merging into the background—achieving goals nearly opposite to those of traditional still life. Fernand Léger’s still life introduced the use of abundant white space and colored, sharply defined, overlapping geometrical shapes to produce a more mechanical effect.
Rejecting the flattening of space by Cubists, Marcel Duchamp and other members of the Dada movement, went in a radically different direction, creating 3-D “ready-made” still-life sculptures. As part of restoring some symbolic meaning to still life, the Futurists and the Surrealists placed recognizable still-life objects in their dreamscapes. In Joan Miró’s still-life paintings, objects appear weightless and float in a lightly suggested two-dimensional space. In Italy during this time, Giorgio Morandi was the foremost still-life painter, exploring a wide variety of approaches to depicting everyday bottles and kitchen implements. Dutch artist M. C. Escher, best known for his detailed yet ambiguous graphics, created ‘Still life and Street’ (1937), his updated version of the traditional Dutch table still life.
When 20th-century American artists became aware of European Modernism, they began to interpret still-life subjects with a combination of American realism and Cubist-derived abstraction. Typical of the American still-life works of this period are the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Stuart Davis, and Marsden Hartley. O’Keeffe’s ultra-closeup flower paintings reveal both the physical structure and the emotional subtext of petals and leaves in an unprecedented manner. In Mexico, starting in the 1930s, Frida Kahlo and other artists created their own brand of Surrealism, featuring native foods and cultural motifs in their still-life paintings.
Starting in the 1930s, Abstract Expressionism severely reduced still life to raw depictions of form and color. By contrast, the rise of Photorealism in the 1970s reasserted illusionistic representation.
Still life painting has affirmed its place in art, and continues to be one of the most versatile and interesting subjects for painters to use today.
PABLO PICASSO: (1881-1973)
GEORGES BRAQUE: (1882-1963)
PIET MONDRIAN: (1872-1944)
VANITAS PAINTINGS:
Paintings executed in the vanitas style were meant to remind viewers of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. They also provided a moral justification for painting attractive objects.
CONTEMPORARY VANITAS SCULPTURE!!!!
More Bodegón Painting:
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