{"id":51,"date":"2013-11-14T16:23:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T21:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/?p=51"},"modified":"2015-01-01T11:07:14","modified_gmt":"2015-01-01T16:07:14","slug":"still-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/?p=51","title":{"rendered":"Still Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The genre of painting known as \u201cstill life\u201d deals with our perception of the natural world. As such it has much in common with the empirical sciences.. However, whereas the scientist analyses the world, the artist tries to recreate it.<\/p>\n

The still-life artist selects and arranges what will be depicted. If landscape is observation, then still life is experiment. The view of the world typically includes artificial as well as natural objects. More often than not, the arrangement of the objects provides a moral meaning, typically one related to transience or \u201cvanity.\u201d The still-life painting thus comments on both the nature of reality and the process of creation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The English word \u201cstill\u201d means both \u201cunmoving\u201d and \u201cpersistent.\u201d \u00a0In French, the term nature morte<\/i> accentuates the idea of mortality. In Spanish, the term bodegon<\/i> means \u201cpantry.\u201d Spanish still-life paintings represent the food, drink, jars, plates and utensils that may be found in a pantry.<\/p>\n

In classical Greek the term was xenia. <\/i>This generally concerns strangers but in this context it has to do with the hospitality relationship between the guest (stranger) and the host. A good host orders the world for the comfort and pleasure of the guest. In his book Imagines<\/i> (\u201cPictures\u201d), Philostratus describes a still life of cherries in a basket, pointing out that the basket is woven from the twigs of the cherry tree. The artist has added a backgroudn narrative to the perceived world. Though the painting’s cherries cannot provide real sustenance, their representation can provide pleasure. We can revel in the meanings. The picture emphasizes \u201cthe elaborate changes of ontological register as images pass between different levels or degrees of reality, away from a primordially-given real and towards an increasingly sophisticated set of fictions-within-fictions.\u201d (Bryson, 1990).<\/p>\n

The Dutch and Flemish paintings of the seventeenth century are magnificent creations, both in terms of how the artists set up their scenes and how well they were was able to represent them. The painting of Still Life with Strawberries and Cherries <\/i>(1658) by Jan Janz. van de Velde III is in the Daisy Linda Ward Collection at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (Meijer, 2003). This collection of almost one hundred paintings is displayed in one room, wherein the viewer can contemplate art and transience to the heart\u2019s content.<\/p>\n

\"van<\/a>A high window on the left is indicated by the multiple reflections from the Venetian wineglass. Light scintillates off the complex stem of the glass outlining its form. On the table an imported porcelain bowl contains ripening strawberries. Dutch art pays homage to Chinese culture. Though the surface sheen of the porcelain is deftly represented, the shape is imperfect: the real bowl must have been more exactly circular and the scallops on the edges more evenly spaced. A few cherries and some pits are scattered on the table top. Two cherries hang over the edge to convince us of both reality\u2019s three dimensions and art\u2019s two. The upper right of the picture is dark. Nothing can be seen. The objects lay their claim to the light, and insist upon existing.<\/p>\n

In his poem Still Life in Milford<\/i>, Thomas Lynch<\/a> touches on the different aspects of still life\u00a0(Lynch, 1998). \u00a0The poem is an example of ekphrasis,<\/i> a work of art about a work of art, typically a literary description of a painting or sculpture. Lynch\u2019s poem describes a 1965 painting by Lester Johnson. The painting represents a bucket of flowers on a table, together with a vase to arrange them in and the artist\u2019s pipe smoldering in an ashtray. Lynch thinks that the pipe might \u201csuggest the artist and impending action.\u201d It might also be an allusion to Magritte\u2019s 1928 painting Le Trahison des Images<\/i> (\u201cThe betrayal of the images\u201d), wherein a picture of a pipe and the words Ceci n\u2019est pas un pipe <\/i>(\u201cThis is not a pipe\u201d) call into question the very idea of representation.<\/p>\n

Lynch\u2019s poem plays with all the meaning of the word \u201cstill\u201d \u2013 without motion, without sound, without stopping, but most of all with the sense of \u201cnevertheless\u201d (without submission). It ends with a meditation on artistic creation:<\/p>\n

Still Life in Milford <\/i>seems a parable
\non the human hunger for creation.
\nThe flowers move from bucket to vase
\nlike moving words at random into song \u2013
\nthe act of ordering is all the same \u2013
\nthe ordinary becomes a celebration.
\nWhether paper, canvas, ink or oil paints,
\nonce finished we achieve a peace we call
\nStill Life in Milford<\/i>. Then we sign our names.<\/p>\n

Perception is the way we understand the world given to us by our senses. We can organize what we perceive according to \u00a0principles of science. We can recreate what we perceive in artistic representations. Science and art are our means to understand the meaning of our world.<\/p>\n

Bryson, N. (1990). Looking at the overlooked: Four essays on still life painting<\/i>. London: Reaktion Books. (p. 32).<\/p>\n

Meijer, F. G. (2003). The collection of Dutch and Flemish still-life paintings bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward: Catalogue of the collection of paintings<\/i>. Zwolle: Waanders<\/p>\n

Lynch, T. (1998). Still life in Milford: Poems<\/i>. New York: W.W. Norton.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The genre of painting known as \u201cstill life\u201d deals with our perception of the natural world. As such it has much in common with the empirical sciences.. However, whereas the scientist analyses the world, the artist tries to recreate it. The still-life artist selects and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":15,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,5],"tags":[92,73],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-painting","category-poetry","tag-jan-janz","tag-thomas-lynch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":734,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}