Still-life painting, depiction of inanimate objects for the sake of their qualities of form, colour, texture, and composition.
Although early cave paintings depict inanimate objects they were as talismans to bring good luck, or to ward off evil. It was not until people became richer and spent less of their time on just surviving that still life as something to appreciate for its own sake emerged. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica that was during the Renaissance which happened after the Middle Ages. I thought that seemed a bit odd, the Greeks and Romans depicted still lives too - look at some of the images found at Pompeii. Apparently art in the Middle Ages was very much controlled by the church and involved depicting scenes from the bible though there was some lovely still life set within these paintings see the objects on the shelves in Van Eyck's Virgin and Child with a book (Bridgeman Educational Library) or the food on the table in Caravaggio's The Supper at Emmaus. (The National Gallery) According to EH Gombrich " The Story of Art " the Dutch masters were the fathers of still life painting and proved that the subject matter may not be as important as the painting itself and illustrated it with this picture by Willen Kalf which has the snappy title of;
Still life with the drinking horn of the St Sebastian Archers Guild, lobster and glasses
Gombrich contrasts this with Cezannes painting
which still manages to convey a sense of depth even though the perspective is warped and the shapes are formed in an manner far more like a drawing
Georges Braque and Picasso took this further with fractured paintings such as Still life with a harp and violin (Bridgeman Educational Library) Still life with a clarinet on a table It's hard to see the objects that inspired the paintings but there is a flavour. I'm not such a fan of his later work which is much simplified and gets a bit cartoon like for my taste. Picasso also made stylised paintings such as Pitcher and bowl of fruit which glows like a stained glass window and used found objects to create 3D still life's
The Guardian has a selection of contemporary still life's in this article. Some of them seem to be a natural evolution from earlier objects, some (such as Marc Quinn's Self) seem to stretch the definition of still life somewhat.
I like the idea of unusual objects for still life pictures Gummy bears, Ladders and items from modern life
Flowers, fruit and bottles still appear in a lot of pictures when you look for contemporary still life pictures but few of them are doing anything radically different to the Dutch Masters. I do really like the idea that the object is less important than the painting/drawing. Maybe it is more important to draw the dull the ordinary and the everyday because that is what we overlook. Going back to the Urbansketchers website Sharon Frost draws very ordinary scenes but makes them important because she has taken time over them. Is the role of the artist to make people stop and examine the ordinary world around them?
Sadly I missed this exhibition but it looks interesting. I did see the Saachi Gallery exhibition Paper which had a number of drawings. The variety of media was interesting, I particularly liked Paul Westcombe's drawings on paper cups. The overall effect was decorative but the subject matter wasn't!
There's also Andrea Joseph who draws the things we had in our pencil cases at school, but also street signs and envelopes. Her work is quite stylised and does remind me of all the doodles we did in our notebooks at school, maybe that is why she is successful.
These modern still life's (lives?) do stretch perspectives and angles. Do drawings of rooms, furniture and buildings (urban landscapes) still fit into the still life category in some way? They are inanimate objects drawn for their shapes or textures.
Wilst researching I found this which isn't still life but is a very interesting drawing
PS I don't like the way the OCA text refers to young contemporary artists. What about the middle ages and the old ones......?
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