The Joy of the Still Life: 1 - Esther

There are so many. They appear in paint, print, sculpture & ink. There are famous ones, Old Master ones, obscure ones & extremely odd ones. I embarked on a “100 Still Lifes” list on Facebook this year (up to the high 80s now!) & in all honesty, I’m going to have to really restrict it to the hundred, otherwise it could become an all-consuming frenzy of making sure I get a different artist every day & attribution or provenance-checking nightmare. Believe it or not, the information given on the internet isn’t always reliable! It could probably go on all year but I don’t think that’d be healthy. My dreams are boring enough without dreaming about bowls of fruit or vases of pansies.

Now that sounds as if I don’t like them, but it’s actually a joy to find such variety. I’m not saying I’ll go for a hundred still lifes here (you endured enough with weeks of the hundred artists…) but I thought if I numbered the entries, I could probably get away with leaving it open-ended. Maybe even we’d go past the ton. We can but dream. 

In any case, the still life serves many a purpose including decoration, studies & practice for the artist, a chance for the artist to show off their skills & general aesthetic appeal. It’s a nonsense that I haven’t addressed them in over two years of blog-writing, but we can make up for that now.

Adjunct: making lists of anything (particularly music, art & things that annoy me) on Facebook is one of my favourite pastimes; it’s a safe & easy activity for someone that makes many bus journeys. Unless the bus is going through Drumoak. Drumoak is a cyber black hole & your phone might alarmingly go on the blink without warning. You experience a millisecond of panic, then realise you’re in Drumoak. You immediately calm down & wait a mile or two. 

Pedro Pedro (b. 1986), Bowl of Citrus, 2020

The absolute antithesis of a stuffy & staid still life, I do feel like I can smell the lemon in this image. For although the painting isn’t concerned with realism, it’s incredibly evocative in colour, texture, atmosphere & composition. Making a subject believable or authentic without being realistic is at the very heart of much art & is equally valid to the showing off of super realism.

Antoine Vollon (1833-1900), Mound of Butter, 1875/1885

Perhaps the strangest still life I’ve ever seen & certainly one of the more amusing, whilst being extremely well-executed. Get this wrong & you’re looking for a severe mocking. But does it maybe give us a clue as to the value of butter at the time of painting? Or is it about how hard someone had to work to make such a huge amount? I love that the eggs give it some scale…provided they’re not ostrich eggs, of course.

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929), Shelf Life Number 12, 2016-2017

When does a sculpture become a still life? When the artist names it, I suppose; it’s indicative of the importance of titles. Here, the artist uses said title as a play on his age & longevity in the art world & everyday junk is given a new lease of life in the process.

Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts (c. 1660–1683), Trompe-l'œil, c. 1680

Everyone has to have a system for organising their lives these days & it seems the 17th Century was no different. Since it hangs on the wall, it may well have the ability to “fool the eye” & the realism is spectacular. Effectively, Gysbrechts creates a stunning portrayal of what we can assume was the iPhone of its day (other organising systems are available).

M.C. Escher (1898-1972), Still Life & Street, 1937

Again, we see the “believable” rendered in an artist’s very distinctive style. At first, it’s as if Escher has set up his still life before a window looking out into the street with this woodcut but look more carefully & we see the cunning old devil is up to his usual “impossible reality” tricks. In fact, he bursts through the building into the street, as the books rest against the buildings.

Patrick Caulfield (1936-2005), Bowl & Fruit, 1979

Caulfield minimises the still life to its basic elements: line, shape & colour. Yet the composition is perhaps the most important element, for if it wasn’t for the lines denoting the cloth behind, we’d simply be looking at a collection of objects floating in space. What it does though is remind us of every still life we’ve seen before. We expect to see that cloth hanging behind & so we know what we’re meant to be looking at. If not for the History of Art, we wouldn’t have this painting & Caulfield captures the lot. 

Holly Coulis (b. 1968), Small Cup and Steam, 2019

This subverts the still life into a piece of graphic art. Again, it takes the well-known elements & subjects of the still life as a genre & plays around with them to create a work that has decorative appeal as well as clever composition.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), Conus Marmoreus, 1650

The objects Rembrandt amassed in the name of art are legendary & at one of the houses he lived in – now a museum – in Amsterdam, replicas are exhibited for all to see. Rembrandt was like many of us – he liked collecting junk. Obviously he’d use them for reference in his paintings but why stick to just one petrified pufferfish when ten will do? I exaggerate of course. Yet, only twenty-two books were found when he died…

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), Still Life, 1918

Although this is an unusual Dalí, we can still see his style shine through. Despite his youth, he is almost fully-formed as a painter, albeit pre-Surrealist movement. 

Ken Currie (b.1960), Heavily Symbolic Still Life, 2009

A still life collection without a skull is no collection at all & here Currie evokes the Vanitas still life paintings of old. With two of the most evocative & widely-used symbols of mortality in everyday culture - not just the Old Masters - & Currie’s distinctive style, this is modern still life at its finest.