Life In Still Life
Crafton Hills College, Online
Tiffany Hahn, Curator
Showing: Still Life Art
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Life In Still Life
Artists Being Shown:
- Chardin, Jean Baptiste Siméon
- Gris, Juan
- Kalf, Willem
- Monet, Claude
- Morandi, Giorgio
- Picasso, Pablo
- Steenwyck, Harmen
- Talbot, William Henry Fox
- Van Gogh, Vincent
- Weston, Edward
I hope you will enjoy this exhibit and stop to really see what each piece is saying, each one has a different aspect of beauty that brings life to objects which otherwise would have none.
Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life
Harmen
Steenwyck
Still
Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life
Oil on Oak, Painting
39.2 x 50.7 cm
1640
Harmen
Steenwyck (1612 - 1656) was born in Delft, where he mainly worked. He and his
brother Pieter were taught by their uncle, David Bailly, in Leiden. Bailly is
often credited with the invention of the type of painting called a vanitas,
which emphasizes the transience of life and the vanity of worldly wealth. The
vanitas was a specialty in Leiden, and Steenwyck became its leading exponent.
This
type of painting is called a 'Vanitas', after the biblical quotation from the
Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes (1:2): “Vanitas vanitatum... et omnia
vanitas'”, translated “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” The objects in this
painting have been chosen carefully to communicate the 'Vanitas' message which
is summarized in the Gospel of Matthew 6:18-21: “Do not store up for yourselves
treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and
steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do
not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your
treasure is, there your heart will be also." Each object in the picture
has a different symbolic meaning that contributes to the overall message. The
books symbolize human knowledge, the musical instruments (a recorder, part of a
shawm, a lute) the pleasures of the senses. The Japanese sword and the shell,
both collectors' rarities, symbolize wealth; shells are also traditionally
used in art as symbols of birth and fertility. The chronometer and expiring
lamp allude to the transience and frailty of human life. All are dominated by
the skull, the symbol of death.
This
piece is slightly different, it was chosen for the symbolism rather than the
immense beauty. While it has the key elements of making one inspect the
elements which are askew on the table, it makes one focus on the skull in the
center. The items represent everyday life, which is indeed showing beauty, but
the skull and the lamp represent the inevitable end to come in life. This piece
almost makes the simple items more glorified in beauty, because they are part
of life and yet it will end. It makes the viewer want to treasure the beauty even
more.
Natura Morta (Still Life)
Giorgio
Morandi
Natura
Morta (Still Life)
Oil on Canvas, Painting
30.50 x 30.60 cm
1956
"It
takes me weeks to make up my mind which group of bottles will go well with a
particular colored tablecloth......Then it takes me weeks of thinking about the
bottles themselves, and yet often I still go wrong with the spaces. Perhaps I
work too fast?" –Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi
(1890-1964) was one of those painters who, at first glance, seem to defy categorization.
He was nicknamed ‘il monaco’ (the monk) due to his reclusive lifestyle. Morandi
spent most of his life in his native town of Bologna, both living and painting
in his flat, and seldom venturing far afield. This gave rise to his initial
reputation as a provincial artist, but the obvious quality of his paintings
gradually forced a reappraisal of his work and established him as one of the
best modern Italian painters and the greatest master of Natura Morta (still
life) in the 20th century.
Morandi
deliberately limited his choice of still life objects to the unremarkable
bottles, boxes, jars, jugs and vases that were commonly found in his everyday
domestic environment. He would then 'depersonalize' these objects by removing
their labels and painting them with a flat matt color to eliminate any
lettering or reflections. In this condition they provided him with an anonymous
cast of ready-made forms that he could arrange and rearrange to explore their
abstract qualities and relationships. Morandi's compositions and choice of
still life’s objects allude to his Italian heritage. When assembled together in
a still life group, his dusty bottles and boxes take on a monumental quality
that evokes the architecture of medieval Italy - a style with which he seems at
ease. Morandi
always looked at his still life objects as if he was seeing them for the first
time. He slowly contemplated each object, profoundly searching for its visual
dynamic within the still life group. When satisfied with an arrangement, he
would draw around the bases of the objects to finalize their positions. It is this
intensity of contemplation and observation that gives a freshness and
individuality to Morandi's painting.
This piece is quite
different from the others in terms of content, or lack thereof. This piece was
actually chosen for that reason, it makes the viewer pause and question the
painter’s purpose. In this piece, the color and blended stokes make the viewer
pause and slow down almost unintentionally. That is what is so unique and
beautiful about the piece, it has taken things from everyday life and made them
less fast-paced. The painting has a tranquil sense to it, and therefore the
piece was chosen simply because it is a still life that has a huge impact on
the viewer. There is simplicity and peace in this one painting, unlike any
other around it and thus is uniquely beautiful for that.
Glass of Water and Coffee Pot
Jean
Baptiste Siméon Chardin
Glass
of Water and Coffee Pot
Oil on Canvas, Painting
32 cm x 41.3 cm
1760
Jean-Baptiste-Simeon
Chardin (1699-1779) was born in Paris, the son of a cabinetmaker, and rarely
left the city. He lived on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice until 1757, when
Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters in the Louvre. Chardin's work
had little in common with the Rococo painting that dominated French art in the
18th century. To
Chardin this theatrical approach reduced art to some kind of intellectual
conversation piece. The items he portrayed from his own home were selected for
their shapes, textures and colors, rather than for any symbolic meaning they
may have had. They were simply painted to convey the visual pleasure he
experienced in looking at them. What Chardin strove for was an overall
effect: a unity of tone, color and form. Chardin would prime his canvases with
a brownish pigment, sometimes tinted with red or green. This would give him a
neutral background to paint on. On this he would brush in the darkest tones,
then the mid-tones, and finally the highlights. When he arrived at the correct
tonal balance, he would add color, being careful to maintain the overall
harmony. He would finally complete the work by going over it again with the colors
he had already used in order to create the reflections and highlights that tune
and unify the composition.
One critic wrote, “To look at pictures by other artists it seems that I need to borrow a
different pair of eyes. To look at those of Chardin, I only have to keep the
eyes that nature gave me and make good use of them.”
In ‘Glass of
Water and Coffee Pot’ the same white that is used for the cloves of garlic is
echoed in the reflections from the glass on one side and in the burnished
highlights of the copper coffee pot on the other. The range of browns across
the picture are united by a subtle hint of the green of the garlic leaves. Chardin's
'Glass of Water and Coffee Pot' contains many of the key elements of his
deceptively simple still lifes. The glass and coffee pot are both truncated
cones, but the shape of one is an inversion of the other. The balance of these
two opposite forms creates a dialogue between their shapes. This balance of
opposites continues through other elements: the glass is light, transparent,
cold, smooth and reflective, while the coffee pot is dark, opaque, warm, rough
and charred with soot. Chardin
balances the tonal values of the glass and the coffee pot by creating a
counterchange with the background. He carefully graduates the tone of the
background from dark on the right to light on the left. It is the harmonies and
contrasts that he builds into the visual elements of these ordinary objects
that make this painting extraordinary.
The
reason this piece was chosen was for the simplicity and the harmony. As Chardin
puts it, there is beauty in the everyday items that we don’t see because we are
too close. When He puts these items together, there is a geometrical beauty in
the symmetry and a beauty in contrast. One may have seen these elements every
morning and not even noticed them, and yet when they are pulled aside and
looked at in “the right light” one can see how beautiful they are. I love the
simplicity because the viewer then stops and looks at three or four simple
object and focuses on what the value is in them. The viewer’s eyes are drawn to
the symmetry without even realizing what is happening. There’s not much to the
picture, but the artist wanted to show the beauty in simplicity instead of
extravagance, which is why it was chosen for this gallery.
Violin and Guitar
Juan
Gris
Violin
and Guitar
Oil on Canvas, Painting
100 x 65.5 cm
1913
Juan
Gris (1887-1927) was born in Madrid where he studied mechanical drawing at the
Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas, during which time he contributed drawings to
local periodicals. From 1904 to 1905 he studied painting with the academic
artist José Maria Carbonero. In 1906 he moved to Paris where Gris followed the
lead of another friend and fellow countryman, Pablo Picasso. Gris refined the
cubist vocabulary into his own instantly recognizable visual language. He is
often referred to as ‘the third cubist’ beside Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
Juan Gris was more calculating than any other Cubist painter in the way he
composed his pictures. Every element of a painting was considered with
classical precision: line, shape, tone, color and pattern were carefully
refined to create an interlocking arrangement free from any unnecessary
decoration or detail. The
whole idea of space is rearranged – the front, back and sides of the subject
become interchangeable elements. Gris’ images combine his observation with
memory of the subject to create a poetic evocation of the theme.
Violin
and Guitar is a magisterial statement that marked 1913 as the beginning of
Gris's mature art. Here he combines the inherent dignity and poetic quality of
the objects with an exploration of their three-dimensional aspects. An
essentially cruciform composition underlies the whole and lends a hierarchical
air; however, as with his use of the golden section, Gris was never absolutely
precise in making his measurements fit a predetermined scheme. The painting is
built on a series of pictorial rhymes among the forms of the guitar, violin,
and glass. Gris's predilection for rhymes, or rhythms based on visual
similarities, has been compared to the techniques of the poets who were so much
a part of his milieu, but it can also be found in the art of his colleagues.
More fundamentally poetic is the spirited flight of artistic manipulation that
occurs in the central section, juxtaposed with the conventional world
symbolized by the wood molding, wallpaper, and floorboards of a surrounding
room. These background details establish a representational setting as well as
a pictorial plane of possibilities. This richly detailed room should be seen as
having fantastic associations for Gris since he reportedly lived in utter
squalor.
This
piece was chosen to look at the different styles of still life, since still
life is meant to look at object in different ways. This painting offers one the
ability to look at a simple object in a new way with different dimensions. It
takes the style of still life to a new level- that is a different dimension.
Two seemingly extravagant objects are seen in different ways and portrayed in
varying places, without knowing there’s a violin and a guitar one might miss
the latter entirely. But it makes the viewer pause, there’s a lot going on in
the painting yet there’s just a small amount depicted. There’s much symbolism
in that which causes the viewer to think about the “conventional world” in a new
light.
[Dandelion Seeds]
William
Henry Fox Talbot
[Dandelion
Seeds]
Photogravure
Sheet: 15.1 x 11.3 cm
Plate: 12.5 x 9.4 cm
Image: 10.5 x 7.6 cm
1858
William Henry
Fox Talbot (1800–1877) was one of the first photographers and made major
contributions to the photographic process. He is also remembered as the holder
of a patent which affected the early development of photography in England.
He was
educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained the
Person prize in 1820, and graduated as twelfth wrangler in 1821. From 1822 to
1872 he frequently communicated papers to the Royal Society, many of them on
mathematical subjects. At an early period he had begun his optical researches,
which were to have such important results in connection with photography.
Talbot's
original contributions included the concept of a negative from which many
positive prints can be made, and the use of gallic acid for developing latent
image. Talbot
was also a noted photographer who made major contributions to the development
of photography as an artistic medium. His work in the 1840s on photo-mechanical
reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the
precursor to photogravure.
This
experimental proof is a fine example of the capacity of Talbot's
"photoglyphic engraving" to produce photographic results that could
be printed on a press, using printer's ink-a more permanent process than
photographs made with light and chemicals. The image here was photographically
transferred to the copper engraving plate by laying the seeds directly on the
photosensitized plate and exposing it to light, without the aid of a camera.
Equally reminiscent of Talbot's early experiments, this image is part of
Talbot's lifelong effort to apply his various photographic inventions to the
field of botany. In a letter tipped into the Bertoloni Album, Talbot wrote, "I
think that my newly invented art will be a great help to botanists". Such
uses were still prominent in Talbot's thinking years later when developing his
photogravure process; he noted in 1863 that "if this art [of photoglyphic
engraving] had been invented a hundred years ago, it would have been very
useful during the infancy of botany."
This piece is
interesting due to it just seeming to be a photograph of dandelion seeds, yet
there is much background to this piece and it’s unintentionally being artistic
without trying. This piece was chosen first because it was a different way of
still life, using photography and engraving being a unique process. And the
fact that the artist pioneered this as photography was just beginning and he
was not really intending to create a new art medium. This piece is both
historic and simplistically beautiful. The viewer wonders how this is seen, it
appears to be through a lens but one may interpret how- a camera, microscope,
telescope- and that all depends on how one views the world. The history behind
the piece made me want to bring it into the gallery, and yet the more one sees
the piece the more it causes one to think (or even have the opposite effect by
clearing one’s mind and imagining the seeds flowing on the wind).
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