Part 2 - Research point 1

Composition

I am going to look at the development of still life.  The term "still life" describes a particular genre of painting, generally of everyday objects or flowers laid on a table or something similar.  

Early still life

There are many still lifes preserved at Herculaneum and Pompeii. They are painted directly onto the walls and sometimes advertise goods being sold or demonstrate a profession. I saw them many years ago and although they remained colourful they seemed rather flat and lifeless and their appeal for me was in the age of the work and the fact that they survived the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79 that wiped out all signs of life.

Still Life with Peaches - AD50
www.independent.co.uk 1

The Still Life with Peaches comes from a room in Herculaneum. It wasn't a free-standing image. Like other still lives, it was set on a wall among landscapes, narratives, decoration. But it occupied a contained square-ish section. And it uses the standard Roman still-life convention, the double (sometimes triple) level: the objects are arranged on a step or a sill.1

16th century

Still life disappeared for well over a thousand years and it re-emerged in the Netherlands in the early 16th century.  The decline in religious paintings after the Reformation left the way open for the still life genre to develop and the development of oil paint made it possible to paint in an extremely realistic way. There was a new emphasis on the home, personal possessions, commerce, trade and learning - all the aspects and diversions of everyday life. 

Carravaggio  (1573-1610) an Italian  made humble objects look beautiful.

Basket of Fruit - Carravaggio. 1596
 http://www.caravaggio-foundation.org/ 5

Floral still lifes were especially prominent in the early 1600s, and in their highly refined execution and in their subjects and symbolism were addressed to a cultivated audience" 2

17th century

Emperor Rudolph II of Prague collected both plants for his garden and paintings of plants and had a small library of relevant books.  Flowers were often drawn from botanical texts and weren't accurate regarding season or even country.  This painting by Vosmaer (1574-1641) is fairly typical although during its lifetime it has had pieces sliced off both the top and the sides.

A Vase of Flowers - Jacob Vosmaer, 1618
www.metmuseum 2

There were regional fashions - flowers were popular in Antwerp but in the Hague they liked to see paintings of food. 

Still life with cheese - Floris van Dyck 1610
www.rijksmuseum.nl 3

Van Dyck's (1575-1651) painting shows the remnants of breakfast and to me it looks rather decadent.  This is exactly the way still life developed becoming a platform for showing extravagant wealth.

One very important type of still life of 16th and 17th centuries was that which had a message to convey. Symbolic Still Life usually had a religious theme with bread, wine and reference to the Bible.  A particular style was the Vanitas which had symbolic images of skulls, snuffed candles and the like to warn of the fragility of life.

Interestingly I saw a modern drawing at the Fibrefusion exhibition at Rufford Gallery recently - it was called Vanitas and showed a figure looking into a mirror and seeing herself and a skull.  Unfortunately I couldn't take a photo.

Northern Europe led the way in still life but there were similar developments in Spain, Italy and to a lesser extent France. 

18th century

Although France wasn't the leader in the still life genre Chardin (1699-1779) was probably the most important still life artist of the 18th century.

Still Life - Jean-Baptiste Chardin.1728-1730
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ 4

This has inanimate objects on a table but has a completely different atmosphere to a century earlier; it's far more casual looking even rustic and homespun.

It is interesting to note that because its status was quite lowly it was acceptable for women to paint still life.  Ann Vallayer-Coster (1774-1818)  was heavily influenced by Chardin.

Still Life with Lobster - Ann Vallayer-Coster. 1781
http://en.wikipedia.org/ 9

19th century

In the 19th century it became fashionable for paintings to be allegorical or depict historical or Biblical scenes and still life fell out of favour once again.  For this reason many of the best still lifes were painted towards the end of the century when the artists were established and didn't need to earn a living by taking commissions. Goya (1746-1828) for instance painted only a dozen or so still lifes. 10  

Still life with Golden Bream - Goya.  1808-1812

Goya departs from traditional artistic depictions of dead animals, investing his still lifes with great pathos. Parallels can be drawn between Goya's representation of animals and his treatment of human corpses in his riveting series of prints Disasters of War, one of the greatest accusations against the horrors of war. 10

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)  was always interested in still life but it was late in his life that he started to really concentrate on them.  Apples and Oranges is a series of paintings featuring everyday items - earthenware bowls, a jug and some fruit.  In this work Cezanne uses all his experience, his sense of style, colour and spatial awareness and takes the still life into a new sphere. 5

Apples and Oranges - Paul Cezanne. 1899
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was also painting at this time and he too produced still lifes using time honoured subjects.

A Vase of Flowers - Paul Gauguin.  1896

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a self taught contemporary of  Matisse, Cezanne and Gauguin.  He studied the paintings of many artists in order to gain knowledge so he was probably influenced by the still life paintings of his peers.  Many of his paintings seem very dark but the subject matter remains the same.

Still Life with Earthenware and Bottles - van Gogh. 1885
http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/ 8

20th century

Soon  after Cezanne painted Apples and Oranges, Matisse (1869-1954) produced Still Life with Vegetables.  The items are similar but the outcome is very different.  The arrangement is casual, the colours are blocks and everything is in a flat plane.

Still Life with Vegetables Henri Matisse. 1905-6. 7

By this time photography was well established and painters didn't need to paint quite so literally.  This gave them a lot of freedom and the early 20th century saw huge changes in painting styles.  

Design developments (see below) made by Cezanne were adapted by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) as the Cubist movement emerged.

Still Life with Peppermint Bottle - Cezanne.  1890-94
http://www.tate.org.uk/ 11

Bowl of fruit, Violin and Bottle - Picasso. 1914
http://www.tate.org.uk/ 11

This image looks as though the pieces are cut from paper and that is exactly what Picasso wanted.

Picasso's friend Juan Gris (1887-1927) did something similar:

Bottle of Rum and a newspaper - Gris.
 http://www.tate.org.uk/ 11

In this most radical form of the cubist idiom, nature was no longer a necessary starting point. Instead, coloured planes could provide the architecture for imagery that the artist could develop towards something representative. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who was Gris’s close friend and dealer, wrote of the artist’s method: ‘He started with the ensemble, whose rhythm he allowed to develop freely. From this rhythm sprang, in their turn, the objects. 11

21st century

Over the past 50 years technology has given artists a whole new world to play with.  There have been many new consumables to include and computer art and digital ways to reproduce images have changed creativity beyond anything earlier artists could have imagined. In 2013 Matthew Petry wrote Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate Still Life (Thames and Hudson). 12

In this book Petry groups 180 contemporary artists who have put a modern twist into the still life genre.  In fact the Independent review of the book on 13.10.13 is "Art Observations: Still Lifes that simply will not stay still".  13

A still life of a bowl of fruit? You must be joking. A new book, Nature Morte by Michael Petry, collects more than 180 contemporary artists who have given the traditional still life a makeover. Sam Taylor-Wood's video A Little Death, 2002, is a remake of the classical still life with dead hare, who now gets eaten by maggots........Gary Hume builds up the colour on a red rose in Pink Rent (2011), to give it a contemporary twist, while Marc Quinn freezes a sunflower in silicone in Eternal Spring (Sunflower) 11, (1998). 13

Pink Rent - Gary Hume. 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk 13

Eternal Spring II (Sunflowers) Marc Quinn. 1998
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk 14

I have found this an interesting and helpful piece of work.  There is no doubt that still life has followed fashion and taken advantage of new materials, techniques and more recently, technologies.  However I have been left with the strong impression that the basic construct (of focus on a group of inanimate objects) has endured but may now be about to change with work like that of Sam Taylor Wood.

1 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/great-works-still-life-with-peaches-c-ad50-anon-1823826.html

2 http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nstl/hd_nstl.html

3 https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/explore-the-collection/overview/floris-claesz-van-dijck

4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/still-life-83523

5 http://www.caravaggio-foundation.org/Fruit-basket.html

6  http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/apples-and-oranges-7153.html

7 http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1999.363.38

8  http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/search/collection?genre=still%20life

9  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_life#Eighteenth_century

10 http://www.mfah.org/art/detail/still-life-golden-bream/

11  http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/picasso-bowl-of-fruit-violin-and-bottle-l01895

12 Petry M. 2013.  Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate Still Life. Thames and Hudson

13  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/arts-observations-the-stilllifes-that-simply-wont-stay-still-8886967.html

14  http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/smap/collection_index/marc_quinn_eternal_spring_sunflowers.aspx