Still Life (pt. 8)

Of this particular genre of painting there is a certain element of pathos which should be understood.  There is a touch of sadness to be found in a still life.  Here is a painting showing no action or event taking place; rather it pictures an inanimate, quiet, and often lifeless world.  There are almost never any people in the paintings.  The scene is set in a lonely room, often dark and often obscured from full view.  How far back the room goes we do not know; we don't even know where we are, really.  Dreamy, cloudy, and almost mystical, it is no wonder that Baroque still lifes generated a symbolic connection with religious paintings.  This period and genre of art could fill an entire life's work of study and research—and a very interesting study that would be—but we will stop here to move on.

Still Life (pt. 7)

In order to lend more thoroughness to our examination of this genre, we will look at one painting, at least, in detail.  This painting, then, is called Still Life with Parrots, created by Jan Davidsz de Heem during the late 1640s.  (By the way, so many people crack jokes about titles such as "Still Life with Parrots" for its apparent lack of originality.  It is important to remember that many paintings were produced without being given distinct titles, and ones such as this are probably names bestowed on the painting by patrons, critics, or other people, not the artist).

What do we see here?  The painting contains a lavish variety of foods, ornate utensils, and a pair of parrots around an extravagantly prepared table.  Everything is expensive: expensive silverware, exotic food, expensive parrots, etc.  Nevertheless, it doesn't matter how enviable these objects are; the fruit is going to go bad if it is left around and not eaten.  The tablecloth appears to be falling off the table, so perhaps the food will simply fall onto the floor before it goes bad anyway.  There is an extraordinary wealth of objects in this painting, but they are all being ignored.  Insects (specifically butterflies, which do not live very long) have their pick at the goods, and, somewhat randomly, there are a couple of parrots just hanging out amidst the scene.  Do you think the parrots are bickering over the food?  The one on top looks down slyly from its perch and holds something, an unidentified object, in its beak.  Perhaps these animals know something we don't.

Because the objects are so expensive and rare and because they are so brightly colored, the painting becomes something of a "visual feast" to the viewer.  The dark curtain in the back contrasts with the bright food, and everything in the work draws your eye across the canvas in a curvy line.  There is an "s" curve: starting at the lower right corner, the objects sway upwards in the line of a letter S, leading your eye through the entirety of the work.  This is a masterful way to construct a painting, because our eye is able to absorb all the incredible imagery of the work in a flowing motion that is almost as graceful as the delicate brushstrokes de Heem used to paint it.

The food, as I said, is all left out to rot or be eaten by the animals, indicating a thematic focus on the mortality of this world, but the food items also serve to connote spiritual teachings.  The lemon has been peeled away to demonstrate the stretching out of this earthly life's term to its last bits.  The wine reminds us of Christ's last supper with His disciples.  The expensive, exotic shells, representations of the economic vivacity during this time, also bring the viewer back to fundamental ideas about vanity and the futility of riches, the vanitas theme epitomized.  If you take to examining still lifes to any great quantity you will soon become familiar with the exhaustive list of symbolic imagery conveying religious ideals or stories, often sort of random connections like a certain flower representing the Virgin Mary and things of this nature.

The beauty is stark in this painting, with vivid colors and an abundance of items set on the stage like a collage.  Everything about it shouts of the vibrant majesty of all that there is in life to enjoy—it's just that the artist makes the point to his viewers that these things don't last very long.  The food will rot; the birds will fly away; the black curtain will close on the scene.  Death is the pervading, imminent truth in most of these paintings.  It oozes from the canvas as baldly as the glistening oils themselves, shiny, cracking, breaking down through the passages of time, hanging somewhere on a museum gallery wall.  Says the king in Shakespeare's Richard II: "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me."

What of the setting?  Past the table, a good three-quarters of the background is covered by a large, impending curtain of black.  That dark, ominous veil comes over the painting like a shroud, again probably indicating the vanitas message of imminent mortality, but there is a patch of openness beyond it as well.  We see a kind of porch area with a Doric column, and it's overlooking a grand view of the sea and a bright horizon over it.  Many miles away, this area of the work shows itself as a very small portion of the canvas, a few dots on the grand surface that extends almost as large as 5' x 4'.  Nearer to the viewer and the scene is a sky of tempestuous and foreboding clouds, dark, threatening, and implying the oncoming of a storm.  You may have thought the curtain was bleak with its black undertones of death, but the scene behind it appears just as grim.  However, de Heem adds the tiny bit of light almost in the center of the painting, next to the column: the bright horizon line above the sea that can either denote the hopeful rising of the sun on the dawn of a new day or the descending of the sun to foretell the arrival of night.  The meaning remains ambiguous.

Still Life (pt. 6)

One of the most prevalent themes became known by the Latin word "vanitas," from which we derive the English word "vanity."  A vanitas still life is an image in which all objects symbolize the theme of the transience of life.  That is a very important phrase: "the transience of life."  Life is not going to go on forever; it will end (and this bears implicit religious connotations as well—to remind viewers to live religiously in order to go to Heaven).  The objects are all placed out on display for us, but they are inanimate, robbed of life, still.  No matter how ornate, expensive, desirable, or beautiful these objects might be, they will never be moved from the eternal position in which they lay on the canvas, and we as viewers of the paintings can never remove them.  Often we see paintings of fruits and extravagant foods laid out on a table to be eaten, and yet no one is around to eat.  What a shame to leave the fruit there unattended—it will surely go bad!  "The grass withers and the flower fades," says the vanitas message of the painting, "but the Word of the Lord is forever"—the message of His truth and the inevitable reality of death are as enduring as the works of art themselves.

Even more solemnly are placed in still lifes evidences of human life that has left and left in a hurry.  This is the meaning behind the tipped glass that appears in so many artworks of this genre.  It implies that the person handling the object was suddenly called away—no one knows why.  A snuffed candle, objects in disarray, half-peeled fruit, and tablecloth that is falling off the table all show that the host or hostess left before they could finish their tasks, and that they were called away too soon by an incontrovertible call (perhaps the call of death when its time has come).  Jewelry no longer has an owner, books no longer have a reader, no matter how expensive or important.  The people in these paintings are simply gone and leave behind only remnants of things that they cannot take with them.  You'll notice many times the flowers in these paintings conceal small insects.  In a kind of post-apocalyptic tone, many painters decided to show Nature falling back unto its own after the people have gone.  The bugs are free to eat away at the fruits and flowers.  Also it was a chance for artists to demonstrate their skill in filling their subject with endlessly interesting finds that can be altogether new to the viewer even after years of owning it.  In my own experience from working at a museum, I have been allowed the distinct opportunity of getting to spend countless hours with paintings such as these.  Many times I would be called on to spend the entire day in the still life galleries.  There are often so many hidden things in a still life that only come out from long hours spent alone in a room, staring at them.  To spot the insects in the paintings became something of a game among us.

Still Life (pt. 5)

It is no coincidence that some objects appear more frequently in Dutch still life paintings than others during the Baroque period.  We see lots of paintings that include fruit, fancy silverware, flowers, candles, books, jewelry, musical instruments, and that ominous skull that keeps reappearing.  What does it all mean?  I will examine a particular still life in detail to provide the model for inspection into this genre, but it will be useful to first offer a bit of general overview.

Putting aside the purely material intentions of artists who were advertising trade with the Eastern world and a predominant fixation on tulips, these paintings do carry a prevalent religious theme.  Knowing the Protestant minimalist tendencies of Genre paintings and nature landscapes, a still life is a relatively simple work of art to look at.  The humility of man (and more specifically the humility of the artist) is being expressed through this latent simplicity, but the underscoring themes that reside beneath the surface of the work demonstrate the bent of the artist toward the deep, personal connection with God, profound philosophical thoughts, and the innermost sincerity of human emotion.  Compare this to Rubens' Raising of the Cross, an elaborate, huge painting that featured heavy action and drama with bulky figures and flowing, multicolored robes.  A still life, on the other hand, features the simple, Protestant mindset of a table set with certain objects, objects to be celebrated on one level for their sheer beauty and on a subliminal level for their deeper, philosophical connotations.  Objects, as I said, become symbols, representing abstract concepts of life, death, God, the universe, and mankind.

Still Life (pt. 4)

Early on, during the Baroque period which we are looking at now, objects presented in a still life carried the distinct connotation of being the personal property of the artist.  Whatever you saw in a painting he owned, and that turned into a kind of status symbol.  No other genre of painting so conveniently provided a way to show off all of your stuff to the wealthy patrons purchasing works of art at this time.  It may even bring you more customers if you are suddenly thought to be both talented and wealthy.

Dutch still life paintings did this; they celebrated the abundance of wealth that trade brought to Flanders and the Netherlands.  This is why many of the objects you see in these Dutch paintings (some of them aren't) are exotic, imported goods from other countries.  The market was flourishing during this time.

It was also the golden age of horticulture.  Tulips especially priced high on the market as exotic finery more desired at that time than jewelry.  They were first introduced to the Dutch from Constantinople.  The word "tulip" is itself a Turkish word, indicating a turban.  Holland society quickly developed a demand that soon grew broader than the supply, leading to a historic display of exaggerated economic inflation.  The Dutch people's obsession with tulips literally became known as "tulipmania."

Here is a source that can better explain it than I can.  This short article on tulipmania was taken from the 2012-2013 exhibition called "Significant Objects," from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California:

In a century characterized by inflation, the prices fetched by the tulips through sales and trade were constantly on the rise.  People eager to turn a profit flocked to the market to trade tulip bulbs.  Many gambled their homes, farm animals or other goods in anticipation of fortune to be made on tulip sales.  The intensity of this speculation appeared to operate outside the laws of common sense.  The phenomenon has been aptly named "tulipmania."

Particular tulips brought extraordinary sums.  The Semper Augustus, for example, was a rare tulip, characterized by blood-red flames and streaks on its white petals.  It sold for 1,000 guilders in 1623.  By 1637, just before the crash of the market, its price reached 10,000 guilders.  (To compare, the annual wage of a skilled laborer in Holland around this time was 200 to 400 guilders; a large house alongside a canal cost around 6,000 guilders).

In 1637, the combination of rumors about a failing market, and the fact that buyers and sellers could no longer transact business at such inflated prices, set off a selling spree.  Within months, the market for tulips collapsed.  Investors suffered heavy losses, and many went bankrupt.  Today, historians view this widespread market crash as "the first great speculation crisis of modern capitalism.

So.  A personal practicing exercise for artists, a display of wealth to viewers, an indiscriminate way to employ new artistic techniques collectively, a celebration of the successful trading industry, a cathartic expression of your tulip fetish: these are all functions that still life paintings served in the Netherlands during the Baroque period.  But apart from these mostly material purposes, still life art served a deeper role in communicating metaphysical sub-meaning and religious truth.  There is a lot of hidden meaning in most Dutch still life paintings; and if you thought the Renaissance imagery was difficult to follow, hold onto your berets.

Still Life (pt. 3)

As for the viewer, still lifes give an excellent opportunity to see into the mind of the painter.  How is this?  In a portrait, a landscape, historical scene, biblical scene, or any other genre of painting, the subject is, to a certain extent, already latent and manifest to the artist before he begins to paint it.  But with the still life, the artist has selected himself what is to be painted.  Everything we see within the frame is the artist's personal choice of objects.  When we see flowers, we can tell that artist has an appreciation for beauty and nature; when we see books, we can assume the artist is learned or probably well-read; when we see a skull, we come to different conclusions; and so on.  The images we see are not purposeless drawings; they represent something, either directly or indirectly, about the artist himself.

Many times the artist intentionally picks items to convey a particular message to his audience, not about himself but something else.  We will dissect this in greater detail later.  Unlike other kinds of paintings—landscapes, portraits, historical scenes, and so on—these works come solely from the artist's imagination as the scene is a created display of items handpicked by the painter, and these items begin to refer to ideas, making the assemblage of objects in a still life like a kind of narrative story, essay, or sermon.  The eye "reads" from left to right, after all, and the arrangement of objects is sometimes so precise that it almost forms something of a written text.

There can be many mysteries in a still life that at first hit the viewer with their stark visibility but then resonate back in the deeper sense only after careful study and thought.

Still Life (pt. 2)

Artists do use still life painting to polish their expertise.  Many of the most stunning paintings are still lifes.  The artist, as I said, has all the time in the world to painstakingly execute the minutest of brush strokes, leading to a stylistic element called photorealism.  This was known as trompe l'œil, which is French for "fooling the eye."  Linear perspective, chiaroscuro, tenebrism—all of the artistic elements we have looked at to date come into play here, making still lifes among the most dynamic paintings in all of art history to observe.  But, for me at least, there is something strange and almost unsettling about the realism of images that hangs inside a frame on a wall.  The objects are so close, poised on whatever cabinet surface or tablecloth, we feel we could almost stretch out our hand and touch it.  Why is that?  Approximately two hundred years early, I'll ask the question: why must paintings look real?  (Centuries later, artists will seriously contemplate this in their works).  What do you think is the point of making an inanimate object—that has no life of its own and that is painted two-dimensionally on a flat canvas—real?

Still Life (pt. 1)

The Baroque age in art also saw the surge of the Still Life.  A still life is a painting of an arrangement of inanimate objects usually showcased on a tabletop or other flat surface in an enclosed space.  We have all seen paintings like this before and may have thought them simple or even boring enough, but "surely all this is not without meaning."

In this case, the "subject" is whatever is pictured in the image.  The subject of a still life can be a glass cup, a vase of flowers, a book, a skull, or (most popularly) an assortment of objects.  To the untrained eye these items can at first appear random, but as you will see, some still life paintings ambitiously tackle more subject matter, artistic form, color scheme, and picturesque detail than landscapes or historical paintings.

Still lifes—and I distinguish: the plural of "still life" is not "still lives"—can offer a unique blend of genres for both artist and viewer.  By simply painting immobile objects on a stationary table or drawer-top, the artist can have the chance of practicing his trade on something decidedly easier than, say, a portrait, where a live sitter is involved (who coughs, moves, easily becomes bored, and can distract the painter from his duty).  In the case of a still life, the objects are all completely motionless; the artist can take all day, or even a year—it matters not: the objects will still be there.