Review
The essays in this volume examine, perceptively and persuasively, how still-life representations spanning 400 years (1560-1960) express the values of their respective societies and individual artists.
Review
The essays in this volume examine, perceptively and persuasively, how still-life representations spanning 400 years (1560-1960) express the values of their respective societies and individual artists.
Book Description
The purpose of these essays is to mine the complexity and expressive richness of still life, traditionally considered one of the lesser genres. Though theorists have commented on its appeal since antiquity, the status of still life has risen significantly only recently, as the priorities of art history and criticism have been reordered to validate areas outside the canon of traditional inquiry. Here six distinguished scholars interpret a wide range of still lifes, using diverse current methods, including paleoethnobotanical research (which makes it possible to reconstruct diets), social history, technical examinations, and material culture studies.The introduction provides a historiography of still life with an emphasis on the twentieth century. Reindert Falkenburg's essay is "Matters of Taste: Pieter Aertsen's Market Scenes, Eating Habits, and Pictorial Rhetoric in the Sixteenth Century," Anne Lowenthal's, "Contemplating Kalf," Julia Ballerini's "Recasting Ancestry: Statuettes as Imaged by Three Inventors of Photography," and Doreen Bolger's "The Early Rack Paintings of John F. Peto: `Beneath the Nose of the Whole World.'" Petra ten-Doesschate Chu writes on Vincent van Gogh's still lifes and the nineteenth-century vignette tradition; and Nan Freeman, on Tom Wesselmann and still-life painting and American culture, circa 1962. In view of the current interest in still life, the publication of this book is ideally timed. Cumulatively, the six essays alert the reader to the myriad meanings carried by still lifes and the diverse ways in which those meanings can be studied.
The Object as Subject: Studies in the Interpretation of Still Life FROM THE PUBLISHER
The purpose of these essays is to mine the complexity and expressive richness of still-life painting, traditionally considered one of the lesser genres. Although theorists have commented on the appeal of still life since antiquity, its status has risen only recently, when the priorities of art history and criticism have been reordered to validate areas outside the canon of traditional inquiry. Here six distinguished scholars interpret a wide range of still lifes, using diverse current methods, including paleo-ethnobotanical research (which makes it possible to reconstruct diets), social history, technical examinations, and material culture studies. The introduction provides a historiography of still life with an emphasis on the twentieth century. The essays' scope is wide, encompassing sixteenth- to twentieth-century European and American painting, graphics, the applied arts, book illustration, sculpture, and photography. The common denominator is a focus on the implications of the things - foodstuffs, tableware, plaster statuettes, books - that form the subject matter of the images. Scrutinizing those objects and their significance, the writers enhance understanding of the objects themselves, the images in which they figure, and the minds and cultures that produced both.
Art & Photography
Book Info
