A Guide To Art: Doin' Life

This is Part 3 of Pat's Guide to Art. You can find Parts 1 & 2 yourself! This guide relies on my many years of being aware of art, and on the fact that I've seen some art in Paris. I looked at art, so you don't have to.

Today's lesson: Still life

Now, I think it’s safe to say that I know a thing or two about art. I have a Bachelor of Arts, after all. [As proof, I’m also unemployed.] So it has fallen upon me to try and explain the enigma that is ‘still life’. On the one hand, you have a boring bowl of fruit. On the other hand…hmm, this is tricky.

Still life should not be confused with still birth or Still D.R.E. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.

Nature Morte aux Oranges by Paul Gauguin.

Still life is all about capturing that magical moment when you’ve come home from the market and have arranged all of your precious new fruit neatly in a bowl. Obviously, you are going to proceed to ignore that fruit until it goes maggoty and is swarmed by fruit flies. The great painters of history - ever the soothsayers - knew the flies and maggots were coming, so they captured that initial moment forever with their paintings. It’s like a really slow, inefficient version of posting pictures of your dinner on The Facebook. 

Fruit and Vegetables with a Monkey, a Parrot and a Squirrel by Frans Snyders

But there is more to the history of still life. Let me explain…

The government of the day (let’s say, after Shakespeare but before Hitler) had a real hard time getting people to eat fruit. “Fruit is gay”, they would say, choking on the irony of their own statements. To combat public apathy, said government began commissioning the great artists of the time to portray fruit in a better light. If the common people spent their days eating fruit, they wouldn’t realise that all the chocolate and foie gras was going to the fat cats.

The famous “One + A Day” campaign was a roaring success. While it did virtually nothing to improve the health and wellbeing of the common-folk – the vast majority of post-medieval ‘prols’ fell victim to drive-by lancings long before experiencing any medical issues – it did increase the popularity of what are now fairly mundane fruits. The campaign did not last, however, eventually giving way to the now-infamous “Just Lick A Lemon” movement, which it had been hoped would cure lance-related heart failure.

 

The Lemon by Edouard Manet.

As ‘olden times’ went on, still life moved on from its fruit focus, and various meats began to feature. Fish, in particular, became very popular, due largely to their scarcity. Those ones that Jesus had given out were pretty much all gone, and the povos were not expert fisherpeople. [Jesus was not a fan of the ‘teach a man to fish…’ parable, believing it to be sexist]. So paintings such as this one started doing the rounds:

Yeah I'm Bout That Carp Life by Abraham van Beyeren (actual title 'Still Life with Carp").

Now, I’m the last person to say anything bad about carp, obviously. But this is a simply dreadful advertisement for the wonders of omega 3s and mercury poisoning. These carp look tired and lifeless. This would never make it past the editors of Cuisine Magazine.

Birds and game began showing up on canvases (or ‘canvi’), and the artists showed these a similarly paltry sense of care:

Still Life with Hare and Birds on a Ring by Adriaen van Utrecht.

Look at the size of that hare! People always throw around that expression “a hare’s breadth” as though it is something very small or narrow. ‘I missed the Autumnal Equinox by a hare’s breadth!’ is one such commonly used phrase. This hare appears to be about as big as a medium-sized dog. If I had ever heard someone exclaim ‘boy, that bus missed that car by a Tree Walker Coonhound’, then I’d understand this expression. Or maybe I have the expression wrong. Maybe it’s “a hare’s breasts.” That doesn’t really make sense either.

From here, the history gets a bit shaky. Many artists began painting (rather than growing) flowers, such was the ubiquity of pollen allergies at the time. An enormous scandal broke in 1890, when it was discovered that Vincent Van Gogh had been signing his name on the paintings of his nine-year old daughter:

Still life: Japanese Vase with Roses and Anemones by Vincent Van Gogh.

From here, not much is known about still life painting. Philosophers believe that the art was lost somewhere around the industrial revolution, but they are philosophers, not historians. They're not much good at all. [Art historians could not be reached for comment.] We do know that in 1962 some blonde nerd scanned the label of a soup can, and brought still life into the modern age:

Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol.

  

This article has not been pear-reviewed. I’m not sure how one would go about doing that.