Still life as an independent genre of painting finally took shape in the 17th century. in the work of Dutch and Flemish artists.

Until that time, it was not an independent genre, but was only included in other genres as a frame for other paintings (for example, flower garlands), decoration of furniture, interior, etc.

Term

The word "still life" in French means "dead nature" (nature morte). Flowers in a vase is a still life; the same flowers in a flower bed or in the front garden - a landscape. In a broad sense, a still life is an artistic depiction of inanimate objects: plants, game, dishes, etc. The artist does not depict objects “from nature”, as they are located in the interior, but consciously arranges them in such a way as to solve some of his own semantic and artistic task.
Often still lifes contain a hidden allegory through the use of ordinary objects, which the artist endows with a symbol, additional meaning and meaning. An example of an allegorical still life is vanitas (from the Latin vanitas "vanity, vanity").

A cliche that will be repeated later by The Young Martyr, in which the sublimation of the memory of his wife is obvious.


The Austrian Herbert Boekk resumes the tradition of studying Flemish anatomy with a series of works in which he does not spare the most gruesome details. No longer a showcase of glowing notifications, but an orgy of blood, bones and bodies torn apart with no delicacy. Open and empty carcasses, almost ready to be baked in the air by some brutal orcs. We also find the colors of death, the decay of yellow and green, and those bodies without dignity, eyes closed and mouths wide open, like a chest open with tripsip.

Varieties of still life

Vanitas

Michael Conrad Hirt. Vanitas
Vanitas is an allegorical still life. Usually on it, among other things, a skull is depicted. Such a still life is intended to remind of the transience of life, the futility of pleasures and the inevitability of death - reflections on the meaning of human existence. The term is taken from a verse from the Bible: "Vanity of vanities, said the Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" In Latin it sounded like this: Vanitas vanitatum dixit Ecclesiastes vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas". You can read more about vanitas.




Still cut heads for Antoine Wirth, the notorious Belgian painter, who in the study of cut heads also represents the blood that flows from severed carotid arteries. In full Edgar Allan Poe style.


Gustave Courbet - painter Everyday life- instead represents the exit of the "housewife", as a result of the death of a dead girl, in which the deceased is lovingly bathed and dressed in many women. The vision is now gone from modern world in which these tasks are entrusted to strangers.

Dutch still life

Dutch still life, which took shape in the 17th century. as an independent genre, influenced the further development of all European painting. It turns out that ordinary objects also live, but their life is quiet and invisible to humans. There is some mystery in this. Apparently, this is why the genre of still life became popular and has survived to this day. Sometimes a still life attracts the eye, excites feelings, it is impossible to tear oneself away from it - some associations, fleeting memories arise ...

A familiar atmosphere in which the bed rests meanwhile, prays and prepares the table, in confidence with the death that has passed away.


Death dressed in carnival is almost a joke. So he looks for Jean-Leon Jerome as if life and death are nothing but a great show that in dense yellow - a color we've learned to associate with meat defeat - sees the end of a human tragedy for Pierrot killed in a duel a contemptuous and crooked Mohawk supported by a Harlequin who no longer laughs.

flower still life

This type of still life is perhaps the most common and the very first to separate into a separate genre.

Jan Davids de Heem (1606-1684). Still life with flower vase (circa 1645). National Gallery of Art (Washington)
Traditionally, many flowers were grown in the Netherlands, gardens were bred, so flower still lifes were a natural extension of society. The very first artists of this genre were Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) and Balthasar van der Ast (1593-1657).

A quarrel, probably for empty reasons, and too much champagne, despair after joy and those cheerful carriages in the background, waiting for the living and the dead. The first mourning of William-Adolf Bouguer to logical rigor was to open this journey in the representation of death in art. This is the first murder of Christendom and, as a result, the first appearance of death. The painting actually represents the time when Adam and Eve find Abele's body. A melancholic melancholy, though technically unobtrusive, including a bloodless body, pours into a puddle at Adam's feet to keep Eve.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder "Tulips, roses, white and pink carnations, forget-me-nots and other flowers in a vase" (circa 1619). Oil on copper

Scientist still life

The most intellectual kind of still life. In such still lifes, reflection on the depicted was supposed, and for this - knowledge of the Bible and other knowledge about the world. Vanitas can also be included in this category, but the scientific still life is broader in subject matter: it contains books, musical instruments, etc.

Perhaps more than an expulsion from paradise, this is the moment when a person realizes his fall, a perbenist warning that I don't like.


Like the most romantic and intriguing Ophelia of John Everett Millais. A sublimated death in which Ophelia looks more beautiful than ever in a crack of licked and sensual lips. Everything is perfect: the ornate dress, the flowers that still cling to the arm, the plants, the water. Much more than the drowning of death and its devastating consequences.

Maria van Oosterwijk. Still life

D. Annenkov "Reflections with Baudelaire"

Just go back to the thought of the death of the Virgin of Caravaggio to find out what influence the body is still in the water for a short time.


Unusual subject of the autopsy of Paul Cezanne. The green and yellow wounds of the corpse are still coming back, in contrast to the hearty cordiality of the doctor, who clenches his muscular arms into some gossip that perhaps it's best not to go deep. The dead have an almost serene expression in a pose that is reminiscent of many affirmations. A red stain on the woman's shirt - probably an assistant - brings us back to life and blood flow.

Still life in Russian painting

In Russia, still life as an independent genre appeared at the beginning of the 18th century. But for some time (almost late XIX c.) still life was considered a lower genre and depicted only flowers and fruits.
A famous artist of this genre in the XIX century. was I. Khrutsky.




But there is tragedy in him, cruel, maybe even because of his father, like suicide. The man is lying on the bed, the gun he shot his life with is still in his hand, blood on his white shirt and on the ground. We don't know who he is or why he committed suicide. Opposite the second opera, the dying bullfighter, in which Manet appears to be reversing Mantegna's perspectives.

Lips haven't lost their color yet left hand on the wound, the right clutched a faded hood.


Refine the incarnated dead girl, even on the border, just below the neck, of what has been exposed to the sun and what hasn't.


It is curious how Christian Zahrtman represented the death of Queen Sophie Amalie of Norway and Denmark, in agreement, the poor were never great beauty, even as a young man. But Zakhrtman was not generous. This is a sudden death that occurred when the woman probably saw her gold coins, which were destroyed on the floor with a precious knife.

I. Khrutsky. Still life with vase (1832)

I. Khrutsky "Flowers and Fruits" (1838)
In the twentieth century Russian still life painting has become equal among other genres. Artists worked on the perfection of color, form, composition, the genre began to develop rapidly.
Famous Russian and Soviet artists who worked and still work in the genre of still life: Konstantin Korovin (1861-1939), Igor Grabar (1871-1960), Pyotr Konchalovsky (1876-1956), Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin (1878-1939), Martiros Saryan ( 1880-1972), Ilya Mashkov (1881-1944), Elena Skuin (1909-1986), Peter Alberti (1913-1994), Sergei Osipov (1915-1985), Evgenia Antipova (1917-2009), Viktor Teterin (1922- 1991), Maya Kopyttseva (1924-2005), Yaroslav Krestovsky (1925-2003), Vladimir Stozharov (1926-1973), Boris Shamanov (1931-2008) and others.

The posture decomposes, a glassy eye, a mouth more than half closed, almost wide open, from which the tongue speaks. The excessive pride of a kneeling man is obvious that the old man has long since died. One would think that the Swiss Ferdinand Hodler was extremely cynical and insensitive in presenting the agony and death of his lover Valentin Godet-Darel in the usual diatribe that the online news feed is. Is it a moral thing that such a photographer condones the theft of images of suffering instead of helping him?

Not because it is sadism, but because it is inviolable to document something that otherwise - in words - it would not have the same power. And not because someone does it insensitively. It suffices to see how the documentary gaze is mercilessly aimed primarily at who has decided to show the world that some things happen, and that's enough. The same Helmut Newton, Lee Friedlander or Araki.

E. Skuin "Peonies and Cherries" (1956)

V. Stozharov. Still life with rowan (1969)

The reason is that, a hundred years later, we all remember Valentine Godet-Darel and suffer with her.





And Hans Andersen Brendekilde seems right. Don't be discouraged by poorly dressed women. Death caught him while he was moving stones in a desert-like field. Not an act of cynicism, but a representation of fatigue, poverty, labor so hard to kill a poor old man who, instead of smoking his pipe under the porch of his miserable house, is forced to work to exhaustion and death.


Ria Munk was the nephew of Joseph Pulyzer and romantically committed suicide by gunshot.

Still life in various styles and directions of art

The turn of the XIX-XX centuries. known for experiments in the field of artistic creativity. Still life also did not escape this fate. Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and others were the first to experiment with still life.

The family wanted a posthumous portrait of the girl and turned to Gustav Klimt, then the most popular Viennese portrait painter. That's probably why Ria looks more like the shape than she probably was, although those strokes of green and blue brushes are back and now we've learned how to deal with death.

Death, which Edvard Munch presents as terrible and cruel. The cruelty of a dead mother and her daughter is almost unbearable. The baby cries desperately and in the two previous versions closes its ears and turns its shoulders towards the mother, as if she doesn't want to feel good. The mother is dead, that there can be no more corpse: the face was dug up, the nose groaned, the teeth protruded from the mouth. Instead of Agony, there are two versions in which the dead, or tormented, are not even shown, except as a bun in bed. More unsettling are the figures that visit her, praying, ghosts themselves more impressive than a corpse, with shadows stretched across the shoulders and connecting them in the pain of palpable darkness.

P. Cezanne. Still life with drapery (1889). Hermitage (St. Petersburg)
Cubist P. Picasso boldly experimented.

P. Picasso "Jug, glass and book" (1908)
J. Braque also worked in the cubist style.

In this case, it is not a sublimation of a character, but rather a representation of a murdering woman who, by giving her life, renews it. Marat is no longer in the famous bathroom, but is lying on the bed, probably killed after making love to his killer, standing looking at the observer without any shame or fear.

The blood that stains the sheets and the same legs. Picasso is also a genius of endless creativity that has remained untouched until now - a feature that we find in many artists, from Michelangelo to Titian - worked with the concept of death. With the exception of the death of Arlecchino - a figure with whom he counted countless times - perhaps one of the most curious performances, as well as the duel after the masquerade of Jean-Léon Gérôme, whom Picasso will surely see. Maybe because it really isn't.

J. Marriage " Musical instruments» (1908)
Cubofuturists worked in search of a new space-time dimension.

More dramatic is the deathbed portrait of a friend of Casagermas who committed suicide. The picture clearly shows a bullet hole in the right temple and a certain influence of van Gogh. Naturally, green returns to the incarnation of the dead.


For Max Beckmann, death is theater, naked bodies, suffering. As in the scenario of the Great Agony, in which the expressionist painter spoke of his self-portraits as "tough", he literally puts tragedy on the scene to express the pain caused by the death of his mother.

K. Malevich "Cow and violin" (1913). State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg)
His "... intuitive feeling found in things the energy of dissonances obtained from the meeting of two opposite forms" (K. Malevich "From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism").
In the metaphysical still lifes of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), objects are pressed against each other, forming dense groups, as if trying to keep warm, fearing external cold and aggression.

Giorgio Morandi. Natura Morta (1956)
The most famous representative of surrealism, Salvador Dali, in his famous work "The Persistence of Memory", which is essentially an allegorical still life, reflects on the relativity of time.

S. Dali "The Persistence of Memory" (1931)
Commercial advertising of the second half of the XX century. brought up in people a greedy attitude to things and insatiable consumption. There is a fetishization of the subject. Elements of the still life genre are beginning to transform from art into a source of consumption.

Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Can (1968)
Dmitry Krasnopevtsev represents Russian "unofficial" art, although he has a completely official classical art education (he graduated from the Moscow Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov).

D. Krasnopevtsev. Still life
Krasnopevtsev's main genre is a "metaphysical still life" close to surrealism with simple, often beaten ceramics, dry plants and shells. These works, painted in ashy tones, develop the motif of the frailty and unreality of the world.
Here are the still life paintings contemporary artist Dmitry Annenkov are quite "animated". They are different: joyful, sad, funny, but quite alive. They want to be touched. Looking at these still lifes, it is impossible to resist a kind smile.

D. Annenkov "Still life with a coffee grinder"

D. Annenkov "Spring Sun"

D. Annenkov "Memories of Summer"

In Russian pictorial art, still life has almost always been a secondary genre. And only sophisticated art critics will be able to name a domestic still life painter. But, one way or another, still life as an independent genre began to develop in the 19th century. The first "swallows" were small watercolors and gouaches by F.P. Tolstoy and the work of I.T. Khrutsky. These were classic European still lifes with lush bouquets of garden flowers and fruit baskets. For all their artistic charm, these works had a very limited value for the development of Russian painting.

Interest in still life as an independent genre of painting appears in 80s of the 19th century. Paintings play an important role here. I.I. Levitan (1860-1900). They are usually simple in design and not large in size, and represent bouquets of familiar garden or wildflowers. In a still life Forest violets and forget-me-nots (1889) the artist sensitively betrayed the fragility of night violets and the airiness of blue forget-me-nots, their harmony with a simple rustic flask. Close in motive Dandelions" and "White Lilac". The first ones are designed in a warm range, which looks very organic with the clay of the milk pot and yellow flower heads. These still lifes by Levitan are quite traditional: the bouquets are depicted on a neutral background and isolated from the surrounding space. The meaning of these paintings is very simple - to convey the beauty of the chosen nature as accurately as possible. However, at the same time in creativity V.A. Serov and K.A. Korovin new trends began to appear that originated on the canvases of the French impressionists. The Impressionists tried to associate the still life with environment, both plot and picturesque. To do this, the "dead nature" is taken out into the open air, associated with the landscape or connected to the interior of the room. With the help of still life, they try to create a reflection of a person’s attitude, his mood and way of life.


All these trends are visible in Korovin's painting "At the Tea Table" (1888). The canvas depicts a friendly society in the country V.D. Polenova. The painting was painted on the terrace of a country house. The artist is trying to convey the feeling of a summer day, the charm of a friendly conversation. The freshness emanating from the greenery and young faces is also created to a certain extent by the still life - the contrast of red poured berries in a white plate, milk in tall transparent glasses, and the whiteness of a fresh tablecloth. The emotional unity of the picture is primarily achieved by the pictorial solution of the canvas. Everything depicted is written taking into account the surrounding light and air environment. In Serov's famous painting " Girl with Peaches" (1887) still life with peaches in the foreground at first glance does not play an important role in the composition of the canvas. All the artist's attention is focused on V. Mamontova, and the fruits only complement the created image. But peaches help Serov solve an important artistic problem. The fruits, according to the artist, serve as a color key to the coloristic construction of the picture. Serov selects his own for peaches yellow and contrasts it with the whiteness of the tablecloth, the greenness of the maple leaves and the yellowness of the light pouring from the window into the garden. The artist distinguishes lemon-yellow, greenish and golden-yellow tones on the uneven sides of the fruit. The tangible light of a summer day, which seems to form peaches, determines the entire emotional and pictorial structure of the picture.


In these works, Serov and Korovin open a new stage in the development of Russian still life. The analytical nature of these paintings is fundamentally different from the concept of a salon still life that existed at that time. The main advantage of such works was considered the maximum similarity of the image with the subject. Etude ease of manner or careful finishing of the picturesque surface was also highly valued. Most accurately, all these principles are embodied in the big picture. K. E. Makovsky "In the artist's studio" (1881). The work impresses with a "still life" heap of details: exotic fruits, rich fabrics, antique rarities. big dog and a little boy do not seem to be living beings, but simple exhibits of this exhibition of luxury goods. The new concept of still life assumed a comprehensive expansion of the boundaries of the genre and its merger with portrait, landscape, interior and household painting. Still life ceases to be a simple image of "dead nature" and turns into a means of revealing the image.


New trends are visible in the famous painting V.D. Polenov "Sick" (1886). The interior and the figure of the heroine are immersed in a deep shadow - they are just a background, and the meaning of what is happening is revealed with the help of a compact group of objects, which is brightly lit by a lamp with a green shade. This still life is very informative. A half-burnt lampshade is snatched out of the darkness by crumpled pillows and sheets, a glass decanter, a glass of water, vials of medicines and doctor's prescriptions. On the left, shabby books in red and blue covers are visible, perhaps these are home remedies or albums that entertained the patient. Such a composition is a symbol of the fact that the whole life of this patient is centered around this table and the objects standing on it. At work, still life is given an active role in creating mood. Also quite characteristic is the still life, which is highlighted in the picture K. Makovsky "Alekseich". In the picture, the figure of a man is already depicted in the background, behind a still life. The image of a benevolent old man is revealed in the sincere joy with which he anticipates his lonely tea party. A crust of bread, a boiling samovar, jam in a glass jar, a box of sugar and tea carefully covered with a towel - all this creates a feeling of peace and warmth, which sincerely pleases an unpretentious person.