#35: Still Life is Never Still
Look and make a still life—and then remake it.
Instructions
Collect some objects (maybe fruit?) to create a still life.
Look at it closely. Notice how it changes over time (hours, days, etc).
Create a version of it that captures the spirit of it or your reaction — photo, drawing, dance move, whatever — and share that.
Me and Museums
I’m a semi-retired modern art nerd. I used to love museums—it’s a strong like now—and have worked in the field for some time. (The short version of this story — sometimes taking the thing you love and doing it as a career can be rewarding … and also destroy the magic of the thing). If you want to have a conversation about how museums are not neutral (and often racist or at least colonial — finder’s keepers! ), how modern art is a sham, or any of those other things — I’m here for it.
AND, there is something nice about having a (mostly quiet) place to go and be that doesn’t (mostly) revolve around buying stuff, and instead offers a chance to pause and look at beautiful things. Of course, as we’ve been exploring in this blog, almost any place has that capacity if we train our attention and interest. But museums have it in excess.
In what seems like ages ago, I was lucky enough to lead a mindfulness class for teachers at MoMA and for a good while just let them sit and look at stuff. That was nice.
But Why So Much Bowls of Fruit
One of my favorite art mediums is painting, and one of the most common painting motifs is still life. Artists can select food and fruit and stuff to be symbols of other things (getting around the pesky ancient censors) but also, fruit doesn’t need to stop to go to the bathroom or sleep like live models need to. Thus: so many paintings of fruit!
For years I’d mainly skip past these at museums, save for the really weird ones (fruit face!), but then I discovered Paul Cézanne. He does the “here’s a table with some fruit” thing pretty heavily, but as a modern (technically “Post-Impressionist”) painter he tweaks the formula. At first glance you think “okay sure, some apples on a table” but pause for a second, look closely, and WHOA.
Image: Detail of Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses. ca. 1890 by Paul Cézanne. Go see it at The Met.
Tablecloths take on an almost architectural strength, brushstrokes layer up to create these vibrating orbs of color, and the perspective is shifted so that you’re almost looking at it from multiple viewpoints at a time. Nancy Locke writes (emphasize mine):
Cézanne’s sense of reconstructing the object world he perceives can best be described as relational. .. One fruit’s spatial relationship with the one next to it makes perfect sense, but one side of the table does not seem to line up with the other. In addition, Cézanne favors multiple outlines for some objects, and no outlines at all for others. …
The disjointedness in the drawing, the spatial ambiguities, the patches of color that migrate from apple to tablecloth—these aspects of Cézanne’s working method are always hailed as modernist innovations. Cézanne calls attention to the painted surface; he works to reconcile an illusion of a three-dimensional object world within the confines of the two-dimensional art of painting.
In non-museum-speak: Cézanne deals with the fact that looking at an ever-changing world is hard to capture in a static picture, and it’s worth trying to inject some of that vibrant aliveness into the 2-D world. As the artist said himself:
“People think a sugar bowl has no physiognomy or soul. But that changes every day here. You have to take them, cajole them. . . . These glasses, these dishes, they talk among themselves. They whisper interminable secrets. . . . Fruits . . . love to have their portraits painted. They sit there and apologize for changing color.”
— Cézanne, from Conversation with Cézanne, quoted in the MoMA.org blog
Re-Making Stuff
Modern painters began to understand that cameras could capture things with technical accuracy, but that paintings can open different doors of perception, so too we can look at and make things without the weight of needing to get every physical detail right. If we let ourselves.
One of my favorite things about good museums are the museum educators. The best ones invite people to engage with art in different ways — dancing, drawing, writing, and more!
Image: Avis Brock leads a group of students in a lesson about art, the Harlem Renaissance, and math with close looking and movement.
So make a still life, look at it, remake it, and look again. Repeat. And don’t forget to HAVE FUN.
And Now, Music!
Okay, 1990s again. Remember Janet Jackson’s run of albums in the mid-1990s? “It’s Been a Minute” did a great podcast episode about it. Here’s Janet with some fruit and veggies and vibrant dancing. So there’s a connection. Also, just listen to joyful music.
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