Dorothy Braund – ‘Still Life’

Like its name suggests, still life art depicts subjects that are unmoving, either man-made or natural. The genre reaches back to ancient Egyptian tombs through to the Renaissance and into modernism, when artists like Paul Cezanne repeatedly painted bowls of fruit. While still life art is now firmly canonised, in the 17th Century it was considered the lowliest genre of all. Not about humans – not good enough, thought the French Academy. But is that true? 

Robert Jacks – ‘Still Life – Cityscape’

The reasons an artist might pursue still life art are varied. In Robert Jacks’s ‘Cityscape – Still Life’, a titular reference to the genre is employed ironically; in the throes of a busy metropolis, life is anything but still. For Sybil Craig, depicting domestic objects in the privacy of her own home allowed her to experiment in a way she was unable to publicly. Her bowl of fruit is not just bric-a-brac, but a minute act of rebellion. Other artists use unmoving objects to experiment with form, colour and composition, pushing themselves to make a familiar subject anew. 

Sybil Craig – ‘Fruit Bowl I’

The still life can also carry a moral or spiritual dimension. In Brett Whiteley’s ‘View of the Garden’, stillness and life are juxtaposed – a quiet interior looks out into a blooming garden. Emerging in the Renaissance, the memento mori (Latin for “remember you must die”) more explicitly evoked this tension, employing skulls, wilting flowers or decaying fruit as reminders that life is transient. Like a peach plucked from its vine, you too will wrinkle. Excesses of food and wine could similarly serve as a warning to avoid over indulgence; paradoxically, they were also celebrations of material pleasure, feasts for the eyes. 

Greg Irvine – ‘The Ming Plate’

At its core, the still life represents a practice of patience – an ability to find art, wonder and newness in the objects we live with. They compel us to be in the moment, to meditate on the minor pleasures of the everyday. In the words of Edgar Degas, gazing upon Edourard Manet’s painting of a pear, “a pear like that could overthrow any god.”