Open Letter To Artists (From An Art Critic) - Part 25
by Joan Altabe

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Still lifes may be still, but they’re not lifeless

Despite their long and varied history, still lifes don’t get enough respect. If you’re a painter of inanimate objects, this one’s for you. Probably the best time to paint commonplace items was the 17th century when things like fruit and flowers stood as symbols for life and death, when they were moral messages, reminders that life is fleeting and material things are meaningless. Such paintings, known as Vanitas (Latin for vanity), pushed the point with images of rotting fruit, dead leaves, and even skulls.

Many paintings of food have been by women. In fact, you might say that women painters of old and still lifes of food went together like bagels and cream cheese. Before the 19th century, female artists were not permitted to study anatomy. Important commissions - history paintings and scenes from the Bible - went to male painters. Women were left to paint the only thing they could study at will: food. Still lifes of food became the female painters' way to earn their bread in the 17th century. And like their male counterparts, their works held philosophical meaning. The dead leaves and fallen petals in Clara Peeters' "Still Life," for example, speak loudly about the impermanence of life.

Some women painters today are still painting still lifes, even though the world is their oyster, so to say. I’m thinking of Audrey Flack, whose paintings are in the Vanitas tradition. Her "Marilyn," a photo-real image of Marilyn Monroe, presents the movie star surrounded by opulent satins and velvet, along with cut fruit that is beginning to dry out, along with a burning candle. Elton John's homage to Marilyn - "Candle in the Wind" – used the same symbol for her death.

But still lifes can stand for more than life's impermanence. Apples and pears by Tom Seghi, a contemporary Chicago painter, come across as the very opposite of impermanence. Static, calm and solemn, his apples and pears can strike one as great monuments. In that way, he paints like ancient Romans, who were known for their still lifes, particularly the ability to capture the roundness of fruit.

Seghi's pears, which are ideally centered and sublimely symmetrical, also bring to mind amphoras, old Greek jars for wine or oil (minus the handles, of course). All restlessness or stirred-up feelings fade before the faultless symmetry of his pears (and apples, too), which he situates alone or in groups upon hard-edge grounds of black. The solemn stillness in his work calls to mind Rembrandt's "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer," in which the Old Master expressed a kind of brooding mystery with strategic lights against an otherwise darkened background.

Probing, poring over a few pieces of fruit with an almost ritualistic concentration, focusing hard on undistorted form, on clarity of light, on subordination of detail, on strict sense of balance, Seghi profiles fruit in categorically classic fashion: restrained and restful. One thinks of sculptor Aristide Maillol's renditions of women in dignified repose - so integral, so ideal. And, as with Maillol, the contours in Seghi's still lifes wend and wreath around like museum docents pointing out the sights.

More than symbols, philosophical mind-states or objets d'art, still lifes can also be personal statements, and in that way, they are self-portraits. Van Gogh leads the pack on this score. "The Yellow Chair," painted at a high point in his life, represents his sunny state of mind, his optimism for the future. You can see sprouting tulip bulbs in a nearby box – clearly an emblem of new life. And to emphasize the message, he marked the box "Vincent." He took everyday objects like a chair, painted it yellow and made it sing of him.

Given the artist’s need for self-expression, one wonders why there aren’t more still-life painters.

— Joan Altabe | March 20, 2007

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