Still Life

LONDONART.CO.UK STILL LIFE "Vanity of vanities - all is vanity." Revelations "Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. " William Faulkner "All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God. " Thomas Browne The secret of Nature Morte, paradoxically, is to bring forth the inner life of objects. The tradition has it's roots in Classical times: the Greeks and Romans were very fond of depicting the ephemera of everyday life. It didn't become a genre in it's own right until the 17th Century in the Netherlands when painters such as Jan de Heem, Pieter Claesz and van Beyeren excelled in the creation of cornucopic festoons of nature juxtaposed with objects which reminded us of the vanity of the material world, the brevity of human existence. The art form was reinvented by the Impressionists, notably Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse and Morandi, and again by the Cubists, especially Picasso and Braque, who abstracted the still life to the point of parody. The genre remains extremely popular today for the simple reason that these paintings hang well in interiors, while providing a mirror to everyday life. London Art hosts a vast array of nature morte, some in the style of the old masters (Ivan Mitev and Dmitry Moiseev are particularly good exponents); some after The Impressionists (Patricia Clements, Greg Skwentna); others with a distinctly Modernist feel (Null Djoma) or domestic Naive style (Julie Nicholls, Catherine Heard). Art must keep evolving, however, and the genre has been brought up to date by Susan Light's (Five Objects), Alan Wilson (Double Twist) and Paul Wright, whose 'Sweets' captures the grotesque appetites of the 21stCentury consumer. Feast your eyes!

Five Objects by Susan Light Still Life with Fruits by Ivan Mitev

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