Artsy Sister Talks About Still Life
Written by Teresita Blanco (The Artsy Sister)
I did a new video blog. The topic was still life. It is quite the underappreciated type of painting. It has an interesting history, nonetheless. Still Life are paintings of inanimate objects.
This includes flowers, fruits, objects, bones and jewelry. The first still life where painting by the Egyptians in tombs. The fruits where painting with “magic paint”. They were supposed to feed the dead in the afterlife.
The Greeks saw these paintings. Not understanding their purpose, they proceeded to use food items as room decorations. The romans added skulls to their still life, as a type of momento mori.
It was a moment to meditate on death. With the fall of the roman empire, art was only produced in monasteries. Monks were safe from the chaos of the world. They painted flowers and fruit as decoration for their gospels.
With the Renaissance, still life lost their religious connotation. In the Baroque period, still life where popular. The discovery of the new world allowed artist to paint foreign plants and food.
These paintings where quite popular for a while. When Ingres and Poussin came to power in the Paris Art Academies, they created a higherarchy of art. Still life where now considered not worth painting.
The impressionists brought back still life. Now, folks paint inanimate objects on a day to day basis. You can check out the video of this blog in my Artsy Sister Youtube Channel. Please do give a like and subscribe.
