Still life

Still life is one of the principal genres of Western art, its subject being motionless, inanimate objects: flowers, fruit and vegetables, tableware, books, musical instruments, game from the hunt, skulls and other things arranged into a composition. The very name (French 'nature morte', 'dead nature'; English 'still life') accurately conveys the essence of the genre. In the traditional hierarchy still life held the lowest place, since it was thought to require only skill in copying the visible rather than imagination or elevated ideas. Despite its low official status, still life flourished in Dutch and Flemish art of the seventeenth century, becoming a field for virtuoso mastery in rendering texture, light, colour and the illusion of materiality. Many still lifes carried hidden symbolic meaning — above all the vanitas, which reminded viewers of the transience of life. Later Jean-Baptiste Chardin gave the genre a noble simplicity, and at the turn of the twentieth century still life became a true laboratory of modernism: Paul Cezanne explored form and space through apples and jugs, while the Cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque broke objects down into facets and planes. Thus the 'humblest' genre became the arena of the boldest artistic revolutions.