INSPIRATION: ART & DESIGN: MODERN STILL LIFE

There’s never been a time with more modern still lifes. Even at the still life heyday in the 1600s in the Netherlands. In English the term still life comes from the Dutch word stilleven, in most other Romance Languages (as well as Greek, Polish, Russian and Turkish) they tend to use terms meaning dead nature instead.

Still Lifes, then as now, tend to feature tables and food, natural elements, both alive and dead and some man made objects. Flowers are also very popular. Photography makes creating a still life easier than ever before, much easier than having to recreate scenes with photo realism using oils or acrylics and so we see them more often than ever. Artists, designers, stylists and instagrammers are subverting the genre and having to become more and more creative.

The still life can be used as a tableau to advertise, instagram food porn is a form of still life, as is the ever present flat lay. I love that the current trend of still life representation that can be quirky, or messy as it wasn’t before. But a mess can look beautiful and it’s finding that line when creating these images that can separate one photographer from another.

I have included a few paintings in this post but I’m mostly featuring photography. The thing I enjoy most about these pieces is how they subvert the original Still Life art fundamentals. A lot of the food is either destroyed, in pieces or gone and leave only crumbs whereas the original still life paintings tended to feature whole foods. There’s a lot less ‘game’ but meat is shown, not the dead animal as would have been seen previously.

In some pieces there tends to be a lot more kinetic energy than the old life still life paintings. With photography comes a lot more control, quick set ups and instant shots. Things can balance precariously where they wouldn’t before. We can see things that might be about to fall, there’s more implication of movement, these images tell more of a story.

Another aspect that is missing from the paintings of old, which has something to do with the instancy of photography, but also with changing tastes and trends, is the appearance of shadows and reflections. In modern still lifes, especially styled pieces for advertising, magazine photography and food styling, interesting shadows and reflections of sunlight, reflections through and off of different surfaces are more commonly shown. In a photography studio it is easy to control the light and create a set of reflections and shadows that work with your aesthetic. As was the trend at the time, the old Dutch paintings were quite dark and reflected what would have been seen rather than manipulated.

Some of these modern still lifes reference directly the original masters, down to the composition of the piece, they subvert the genre by using modern foods or methods. Juan Sánchez Cotán’s Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber of 1602, has been recreated (see below) with KFC, but also postcards, Watermelon and books, and recreated with the same objects but with photography by student photographers, A-level art students and flickr photographers a million times over.

Find some of the most famous original still life artists here…