The course notes ask for comments on anything I found particularly interesting or surprising about this genre.
Generalising (since of course there are always individual exceptions), I love the human scale and interest, the sense of the person. The artist has chosen this particular group of objects to observe carefully, to spend time with. There’s often a meditative feel, giving a moment to stop rushing about and to see what is around us all the time.
Given what I saw in Cézanne (see 30-Jan-2014), still life also gives a lot of scope to bring in theory, to experiment. In a sense it is the most obvious non-abstract form which reduces the importance of the subject of the painting – a key element in the movement towards abstraction. In that light still life was a bridge to many the developments of the twentieth century, but it remains an important area of work in its own right.
I want to show a few still life works I’ve seen in recent months and found particularly interesting.

Matthew Smith
Jugs against vermillion background
1936 – 30. Oil on canvas
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/27.1992/

Giorgio Morandi
Still life
1957. Oil on canvas
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/431.1997/

John Brack
The Breakfast Table
1958. Oil on canvas
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/193.2013/

John Bokor
Kitchen table
2011. Pencil, gesso wash on thick textured white paper (oil paper)
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/362.2012.3/
The multiple lines and layers made me think of pentimenti (traces of alteration) in older works where the artist may have changed his/her mind, then the multiple lines in Cézanne’s work where he kept seeing slightly different parts of an object, and the tail of the bull in Matisse’s L’Enlevement d’Europe (see http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=75935) that I wanted in my bedroom in the Finding Affinities exercise (see 9-Dec-2013). I haven’t got to the end of this train of thought, but it feels like something I want to explore further.

Emma White
Still life with objects
2011. Archival inkjet print
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/91.2012/

George Baldessin
Pear – version number 2
1973. Sculpture, corten steel: 7 forms
artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=45188
I’m continuing my personal attempts with still life. I like this best of what I’ve done so far. I like some of the textures created by the posterizing of the image. I think perhaps it needs some other little thing with a hard reflection like the ginger beer bottle – maybe a little hard round reflective shape catching the light just in front of the deeply shadowed side of the bowl. You can see more of my struggles in my sketchbook (click here).
UA1-WA:P3-p4-Exercise: Notes about still life
Understanding Art 1 – Western Art.
Part three: Modern art and still life
Project four: Still life after 1900
Exercise: Notes about still life
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