Contemporary Still Lifes on Artsy

Here's another post I made for Artsy about contemporary still lifes. It's brief and superficial, but, hey, it's something!

Still life painting is perhaps the most calculated of all genres. The artist first chooses the scene, and in most cases, arranges the image to their liking. Sixteenth and seventeenth century still lifes focused on portraying important themes of the day such as vanitas, which is, very loosely translated, a meditation on death, such as a skull, religious devoutness, such as a loaf of bread and a glass of wine, and regal status, for example, a sumptuously displayed table. At this time, artists were concerned with representing real life in a precise and natural manner through subjects that would convey specific themes to their viewers. Toward the middle of the 19th century, modernists (i.e. impressionist and post-impressionist artists) began to break away from the realism and naturalism of the past. No longer concerned with classicism and traditionalism, these artists broke from the Academie and introuduced bold color, sweeping gestures, unique perspective, and tangible emotion to their works (think of Van Gogh’s seminal sunflowers). Rejecting the conventions of the traditional still life which focused on the subject and symbolism, expression and process became increasingly the focus of the contemporary still life.  With the advent of Pop art, contemporary artists like Wayne Thiebaud, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, combined traditional still life representation with the bold colors and spatial concerns of the modern era. David Hockney similarly utilizes a combination of classic rendering with expressive color and unique perspective.