Still Life
Arrangements of things that do not move, such as food, flowers, vessels and books, painted or photographed for close attention.
299 works · 10 related artists
About
Still life arranges things that do not move and makes them worth long attention. Juan Sánchez Cotán's Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber (c. 1602) hangs fruit and vegetables in a stone window frame against pure black. Clara Peeters, working in Antwerp, painted tables of cheese, pies and gilt cups and slipped tiny reflections of herself into the polished metal, and Rachel Ruysch built flower pieces of dizzying detail over a career that ran into the 1740s.
Modern painters turned the genre into a laboratory. Paul Cézanne tilted tables and apples in works such as The Basket of Apples (c. 1893) to show objects from more than one angle, and Giorgio Morandi spent decades rearranging the same dusty bottles in muted tones. Photographers joined in: Edward Weston's Pepper No. 30 (1930) turns a vegetable into a sculptural form. Look for the balance of textures, and for fruit just beginning to spoil.
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