What is Still Life?

Still life is a painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects, typically including fruit and flowers and objects contrasting with these in texture, such as bowls and glassware. It is also a work of art that shows inanimate objects from the natural or man-made world, such as fruit, flowers, dead game, and/or vessels like baskets or bowls.

Fernando Botero Angulo was a Colombian figurative artist and sculptor from Medellín. His signature style, also known as “Boterismo”, depicts people and figures in large, exaggerated volume, which can represent political criticism or humor, depending on the piece. This style is shown through his still life photos by using large fruit with large abnormal objects to show uniqueness and creativity.

Here is some of Fernando Botero’s best still life work that he has produced over the years!

Another really important and famous artist is Caravaggio. He was a divisive and important Italian painter. He was abandoned when he was 11 years old and trained with an artist in Milan. He relocated to Rome, where his art became well-known for the tenebrism method he employed, which used shadow to highlight brighter regions. His success, unfortunately, was brief. Caravaggio departed Rome after killing a person in a scuffle.

Caravaggio with his Basket of Fruit gave still life new dignity, by putting it on the same level as figurative painting. Caravaggio didn’t search for aesthetically pleasing representations, but he searched for reality, because to him painting meant to accept life as it is, without decorations and with all its imperfections. It looks like he has the basket of fruit on the rule of thirds which shows that is the main focus.

What is Vanitas?

Vanitas is a still-life painting of a 17th-century Dutch genre containing symbols of death or change as a reminder of their inevitability. Here are some examples.

What is Memento Mori?

Memento Mori is an object kept as a reminder of the inevitability of death, such as a skull. Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’. A basic memento mori painting would be a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses or clocks, extinguished or guttering candles, fruit, and flowers.

Some Metaphors and Symbols used in still life would be:

Fruit: Varying Symbolism In Still Life Paintings.

Candles: The Passing of Time.

Seashells: Birth, Purity, And Fertility.

Insects: Transformation And Decay.

Dead Animals: Contradiction And The Hunt.

Trade/Slavery/Colonialism: Shown through objects they used or materials they used/picked e.g. cotton.