What makes a still life painting beautiful?

Throughout art history, still life has often been relegated to a “low” art form. For example, the 17th-century Italian painter Andrea Sacchi ranked it below landscape, and in the 18th century, Royal Academy founder Joshua Reynolds ranked it below landscape, portraiture and history painting. For centuries, the lifeless and sometimes predictable nature of still life subjects — skulls, globes, heavy books and sumptuous meals — has left some art critics cold.

Yet, despite attempts to relegate still life to the lowest rung of the artistic hierarchy, the genre is now a fundamental part of Western art history. Still life remains, as Édouard Manet put it, a ‘touchstone’ for painting. Lately, the genre has been celebrated with increasing frequency in a series of exhibitions. In 2022, the Louvre hosted its landmark exhibition Les Choses (The Things), setting up a dialogue between artists who have worked with still life, past and present. This year, art spaces around the world, from the Hepworth Wakefield to the Ben Brown Gallery and the Henoch Gallery, have followed suit, showcasing new and vivid works by artists who give material life universal and contemporary meaning.

The Shape of Things at Pallant House Gallery is undoubtedly the most comprehensive of these new exhibitions—featuring 150 works by more than 100 artists—but it is also the first major show to consider the history of still life in Britain specifically. “What really struck me when engaging with works from the past and present was how artists used still life as a vehicle to grapple with some of the most pressing and profound aspects of the human condition,” says Melanie van den Broek, the exhibition’s lead curator. “Birth, love, loss, joy, violence; it’s all there, projected onto the objects on canvas.”

Simon Pietersz Verelst Bittersweet Bouquet Painting Roses, morning glories and carnations are placed on the marble wall, along with some grapes. (c. 1700) is displayed in the first room of the exhibition and is full of symbolism, conveying the gift of God’s creation and the transience of life. The rose petals are about to wither, and the leaves are already withered by the sun. Each element has a deeper meaning: the rose symbolizes love and the Virgin Mary, while the carnation represents the resurrection and eternal life.

Often, these works endure because they allow the viewer to take a moment of respite. “At its core, this genre of work focuses on slow, close observation, giving the viewer a chance to pause,” Vandenbroucke said. “Contemporary artists are intentionally drawing on the tradition of still life painting to reinvent it, push its boundaries, and continue to provoke that feeling.”

In the exhibition at Palant House, artist Patrick Caulfield of the 1960s Pop Art generation Reserved table (2000). Caulfield’s life-size painting is an abstract composition of a restaurant interior, in which a lobster is rendered in vivid detail on a tin tray on a crisp white tablecloth. By reinvigorating the genre’s formal traditions, Caulfield achieved his goal of “shaking the familiar with the familiar”: “I have found that by treating different things in different ways, they come into focus,” the artist wrote in the publication Patrick Caulfield (2005). “It means that one person cannot take in everything, and your eyes can look around and see all kinds of things.”

Just as an archaeologist unearths relics, studying the timeline of still life painting represents an exploration of human history. “For the past 130 years, artists have used still life painting to make sense of the world around them,” Vandenbroucke said. “Each painting, sculpture or installation is a historical touchstone that is very much in character with its time. [In the exhibition]we see artists exploring themes such as consumerism, injustice, and immigration. ” The culture depicted in the table is arguably as responsive to history as any building or landscape. In paintings from the Dutch Golden Age of the 16th century, the presence of certain fruits such as pineapples indicated the wealth of the Dutch Republic and its powerful global trade networks. The nuances of how an object or artifact appears to us are the product of cultural and historical pressures.

In his archival inkjet prints Still Life with Goblet (after Pieter de Ring, 1640–1669) (2017), British-Chinese artist Gordon Cheung focuses on Dutch banquets and breakfast works, exploring the connections between historical socio-economic systems, modern capitalism, and China’s recent power on the global stage. Cheung adapts open-source images of historical still life paintings and applies a digital code that “destroys” the image. This aesthetic erodes the original image, moving it towards a state of pictorial chaos.

Vandenbrouck also points out that still life paintings can express inner and outer conflicts, citing Meredith Frampton’s disturbing assemblages of objects as an example. Trial and error (1939), which reminds people of the social instability at that time.”Trial and error “In some ways, the painting is a traditional still life, with its delicate use of paint, realistic representation of objects, and almost neoclassical architecture,” Vandenbroucke said. “But something feels off. The juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated objects—from a pear-shaped urn to a coil of ribbon; from a green ribbed glass poison bottle to art supplies—suggests the dissonance and uncertainty of the time, but also the fragility of life and the vicissitudes of existence.”

Madame Yevonde, a society portraitist and pioneer of color photography, similarly explored the anxieties of war. Crisis (ARP)—Taken in 1939, just two days after the outbreak of World War II, the photographer covered the bust of Julius Caesar with a gas mask and placed it amid the falling petals of a red carnation: a solemn foreshadowing of the bloodshed of war.

In addition to critical behavior vanity or Death warningAt its core, still life painting celebrates and exalts the ordinariness of inanimate objects. The genre falls under what is often called “rhopography,” the depiction of things that are unimportant. In the exhibition at the Palant House, internal symbols and fragments of identity are embodied in a pair of false teeth or a scattered silk scarf, as in Dod Procter’s black and white (1932). In Jann Haworth’s soft sculpture, a pack of cigarettes, a cup of coffee and a morning newspaper form the image of a kitchen table. Donuts, coffee cups and comics (1962).

This distillation of everyday life is best exemplified by the work of Post-Impressionist artists, including Paul Cézanne and Édouard Manet, as well as artists of the Bloomsbury and Camden Town groups. These artists depicted humble household objects, devoid of symbolism, in simple arrangements and in vibrant colours to achieve a sense of balance and unity.

For example, in the second room of the Pallant House exhibition hangs a painting by the British painter Ursula Tyrwhitt. Flowers (1912), a watercolor of a jar filled with common English flowers. Tyrwhitt used pattern (in the form of an incomplete tablecloth) and distorted perspective to bring still life into a new era of modernism. A few years later, this focus would take hold in the Social Realism movement, which used art to draw attention to the conditions of everyday life. John Bratby Still Life with Chip Frier (1954), also on display, depicts a cluttered table piled high with food, a departure from the traditional still-life representation of food. Instead, he showed mass-produced goods, such as a fryer for french fries or a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

In many cases, still life painters refuse to play the role of neutral observer, instead endowing central objects with a sense of intimacy and proximity, as if each object has its own personality. Understanding still life in art doesn’t require specialized knowledge — it’s about appreciating the stories, meanings, and beauty contained in everyday objects. “No matter how insignificant they may seem, the lives of objects reveal our own lives,” says Vandenbroucke. “They represent and contain us, tangible fragments of ourselves.”

For example, in My bottle and pump (2024) is a new painting by Caroline Walker for The Shape of Things, in which she challenges the “low” status of her everyday personal objects. She depicts a breastfeeding device drying on the kitchen sink, elevating this feminine act. “Walker is reclaiming domestic space and offering a window into contemporary motherhood,” says Vandenbroucke.