Artists do use still life painting
to polish their expertise. Many of the
most stunning paintings are still lifes.
The artist, as I said, has all the time in the world to painstakingly
execute the minutest of brush strokes, leading to a stylistic element called
photorealism. This was known as trompe l'œil, which is French for
"fooling the eye." Linear
perspective, chiaroscuro, tenebrism—all of the artistic elements we have looked
at to date come into play here, making still lifes among the most dynamic
paintings in all of art history to observe.
But, for me at least, there is something strange and almost unsettling
about the realism of images that hangs inside a frame on a wall. The objects are so close, poised on whatever
cabinet surface or tablecloth, we feel we could almost stretch out our hand and
touch it. Why is that? Approximately two hundred years early, I'll
ask the question: why must paintings look real?
(Centuries later, artists will seriously contemplate this in their
works). What do you think is the point
of making an inanimate object—that has no life of its own and that is painted
two-dimensionally on a flat canvas—real?
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