DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.56224#0031
(fig. 8). On a table parallel to the picture plane in
the exact center of the painting is a basket of oranges
and orange blossoms. It is flanked by a pewter plate
with lemons and a cup and saucer, on which is an-
other blossom. Every object is carefully outlined and
strongly modeled. Each is a world of its own. This is
no meal—it is, rather, an offering.
Among the still lifes by Aurbaran's followers the re-
ligious flavor is less marked. However, the symmetry
and clarity of their compositions, as well as the linear
and sculptural qualities, survive. Sometimes the Span-
ish bodegone recalls old-fashioned window displays.
The bodegone reached Mexico during the colonial
period. Antonio Perez de Aguilar painted one there in
1786—testifying to the fact that objectivism in still-life
painting survived in Mexico after it had disappeared
in the mother country. This painting depicts with great
simplicity and intensity the shelves of a pantry in a
frontal view.
During the nineteenth century this style was rejected
by the academic painters of Mexico and it found a
refuge in the folk art. There are anonymous still lifes
from the beginning to the middle of the century,
which in all their naiveté have preserved a good deal
of the dignity and order of ancient Spanish objectivism
under a thin veil of contemporary taste (fig. 7).
Finally a few words about the fate of the ‘close-up’
type of still life. Dürers ‘foreground details were imi-
tated after his death, and these paintings remained
popular collectors items all during the Baroque.
Whether or not inspired by Dürer, the Dutchman
Otto Marsaeus van Schrieck specialized in close-ups of
underbrush, animated with reptiles and insects (fig. 5).
This type of picture, which assumed an uncanny char-
acter in the hands of Marsaeus, was kept alive by his
pupil, Mattheus Withoos, whose daughter and fol-
lower carried on the tradition into the eighteenth cen-
tury. The English genre painter Alfred William Hunt
did water-color close-ups of clumps of grass and birds’
nests in the middle of the nineteenth century, but his
minute, flawless technique is not without the senti-
mental approach reflecting the popular taste of the
time. :
The bulk of still-life production in Europe after the
Baroque was of the picturesque type. This is true of
the highly decorative hunting still lifes of the Rubens
school, which like the Dutch flower paintings con-
tinued in a weakened form far into the eighteenth
century.
(o]
In France, Chardin made a new start in the middle
of the eighteenth century, reinterpreting the Dutch
breakfast piece in terms of a new color scale. He mas-
tered the richer palette of the Rococo style (fig. 10),
adding his own observations to it, which led him close
to the later discoveries of the Impressionists. A century
later, Gustave Courbet resumed the naturalistic trend
of Chardin, in his lessknown fruit and flower pieces.
In contradistinction to Chardin, Courbet retained the
brown tonality of the Dutch masters. His still-life style
inspired Carl Schuch (1846-1903), a Viennese mem-
ber of the group gathered around Wilhelm Leibl in
Munich (fig. 13). Not until Edouard Manet developed
the technique of impressionism was Courbet's warm
color scale replaced by that of bright daylight. Manet’s
still lifes of fruit and flowers with their patches of vivid
color are the beginnings of a development that cul-
minated in Renoir's flower pieces, the pure colors of
which recall the hues of the rainbow.
Cézanne heralded a new era of the still life where
color and form became the predominant values rather
than light and texture. At the same time Van Gogh
forced the still life to respond to his violent emotions.
From the style of Cézanne and Van Gogh the post-
impressionists developed their highly differentiated
tendencies, which covered the range from pure ab-
straction to a mere distortion of reality. As early as the
First World War, countercurrents to these movements
began to evolve. The artists who led these movements
called their groups Valori Plastici in Italy, Neue Sach-
lichkeit in Germany, and Surréalisme in France. Cor-
responding to their national backgrounds, the move-
ment in Italy assumed a classical, in Germany a ro-
mantic, and in France a symbolic character.
All had in common a new emphasis on objects. The
artist contemplated an isolated object until he per-
ceived its very essence, and then, if possible, without
copying from life, he projected it on the canvas as a
self-contained creation. During the process of mental
penetration, however, the object lost the familiar char-
acter of its part in daily life. It became charged with
deeper meaning, with associations and implications,
with symbolism and individuality. These overtones
gave the work of art the quality that Franz Roh hap-
pily termed magic. At one time the painter of the
trompe Vœil had gained an uncanny effect from his
peculiar illusionist technique. By similar devices in our
time the ‘Magic Realist conjures up the impression
that his dead objects are endowed with an enigmatic
life of their own.
— e AR L MG s
the exact center of the painting is a basket of oranges
and orange blossoms. It is flanked by a pewter plate
with lemons and a cup and saucer, on which is an-
other blossom. Every object is carefully outlined and
strongly modeled. Each is a world of its own. This is
no meal—it is, rather, an offering.
Among the still lifes by Aurbaran's followers the re-
ligious flavor is less marked. However, the symmetry
and clarity of their compositions, as well as the linear
and sculptural qualities, survive. Sometimes the Span-
ish bodegone recalls old-fashioned window displays.
The bodegone reached Mexico during the colonial
period. Antonio Perez de Aguilar painted one there in
1786—testifying to the fact that objectivism in still-life
painting survived in Mexico after it had disappeared
in the mother country. This painting depicts with great
simplicity and intensity the shelves of a pantry in a
frontal view.
During the nineteenth century this style was rejected
by the academic painters of Mexico and it found a
refuge in the folk art. There are anonymous still lifes
from the beginning to the middle of the century,
which in all their naiveté have preserved a good deal
of the dignity and order of ancient Spanish objectivism
under a thin veil of contemporary taste (fig. 7).
Finally a few words about the fate of the ‘close-up’
type of still life. Dürers ‘foreground details were imi-
tated after his death, and these paintings remained
popular collectors items all during the Baroque.
Whether or not inspired by Dürer, the Dutchman
Otto Marsaeus van Schrieck specialized in close-ups of
underbrush, animated with reptiles and insects (fig. 5).
This type of picture, which assumed an uncanny char-
acter in the hands of Marsaeus, was kept alive by his
pupil, Mattheus Withoos, whose daughter and fol-
lower carried on the tradition into the eighteenth cen-
tury. The English genre painter Alfred William Hunt
did water-color close-ups of clumps of grass and birds’
nests in the middle of the nineteenth century, but his
minute, flawless technique is not without the senti-
mental approach reflecting the popular taste of the
time. :
The bulk of still-life production in Europe after the
Baroque was of the picturesque type. This is true of
the highly decorative hunting still lifes of the Rubens
school, which like the Dutch flower paintings con-
tinued in a weakened form far into the eighteenth
century.
(o]
In France, Chardin made a new start in the middle
of the eighteenth century, reinterpreting the Dutch
breakfast piece in terms of a new color scale. He mas-
tered the richer palette of the Rococo style (fig. 10),
adding his own observations to it, which led him close
to the later discoveries of the Impressionists. A century
later, Gustave Courbet resumed the naturalistic trend
of Chardin, in his lessknown fruit and flower pieces.
In contradistinction to Chardin, Courbet retained the
brown tonality of the Dutch masters. His still-life style
inspired Carl Schuch (1846-1903), a Viennese mem-
ber of the group gathered around Wilhelm Leibl in
Munich (fig. 13). Not until Edouard Manet developed
the technique of impressionism was Courbet's warm
color scale replaced by that of bright daylight. Manet’s
still lifes of fruit and flowers with their patches of vivid
color are the beginnings of a development that cul-
minated in Renoir's flower pieces, the pure colors of
which recall the hues of the rainbow.
Cézanne heralded a new era of the still life where
color and form became the predominant values rather
than light and texture. At the same time Van Gogh
forced the still life to respond to his violent emotions.
From the style of Cézanne and Van Gogh the post-
impressionists developed their highly differentiated
tendencies, which covered the range from pure ab-
straction to a mere distortion of reality. As early as the
First World War, countercurrents to these movements
began to evolve. The artists who led these movements
called their groups Valori Plastici in Italy, Neue Sach-
lichkeit in Germany, and Surréalisme in France. Cor-
responding to their national backgrounds, the move-
ment in Italy assumed a classical, in Germany a ro-
mantic, and in France a symbolic character.
All had in common a new emphasis on objects. The
artist contemplated an isolated object until he per-
ceived its very essence, and then, if possible, without
copying from life, he projected it on the canvas as a
self-contained creation. During the process of mental
penetration, however, the object lost the familiar char-
acter of its part in daily life. It became charged with
deeper meaning, with associations and implications,
with symbolism and individuality. These overtones
gave the work of art the quality that Franz Roh hap-
pily termed magic. At one time the painter of the
trompe Vœil had gained an uncanny effect from his
peculiar illusionist technique. By similar devices in our
time the ‘Magic Realist conjures up the impression
that his dead objects are endowed with an enigmatic
life of their own.
— e AR L MG s