Still Life Revisited

On the weekend I saw an excellent exhibit of artist Beth Lipman at Sandra Ainsley Gallery in the Distillery District.

Beth Lipman's work takes 17th-18th century vanitas ('still life') paintings; popularized by Dutch Baroque artists; recreating them in hand-blown clear glass. As physical objects these works are gorgeous and demonstrate an incredible talent with the medium. What makes these works so clever is the multi-faceted underpinning art history intelligence demonstrated.

Artisans whose works were made of glass or other 'craft' media/methods were considered a lesser form of art than the 'high arts' of sculpture and painting; yet within painting 'still life' was considered a lesser form of painting than religious depictions, portraits etc. Clear glass reproductions of 'still life' paintings is a subtle and excellently executed commentary on this. The works are transparent; you can see through them; therefore a metaphor for how glass and 'still life' painting were overlooked and undervalued as art. However the objects are also multi-dimensional 'real' sculptural-like objects and hence can't be ignored. I like to think of this as 'sticking it' to old-fashioned art attitudes.

Delving further into art history the use of glass to recreate 'still life' subjects is very interesting. 'Still life' paintings were commissioned by art patrons to demonstrate their wealth and abundance (they often had some very sexy symbolism too). The subjects; lots of over-ripe fruit, seafood, game etc.; although luxurious in reality decomposed very quickly. The irony being that by attempting to depict wealth and make their marks on history, the organic subjects held their 'wealth' very briefly and were only 'kept alive' in paint. Lipman's work recreates the original organic subjects in glass, which permanently captures the subjects in single state preventing them from loosing their value to decomposition. However, she has made the subjects with elements of decomposition such as flies, spillage etc., that acknowledge the organic nature of the original subjects. Therefore she has inverted the original relationship between the object's physical reality and art's portrayal of it. Once the subjects would rot but be caught in art forever as being perfect, now the object is caught forever demonstrating its decomposition forever.

Ok, art lesson for the day over.