Still life is a genre that rose to prominence in Western art towards the end of the 16th century and has remained an important genre ever since. Still life paintings are classified according to the depiction of ordinary objects, which can be natural, such as flowers, fruits, etc., or artificial, such as glasses, musical instruments, etc. Below is a list of the 10 most famous still life paintings by famous artists including Chardin, Paul Cezanne, Van Gogh and Giorgio Morandi.

No. 10 Still life series, Artist Tom Wesselman

The pop art movement originated in the 1950s and uses recognizable images from popular culture. Among the most popular works of pop art is a series of still lifes by Tom Wesselmann. His still life paintings depict elements of the modern world, rather than the fruits and vegetables of the previous generation of artists in this genre. This work (Still Life #30) is a combination of painting, sculpture, and a collage of trademarks that Tom saw on the street.

No. 9 Vanitas with violin and glass ball

Illustrator: Peter Klas

The word "still life" comes from the French phrase "nature morte" and means mortified or dead nature. But it seems to me that the essence of this art form is better conveyed by the English expression "still life" - "still, frozen life." Indeed, at its core, a still life is nothing more than a captured piece of life.

Collecting material for this article, I encountered certain difficulties. At first glance, shooting a still life is easy. Put a cup on the table, added some details to it, set the light and click the shutter for yourself. Photo models are always at hand, unlimited time for shooting. Convenient and minimal cost. That is why novice photographers love this genre so much. And some achieve very interesting results. Go to any photographic site, select the appropriate section and admire really chic pictures. But time passes, and many questions arise: "Why shoot this? Who needs it? What will I get from this?" Unable to find answers to these questions, many switch to wedding, baby or animal photography, which provide some income. Still life does not enjoy special respect among the masters of photography. This is not a profitable business. If anything can bring, it is only aesthetic satisfaction. And they shoot still lifes from time to time, so to speak, to hone their skills.

But there are a few who see in a still life, something more than just a beautiful picture. It is to these masters of still life that I dedicate my article.

I admit, at first I wanted to make a selection of works by photographers that I like and who rightfully occupy the first places in the ratings on various photography sites. And then the question arose: "why?" Everyone knows how to use the Internet, most of them have studied photo sites more than once, they are familiar with the best works, and information about the photographer they are interested in can always be found using a search engine. I decided to tell you about Special Photographers - those whose work turns the recognized canons upside down, who really brought something new to still life photography, who managed to see something extraordinary in ordinary things. You can relate to their work in different ways: admire or, conversely, not accept. But, clearly, their work cannot leave anyone indifferent.

1. Cara Barer

Kara Barer (1956), a photographer from the USA, chose one subject for shooting - a book. Transforming it, she creates amazing book sculptures, which she photographs. You can look at her photos endlessly. After all, each such book sculpture has a certain meaning, and ambiguous.

2. Guido Mocafico

The Swiss photographer Guido Mocafico (1962) is not limited to one subject in his work. He is interested in different things.

But even taking a single item, he gets amazing work. Famous for his series "Movement" ("Movement"). It seems that the clock mechanisms are simply taken, but each, if you look closely, has its own character.

In still lifes, as you know, "inanimate nature" is removed. In his "Snakes" series, Guido Mocafico broke this rule and took a living creature as the subject of a still life. Coiled snakes create an amazing, bright and unique picture.

But the photographer also creates traditional still lifes, shooting them in the Dutch style, and using truly "inanimate objects" as props.

3. Carl Kleiner

Swedish photographer Karl Kleiner (1983) uses the most ordinary objects for his still lifes, composing them into bizarre pictures. Photographs by Karl Kleiner are colorful, graphic and experimental. His imagination is boundless, he uses completely different materials, from paper to eggs. Everything, as they say, goes to work.

4. Charles Grogg

Still lifes by American Charles Grogg are made in black and white. The photographer for shooting also uses ordinary household items that are available in every home. But experimenting with their arrangement and combining them in unusual combinations, the photographer creates truly fantastic pictures.

5. Chema Madoz

I am sure that the work of Chem Madoz (1958), a photographer from Spain, is familiar to many. His black and white still lifes, executed in a surrealistic style, leave no one indifferent. The photographer's unique view of ordinary things is admirable. Madoza's works are full of not only humor, but also deep philosophical meaning.
The photographer himself says that his photographs are made without any digital processing.

6. Martin Klimas

In the works of Martin Klimas (1971), a photographer from Germany, there is also no photoshop. Only a short, or rather, super-short, shutter speed. His specially developed technique allows you to capture a unique moment that the human eye cannot even see. Martin Klimas shoots his still lifes in total darkness. With the help of a special device, at the moment of breaking an object, a flash is turned on for a fraction of a second. And the camera captures the Miracle. Here you have just a vase with flowers!

7. John Chervinsky

American John Chervinsky (1961) - a scientist working in the field of applied physics. And his still lifes are a mixture of science and art. Here you won’t understand: either a still life, or a textbook on physics. When creating his still lifes, John Chervinsky uses the laws of physics, getting an incredibly interesting result.

8. Daniel Gordon

Daniel Gordon (1980), American photographer, not concerned with scientific issues. When photographing still lifes, he chose a different path. It prints color pictures downloaded from the Internet on a printer, crumples these pieces of paper, and then wraps various objects in them. It turns out something like paper sculptures. Bright, beautiful, original.

9. Andrew B. Myers

Still lifes by Andrew Myers (1987), a photographer from Canada, cannot be confused with any others - they are always recognizable. A simple gentle, calm background, a lot of empty space, which creates a feeling of fullness of the image with light and air. Most often, to create still lifes, he uses objects from the 70s and 80s. His works are graphic, stylish and evoke a certain nostalgia.

10. Regina DeLuiseRegina DeLuise

Regina DeLuise (1959), a photographer from the USA, does not use SLR to create her work. She chose another way - she prints negatives from film on special rag paper. Her poetic imagery contains a wide range of tones and many textures. Still lifes are very tender and poetic. Amazing play of light and shadows.

11. Bohchang Koo

Bohchang Koo (1953), South Korean photographer, prefers white. The still lifes he created - white on white - are simply amazing. They are not only beautiful, but also carry a certain meaning - the preservation of ancient Korean culture. After all, the photographer specially travels the world, looking for objects of the cultural heritage of his country in museums.

12. Chen Wei

Chen Wei (1980), a Chinese photographer, on the other hand, finds inspiration for her work close to home. Featuring strange spaces, scenes, and objects, he uses props thrown into landfills by others.

13. Alejandra Laviada

Alejandra Laviada, a photographer from Mexico, uses ruined and abandoned buildings for her photographs, creating still lifes from objects found there. Her still lifes tell real stories about the people who lived in these buildings and used things left as unnecessary.

Most consider still life paintings to be beautiful but boring. Even the very name of the genre - from the French nature morte - "dead nature", seems to prove that there is little interesting here. However, among the still lifes there are pictures of unusual and exciting. True, their unusualness is far from always visible at first sight: sometimes you need to take a closer look, and sometimes find out the history of the creation of the picture. About the most interesting still lifes with food - in our article.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Portrait of Emperor Rudolph II as Vertumn", 1590

Despite the name of the painting, art historians define its genre as “portrait still life”. And here it’s hard to disagree with them: after all, it’s impossible to call it an ordinary portrait. The painting belongs to the brush of the 16th century Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who in the 20th century was proclaimed the forerunner of surrealism. In his paintings, Arcimboldo depicted human faces in the form of compositions of vegetables and fruits, crustaceans and fish, often even with a portrait resemblance. It is known that Emperor Rudolph II was delighted with his "edible" portrait and very generously rewarded the artist. Among the portrait still lifes, Arcimboldo also has quite unusual ones - “shifters”: it is enough to rotate the picture 180 degrees to see a completely new image. So, the portrait "Gardener" when rotated becomes a still life "Vegetables in a bowl", and the portrait "Cook" turns into a still life with piglets on a platter.

Frans Snyders "Still life with bat game and lobster", first half of the 17th century

It was in the work of the Dutch and Flemish artists of the 17th century that the still life finally established itself as an independent genre of painting. Still lifes by Frans Snyders are made in the Baroque style - they are dynamic, abundant, colorful. A blue-black peacock hanging from the table, a luxurious red lobster on a blue dish, colorful small game on the table, yellow and green artichokes and melons ... Despite the "dead nature", the picture is full of life and seems to be permeated with movement. And the dog and cat quarreling under the table only harmoniously complete the already lively kitchen scene.

Paul Cezanne, Still Life with Apples and Oranges, circa 1900

The French artist Paul Serusier spoke about Cezanne's fruit like this: “They will say about the apple of an ordinary artist:“ You want to eat it. About Cezanne's apple: "How beautiful it is." You will not dare to peel his apple, you will want to copy it. Indeed, Cezanne had a “special relationship” with apples: he considered them perfect creations both in shape and in color. It is known that Cezanne even said: "I will conquer Paris with my apples." On the simplest examples, he sought to show the true beauty of nature. One of the young artists visited Cezanne while he was working on one of the still lifes and was amazed: “Cezanne began to lay out the fruits, picking them up so that they contrasted with each other, and watching for the appearance of additional colors: green on red and yellow on blue . He moved and turned the fruits endlessly, placing coins of one and two sous under them. All this Cezanne did slowly and carefully, and it was clear that this activity gives him real pleasure.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin "Morning still life", 1918

At first glance, the picture "Morning Still Life" is simple and uncomplicated, but if you look closely, you can notice interesting details, for example, a ginger cat reflected in the teapot - perhaps it lies on the owner's lap. In addition to the cat, the dog “gives out” the person in the picture - she looks straight at him in patient expectation. So in a still life, the presence of a person is visibly felt, although the artist did not draw him. There are few objects in the picture, but most of them are endowed with brilliance: a nickel-plated teapot is polished to a shine, a glass jar with a bouquet of wild flowers glistens in the sun, and egg shells glisten. There are light reflections on the countertop, saucer, glass of tea, refracted silver spoon. The painting "Morning Still Life" is full of bright light, it conveys a feeling of morning freshness and peace.

Salvador Dali "Living Still Life", 1956

Among the still lifes of the Spanish surrealist artist there are quite a few quite “ordinary” ones - “Still Life” of 1918, still lifes “Fish” of 1922 and “Basket of Bread” of 1925, “Still Life with Two Lemons” of 1926, etc. However, the most famous of the still lifes Dali is "Live Still Life" ("Moving Still Life"), written during his passion for physics (mainly nuclear and quantum). Dali himself called this period - from 1949 to 1962 - "nuclear mysticism." At this time, Dali did away with "static" in the paintings and began to represent matter in the form of particles. Even in still life, objects have lost their absolute immobility and have acquired a crazy movement that does not correspond to our ideas about reality.

Well, let's see some more pictures, shall we?
Unexpected still lifes - this is because we usually expect completely different subjects from their authors. Traditionally, these artists worked in completely different genres, preferring landscape, portrait or genre painting. Only occasionally did something get into their heads and they exclaimed: "And I'll draw this vase with tuberose!" True, this happened very rarely. So rare that I had to rummage through the sources for half a day to find their still lifes.

LET'S START WITH OUR:

Marc Chagall "White flowers on a red background". 1970. Mark has only a couple of still lifes, written at an already mature age, and then he, accustomed to depicting human-animal phantasmagories, could not resist in any of them - at least a piece of a human physiognomy, at least somewhere with a piece of bread, let him insert.

I, for example, love still lifes very much, but most artists do not. Somehow this is not solid for a venerable creator, all students learn the basics of drawing from staged still lifes.

Still life was especially unpopular in the second half of the 19th century, to the greatest extent - among the Impressionists, our Wanderers also disliked it. Some of them I did not find a single still life. There are no such works and, for example, Nesterov, Kuindzhi, Aivazovsky, Perov, Grigory Myasoedov (whoever finds, tell me, I will add).

Viktor Vasnetsov "Bouquet". A fabulous or epic story - please, the Kiev Vladimir Cathedral is easy to paint, but the artist does not have a lot of still lifes. However, they are!

Of course, there are exceptions among the Impressionists - Cezanne was very fond of still lifes, although he did not consider himself an Impressionist. The post-impressionists Van Gogh and Matisse "came off" on still lifes (I will not cover the listed ones here - we are hunting for rare works of still life "dislikers"). But, basically, representatives of these trends did not like this flower-fruit business - bourgeois and patriarchal, without a favorite plein air - boredom! Even Berthe Morisot is the only girl among the Impressionists, and she did not like this slightly "girly" genre.

Ilya Repin "Apples and leaves", 1879 . Still life - not typical for Repin. Even here, the composition does not look like a classical production - all this can be lying somewhere on the ground under a tree, no glasses and draperies.

Still life did not always go through bad times. It began to appear in the 16th century, while as part of genre paintings, and in the 17th century, thanks to the Dutch, it grew into an independent genre of painting. It was very popular in the 18th and in the first half of the 19th century, and then, thanks to innovative movements in art, its popularity began to fall. The revival of fashion for still life began around the 20s of the 20th century. Many contemporary artists again took up vases and peaches, but these were already new forms. Of course, the genre never completely died out, and there was (and still is) a whole galaxy of still life painters. We will talk about this later, but for now I will be silent, I will only comment on something, and you just look at the rare still lifes of the authors who wrote them only occasionally:

Valentin Serov "Lilac in a vase", 1887.
In his famous works, you can see only a piece of still life - peaches in front of a girl. The most penetrating portrait painter, apparently, was bored with painting flowers and the corpses of birds.

Isaac Levitan. "Forest violets and forget-me-nots", 1889.The genius of the Russian landscape sometimes painted wonderful still lifes. But very rarely! There is also a jug of dandelions - lovely!

Vasily Surikov "Bouquet".
The author of The Morning of the Streltsy Execution loved scope and drama. But this is also preserved - a little naive and charming roses.

Boris Kustodiev. "Still life with pheasants", 1915 . Often in his works there are huge still lifes - he painted merchants and ruddy peasants at tables literally bursting with food. And in general, his cheerful bright canvases look like a still life, even if it is a portrait, but there are few individual images of not a merchant's wife, but her breakfast.

Victor Borisov-Musatov "Lilac", 1902.
I really like his original dense, no one else's similar. You can always recognize him, and in this still life - too.

Mikhail Vrubel "Flowers in a blue vase", 1886
What a talent! How insultingly little time! The flowers are also gorgeous, as are the demons.

Vasily Tropinin "Snipe and Bullfinch", 1820s.
The serf artist seems to have treated the genre of still life without much reverence, and therefore almost never painted it. What you see is not even a full-fledged canvas, but a study.

Kazimir Malevich. "Still life". And you thought his apples were square?

Ivan Kramskoy "Bouquet of flowers. Phloxes", 1884
I wanted to go straight to the dacha - I also had phloxes there in the summer.

Wassily Kandinsky "Fish on a Blue Plate" Not everything is completely in squiggles yet, eyes and even a mouth are traced in the picture, and they are even nearby!

Nathan Altman "Mimosa", 1927
I like. There's something about it.

Ivan Shishkin, 1855.
And where are the bears and the forest ?!

I also wanted to insert Petrov-Vodkin, but he had quite a lot of still lifes, as it seemed. And Mashkov, Lentulov, Konchalovsky, so they are not suitable for this post.

FOREIGN:

Egon Schiele "Still Life", 1918
And you thought he only knew how to draw naked minors?

Alfred Sisley. "Still life with a heron". Dead birds - drama in everyday life.

More Sisley. Well, I love him!

Gustave Courbet. Apples and pomegranates on a platter. 1871

Edgar Degas "Woman seated at a vase of flowers", 1865
Despite the name, the woman occupies 30 percent of the area of ​​the canvas, so she considered it to be a still life. In general, Degas liked to draw people much more than flowers. Especially ballerinas.

Eugene Delacroix. "Bouquet".
Well, thank God, no one eats anyone and no one shoots!

Theodore Géricault "Still life with three skulls"
In general, Gericault somehow suspiciously loved blue corpses and all kinds of "dismemberment". And his still life is appropriate.

Camille Pissarro, Still Life with Apples and a Jug, 1872

Claude Monet "Still life with pears and grapes", 1867.
He had still lifes, they were, but relatively few.

Auguste Renoir, Still Life with Large Flower Vase, 1866
He, in comparison with the others presented here, has quite a lot of still lifes. And what! One of his contemporaries said that he does not have sad works, and I adore him, so I shoved them here. And also because his still lifes are still little known, much less than all these bathers, etc.

And you know who? Pablo Picasso! 1919

Pablo was amazingly productive! Huge number of pictures! And among them, still lifes occupy a much smaller percentage than everything else, and even then they were mostly "Cubist". That is why he was included in the selection. To give you an idea of ​​just how crazy (but certainly talented!) and fickle he was, take a look at the picture below. This is also him, and in the same year!

Pablo Picasso "Still life on a chest of drawers", 1919

Paul Gauguin "Ham", 1889.
Tahitian women later went, he left for Tahiti after 2 years (now I will add and go dig in the refrigerator).

Edouard Manet, Carnations and Clematis in a Crystal Vase, 1882
There are also wonderful works, such as "Roses in a glass of champagne", but Manet's still lifes in his legacy are always in the background. And in vain, right?

François Millet, 1860s.
Just a dinner for all his peasants and reapers.

Berthe Morisot "Blue Vase", 1888
Still couldn't resist!

Frederic Basil. "Still life with fish", 1866
Simple and even rude, but I think I even smell the fish! Should I go take out the trash?

Henri "Customs Officer" Rousseau, "Bouquet of Flowers", 1910

Unexpected in genre, but invariably in style. The simple-minded customs officer was always true to himself.

Everyone, thank you for your attention!
How are you?

PS. And yet Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, for he is beautiful!:

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin "Violin in a case", 1916, Odessa Museum of Art
He has quite a few still lifes. Wonderful, just wonderful! Such bright, summer ones - be sure to look on the Web, move aside the red horse and other revolutionary paraphernalia! But, since we have a post about unusual still lifes, I chose the most atypical one for this author.

Thanks again for your attention!