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I define my work as realism, because I paint only what I see. My aim is to present the subject with as much clarity as I can. This involves more than the recording of observation. There is always the problem of a fog of preconception coming between the painter and his/her subject, and it is dangerous to ever assume that there is a formula for success, or that what you did last time will work again this time.I want to show here the work of some artists who, to me, seem to have succeeded in achieving the clarity that I want, and whose example has guided me in my own work |
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The painting above is by Juan Sanchez Cotan, who was active in the late sixteenth century in Spain. The subject is a collection of fruit and vegetables arranged in a shallow space, which might be a canterara, a kind of larder, in a Spanish house. The hanging fruit may look strange, but in Spain at the time this was a normal way of protecting produce from pests. Sanchez Cotan has carefully arranged the composition, organising the fruits and vegetables in a precise curve that moves both vertically and horizontally. Each object on the descending curve projects successively outward until the cucumber, which extends over the ledge, seems to thrust forward into the viewer's space. |
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Francisco de Zurbaran is best known for his paintings of saints. In the few still lifes he is known to have painted he seems to simplify his subject to its most essential elements. The painting shown here draws attention to the smallest differences between these ordinary objects: a bronze cup on a silver tray, a white clay vessel, an unglazed terracotta vessel, and a small white jug on a silver tray, all simply arranged on a board. The apparent lack of artifice in the uncluttered, linear composition emphasises the reality of the scene. |
Jean
Baptiste Simeon Chardin |
As well as the formal purity of the genre, the attraction of still life comes from the fascination of the presence of objects. The eighteenth century painter Chardin painted and repainted his subjects until they became themselves and nothing else. Chardin worked in the Age of the Enlightenment which, in France, came to an end in 1789. In the painting of the time, the great debate was about truth, reason and nature. Chardins contemporaries were the Rococo artists, such as Boucher (1703-70), Fragonard (1732-1806) and Watteau (1684-1721). Rococo art did not so much depict nature, as romanticise it in paintings of flirtation and frivolity. The other side of the Enlightenment was more restrained and looked back to classical art for its inspiration, and Chardin epitomises this tendency. For some artists seeing is considered an act of epiphany. For Chardin the ambition seemed to be to achieve non-epiphany, where the thing is seen as absolutely itself. |
Giorgio
Morandi |
In the twentieth century Morandi continued this tradition, in paintings like this. He achieved monumentality on a small scale, by the idealisation of simple objects. Morandi often painted the objects themselves to make them fit his intentions. In a sense because Morandi's world was mostly a tabletop, he convinces us that we can see the world on a tabletop. In the works above the subjects seem more real than in reality. This mysterious achievement comes from an authenticity and intensity of observation, and an ability to strip away clutter and organise a subject to be most representative of itself. There are many others, historical and contemporary, who have succeeded in the same difficult and challenging goal, and whose work I admire. I hope that in my own way I can achieve something of the qualities of these great painters. |
