Transience, Fragmentation, and Fruit: Modernizing VANITAS Still Life Paintings

Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Anderson, Kim

Keywords

Vanitas, Still Life Paintings, Fruit, Aesthetics

Area of Concentration

Art

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to reinterpret still life vanitas paintings and prints for the twenty-first century through the context of abstracted fruit pulp. Depicting fragments of fruit pulp allows for the exploration of contemporary formal and aesthetic qualities like color and close up images while still maintaining a connection with the historical paintings through similar source imagery, which served as symbolic reminders of the ephemerality of life and the futility of pleasure. In some ways my paintings and prints more directly correlate to the body than traditional vanitas paintings because the deconstructed fruit fragments more readily suggest viscera than still life objects. The inspiration for the project is fruit pulp that has been photographed as a way to preserve the fruit's original colors, textures, and viscosity. It is important the image is cropped close to the fruit and that the fruit appears to continue off the page as a way to make the content appear scaleless. The photograph itself is altered through the painting process, either through exaggerating its physical appearance or through editing and elimination. The latter tends to give the pieces a greater sense of dislocation, isolation, and abstraction, especially when the background of the image is removed. This process highlights the fragments themselves, relating them back to the human body. Historically, this body of work draws on artists who create vanitas still life painting, close up images of fruit, and organic forms. The artists who have inspired my work and creative process are those who work with vanitas still life painting from 1600 to 1900, like European and American painters Juan Sanchez Cotan, Jacques de Gheyn the Younger, Blathasar van der Ast, and Severin Roesen; the fruit and flower paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe; the produce images of photographer Edward Weston and painter Janet Fish; and from a formal standpoint, contemporary American painter Alexander Ross's organic formations.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS