Still life modern

17 Contemporary Artists Reimagining the Still Life

Aug 7, 2020 5:41PM

The things we own—the clothes we wear, the objects on our tables, the furniture in our homes—tell stories about who we are, what we value, and where we come from. Artists who make still lifes create suggestive worlds, placing clues about their lives and their often invented, absent characters into their compositions.

The 17 contemporary artists below explore the material world through abstract painting, performance, craft, and digital media. As they capture objects ranging from bodega sandwiches to artist monographs, they document what it’s like to live, consume, and simply make art today.

Lives and works in Los Angeles

Hilary Pecis, Two Candles, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

Hilary Pecis, Visiting Michelle, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

Hilary Pecis’s vibrant still lifes are filled with art-historical references, and with art itself. Painting monographs of Alice Neel, Henry Taylor, Georgia O’Keeffe, Eva Hesse, Francis Bacon, Kerry James Marshall, Hilma af Klint, and Lari Pittman line the tables and bookshelves of her compositions, indicating the artist’s own muses. Her interiors often feature Salon-style hangs of canvases both figurative and abstract. In Camellias (2018), Pecis even reproduces a poster for a Joan Mitchell exhibition, which hangs behind a giant bouquet of flowers, propped up on art books. An ostensible Ernst Ludwig Kirchner canvas hangs behind another floral grouping in Camellias and Leopard (2019).

The still life offers Pecis the ability to reference artists, living and dead, who are working (or have worked) in very different modes. “I find that there is a lot of freedom within the parameters of the still life,” she said. “It is a place to start, but there are infinite possibilities.” She cites the “color and application” of the Fauvist movement and California Funk artists as major inspirations. This November, she’ll exhibit her still lifes and landscapes in a solo show at Spurs Gallery in Beijing.

Lives and works in Athens, Georgia

Holly Coulis, Small Cup and Steam, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery.

For Holly Coulis, the appeal of painting still lifes is in stillness itself. “In other genres (even abstraction), there is paused movement,” she said. “A still life was still before it was painted, and after. Until someone or something comes to rearrange or to disturb it.” Such compositions feel “intimate and personal” to her. Looking at Coulis’s still lifes, a viewer is gazing at an unseen character’s private things. Solidly colored lemons, vases, cigarettes, knives, and cats dance around Coulis’s canvases, cheerfully bumping against one another. The artist outlines her forms many times in varied, bold hues, giving them radiant, vibrational auras. Pop art, Cubism, and abstraction inform the flat color, geometry, “off perspective,” and playfulness in Coulis’s paintings.

Coulis said that right now in her studio, she’s thinking about how to shift the lines in her paintings and “find a way to make them move more.” She’s also experimenting with making her paintings more abstract, pushing them to the very edge of what she calls “still life–ness.”

Lives and works in Baltimore

Nicole Dryer, My Pantry, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Nicole Dyer updates the grand Pop art tradition of incorporating representations of branded foodstuffs into her art, à la Andy Warhol and, more recently, Katherine Bernhardt. She’s made floor sculptures of La Croix and Vintage-brand seltzer cases, and a multimedia painting with a Quaker Oats package at its center. Faux candy conversation hearts, ginger chews, and Froot Loops adorn the borders of her highly textured works. Dyer is interested in how products can “trigger an intense emotional response” in a viewer, such as nostalgia, hope, or commitment. Consumerism is a major concern for the artist—her work considers how seltzer brands accrue cult followings and how “colorful, matte packaging can make junk food appear healthier. ”

While Pop art is ostensibly her most direct influence, Dyer is also inspired by a much older aesthetic tradition—Dutch still-life paintings of food. “I love the compositions, detail, and dramatic lighting,” she said. “I’m interested in the effect of similar compositions but made up of modern products and brighter colors.”

Lives and works in Oakland

Anna Valdez, installation view at Hashimoto Contemporary. Photo by Shaun Roberts. Courtesy of the artist.

Anna Valdez draws and paints tables and floors crowded with art books (featuring David Hockney, Georges Braque, and Philip Pearlstein), plants, cow skulls (clear nods to Georgia O’Keeffe), conch shells, and decorative vases evocative of ceramic traditions from around the world. “My subjects might look like compilations of ordinary mundane objects, but together they tell my specific story of painting investigation through art lineage, symbolism, and composition,” said Valdez. In this way, her still lifes become skewed self-portraits.

Valdez noted her interest in the Dutch vanitas tradition of painting from the 17th century, in which artists painted symbols of death to remind viewers of their own mortality. “By incorporating plants, shells, bones, and stones, along with paintings, sketches, ceramic objects, and fabrics, I am referring to the natural world, time, and contemporary life,” said Valdez. In early November, Denver’s David B. Smith Gallery will exhibit new, large-scale still lifes by the artist based on installations she’s created in her studio.

Lives and works in Los Angeles

Alec Egan, Bag of Fruit on Ottoman, 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi.

Alec Egan, Bathroom, 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi.

Alec Egan’s lush interiors feature floral wallpapers and fabrics that suggest some absent homeowner’s obsession with harnessing nature into man-made designs. Blossoms bloom across pillows, rugs, bedspreads, and chairs, reminding this viewer of the scene from the classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, in which Max’s bedroom slowly morphs into an untameable forest. Egan loves the way that his still lifes can conjure narratives, as well as ideas about just who the mysterious, unseen occupants may be. He named “storytelling, exhibition construction, duration, and seriality” as his major aesthetic interests.

“I’m building an imaginary house through each of my exhibitions,” Egan explained. In 2017, at his first show at Anat Ebgi, he began his series of paintings depicting different perspectives of one enormous abode—so far, he’s created a living room, two bathrooms, four bedrooms, an entrance, a dining room, and a library. Up through September 5th, Egan’s current exhibition, “August,” at Anat Ebgi’s Los Angeles space, showcases the most recent additions to the artist’s home. “The next exhibition will most likely deal with the kitchen,” said Egan.

Lives and works in South Hadley, Massachusetts

Nikki Maloof

After Hours, 2019

NINO MIER GALLERY

Animals dead and alive fill Nikki Maloof’s canvases—from fish, oysters, and lobster resting on plates atop a checkered tablecloth, to a caged bird or a cat gazing out a window. As vibrant as the works are, they also elicit a sense of confinement and angst. In Cry Whenever You Need To (2018), for example, a bird cage is lined with a New York Times page whose headline announces the work’s emotional title.

The artist is inspired by the “lush textures,” “hyperdramatic arrangements,” and “symbolism” of the Dutch vanitas tradition. She’s particularly drawn to the moments in the 17th-century canvases where it becomes clear that “the artists drifted into fantasy to achieve the drama they were looking for.” The closer she looks at these paintings, she said, the more they begin to “feel like stages for operas or plays about the everyday.”

Maloof hopes to “heighten and expand” these ideas across her own works, creating psychological intrigue as she juxtaposes everyday objects and domesticated beings. Painting entirely from her imagination,she loves finding opportunities for “chaos and foreboding to creep” into her compositions. Maloof’s upcoming show at Nino Mier Gallery in Los Angeles this November is filled with works centered around food preparation.

Lives and works in Los Angeles

Pedro Pedro, Table In Studio With Lotion And Denatured Alcohol, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

A curious, surrealistic physics infuses Pedro Pedro’s still lifes. Socks, a banana peel, shoes, and a hat appear to droop like Dalí clocks. The chair cushions and tables that hold them are slanted so vertically that it’s amazing all these objects haven’t slipped off. Appropriately, Pedro said he’s drawn to the still-life form for its “banality and mystery”—in his paintings, the everyday becomes deeply, compellingly weird.

Pedro said that the color and vibrancy of Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s still lifes inspire him, as well as the “movement and detail” in the work of Italian Baroque painter Giovanna Garzoni. While he also looks back to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist compositions, the artist added that he’s not attempting to “break or honor” any specific traditions—he simply likes to “sample” elements from other paintings. At the moment, he’s working on a composition of tomatoes on a vine that references a grocery store advertisement he recently received in the mail.

Lives and works in New York City

Lucia Hierro

BYOB: Retrato de la Artista Primavera 2020, 2020

Fridman Gallery

Lucia Hierro, Sufrir o Sofreír, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.

The title of Lucia Hierro’s series of digitally printed still lifes “Bodegón” (2015–present) refers to both the Spanish term for “still life” and the small New York corner shops more typically called “bodegas.” Bodega staples—an egg-and-cheese sandwich on a roll in hexagonally printed foil; a bottle of Fanta; a bright yellow package of Café Bustelo coffee—fill Hierro’s works, alongside items such as a Yale coffee mug, a Giorgio Morandi painting, and a New York Yankees cap. Altogether, the objects conjure city lives that cross economic and cultural lines.

The works also reconsider the legacy of Dutch still-life painters. It’s easy, Hierro thinks, to admonish the 17th-century artists for portraying objects acquired via conquests—olives from across the Mediterranean, for example, or Chinese porcelain. In Hierro’s aesthetic world, however, these objects and their politics become far more complicated. “I, a Dominican-American consumer, implicate myself in the way that history is still playing out today,” said Hierro. Next up, the artist is slated to curate an exhibition at Gold/Scopophilia* (artist Jennifer Wroblewski’s gallery in Montclair, New Jersey) and mount a solo exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut next June.

Lives and works in New York City

Jean Shin, Floating MAiZE, 2020. Photo by Andrew Moore. Courtesy of Brookfield Place.

Jean Shin believes that still lifes offer viewers the chance to appreciate the beauty of everyday objects. The form, she said, presents a “preserved and memorialized” reality that depicts the artist’s “systems, culture, and history. ” Shin, who is known for her often monumental installations, has mounted dozens of sports trophies atop a long, white plinth; built structures composed entirely of discarded lottery tickets; and made an outdoor sculpture with broken umbrellas.

“I’m interested in engaging participants and communities in the process of collecting large quantities of everyday objects and detritus,” said Shin. “I transform these materials to be in dialogue with larger social concerns and in response to the site’s context.” She recently completed a large-scale installation, Floating MAiZE (2020), for the Winter Garden Atrium at Brookfield Place in New York City. The work repurposes more than 7,000 green Mountain Dew bottles into a sculpture that resembles a faux cornfield. Shin said she wants to connect the “harmful consequences of industrial scale agriculture of corn to the unhealthy consumption of high fructose corn syrup in processed foods and beverages,” and lead viewers to consider how food production, nutrition, and pollution are intertwined.

Lives and works in New York City

Daniel Gordon

Untitled Still Life, 2017

Danziger Gallery

US$7,000–US$8,000

Daniel Gordon

Yellow Daffodils, 2020

James Fuentes

To make his still lifes, Daniel Gordon takes photographs of everyday objects from the internet—fruits, vases, flowers, pitchers—then reassembles them in his studio and photographs the final compositions. The resulting frames are vibrant and complex: Looking at the two-dimensional pictures, the viewer must distinguish between real and digital space. Misshapen apples can be blue or purple, while onions look simultaneously flat and like collaged, three-dimensional objects.

A tricky sense of unreality and distortion creates intrigue across Gordon’s series. “My work has engaged with genres of still life, portraiture, and landscape,” said the artist. “I like to work within a genre so I can hopefully add to a tradition and play with some of the established conventions. ” Through lockdown, Gordon has made smaller still lifes that incorporate real household items into his compositions. He calls them “Night Pictures,” since he’s only been able to work on them in the evenings.

Lives and works in Los Angeles

Arden Surdam, Autopoiesis I, 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Kendra Jayne Patrick Gallery.

Arden Surdam

Charcuterie, 2019

ABXY

Price on request

Arden Surdam’s photographs embrace the macabre. They feature sausage links trailing down a giant plastic tarp, bloodied animals, and stained sheets. It’s no surprise that she cites Francis Bacon, master of the grotesque, as a major influence. Recently, she’s been thinking about the artist’s diptychs and triptychs, especially Study from the Human Body (1983). It looks, she said, like “a slippery human chicken.” Bacon’s multiple-canvas works—which both suggest and evade narrative, linear readings—were themselves informed by the photography of Eadweard Muybridge, who famously shot animals’ movements in serial frames.

Recently, Surdam has been playing with similarly sequenced still lifes, asking viewers to look at four pictures of varying perspectives on the same few objects (a photograph, a glass surface, and a shiny, cream-colored sheet, for example) to extrapolate a larger scene and narrative. Surdam is now previewing her first monograph, Glut, and will have work in Phaidon’s forthcoming book The Kitchen Studio: Culinary Creations of Artists.

Lives and works in New York City

Stephanie H. Shih, Stone Dumpling House, 2018. Photo by Robert Bredvad. Courtesy of the artist.

Stephanie H. Shih makes ceramics that resemble foods found in East Asian grocery stores—Kikkoman soy sauce, Sriracha, and Botan Calrose rice, for example. “My work is about shared nostalgia,” said Shih. “I like creating vignettes that are ambiguous enough to speak to a large swath of the Asian American diaspora while also being specific enough to speak to distinct memories. ”

Shih’s three-dimensional objects stimulate viewers’ desire, inviting them to imagine touching the works and feeling their weight. The sculptural aspect draws Shih’s audience into her exhibition spaces “both physically and psychologically.” Starting on August 17th, a Perrotin viewing salon will exhibit a portion of Shih’s newest series which, in sum, features 30 ceramic soy sauce bottles from across the Asian American diaspora.

Lives and works in Chicago

Guanyu Xu, Rooms of Convergence, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery.

In Guanyu Xu’s series “Temporarily Censored Home” (2018–19), the artist redecorated his childhood home while his parents were away at work. Xu, who grew up as a closeted gay teenager, mounted photographs of himself and other gay men around opened closets, floor-to-ceiling windows, his parents’ bedroom, the family dining room, and other spaces that once served to repress his sexuality. He then photographed those rooms, documenting and preserving his subversive acts so they could retain their power long after the artist had to take his pictures down again (his parents still don’t know he’s gay).

Before the pandemic, Xu was making similar photo interventions in immigrants’ homes. Now, homebound, he’s been making computer-generated images based on cities he’s visited, photographs he’s taken, and the news he’s consumed during lockdown. This September, he plans to exhibit a work in Shanghai, as the winner of Photofairs’s Shanghai Exposure Award.

Xu sees his prints as “symbolic” objects that “formulate memory, desire, identity, and ideology.” He questions the “static form of photography itself,” presenting photographs of photographs “in context.” His works also document his own performance. The blink of his shutter, he said, “represents the brief moment of freedom I could have.”

Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro

Maria Nepomuceno, detail of Xamã I, 2017. © Maria Nepomuceno. Photo by Jason Wyche. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Maria Nepomuceno, 3 mulheres, 2017. © Maria Nepomuceno. Photo by Pedro Agilson. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co. , New York.

Maria Nepomuceno’s knitted, sculptural tableaux at first look like floral still lifes. Closer examination, however, reveals the organic nature of her forms, suggesting organs, arteries, and other inner workings of the body turned outward into magnificent, colorful assemblages. “Even though I have works where nature is an important reference, I don’t consider them still lifes,” said Nepomuceno. “They speak more of an inner living universe.”

Nepomuceno is now working on an installation for Japan’s 2021 Ichihara Art Mix Festival, for which she will collaborate with children from Rio de Janeiro’s Maré community. She will also create a site-specific installation at the Portico Library in Manchester, and will launch a wearable art project with London’s Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery.

All of her work—wearable or not—espouses genuine feeling and a love for craft. Nepomuceno said she wants to “break with cynical art,” making viewers “feel pleasure and love” in an inclusive, vital way.

Lives and works in New York City

Tishan Hsu, Ooze, 1987. Courtesy of the artist.

Tishan Hsu’s artwork considers the ways in which humans and technology are becoming inextricably intertwined. His floor sculptures conjure machines and biotechnologies that might be placed in fantastical, futuristic rooms. As iPhones increasingly become extensions of ourselves, medical technologies reimagine how our bodies can function, and internet companies reduce people to data, Hsu’s work implies that human bodies may, at some point, become objects worthy of still lifes. “The traditional still-life composition has been invaded by a still life of technological objects,” said Hsu, offering the examples of monitors, screens, and handheld devices. He’s not drawn to the still-life form, per se. Instead, he is drawn to the “transformation” in the things we value and capture in contemporary art.

Hsu explained how, beginning with the Renaissance, Western artists placed mankind at the center of the world—and, subsequently, at the center of art. “This perception in the pictorial subject evolved to include landscape and interior objects,” said Hsu. He is inspired by art’s ability to reveal such changes in societal value. Through his own work, he hopes to convey how humans’ interactions with objects are changing via technology.

Enjoying “the calm and focus” of quarantine while simultaneously “internalizing the stressful onslaught of daily news” on the web, Hsu has recently begun a new series of pencil-on-paper drawings. With these new works, he’s exploring internet images that derive from data and our “extractive use of technology.”

Lives and works in London

Isaac Julien, Still Life Studies Series, No. 5, 2008. © Isaac Julien, Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures

Many of Isaac Julien’s films and installations play with the idea of the memento mori—paintings, closely related to vanitas works, that include symbols or reminders of death and mortality. In a series of 2008 lightbox still lifes, Julien photographed the late Derek Jarman’s famed Prospect Cottage residence, and its surrounding gardens, in the English county of Kent.

Julien incorporated these works into “Brutal Beauty,” an exhibition he curated in 2008 at the Serpentine Galleries to celebrate Jarman’s work 14 years after the lauded director’s death. Julien helped fundraise to preserve Prospect Cottage as a cultural site and made the film Derek (2008), which retells Jarman’s life through archival footage and more recent shots of the home and garden. In doing so, Julien has helped secure Jarman’s legacy by documenting and honoring the things that Jarman built, acquired, and grew during his brief lifetime.

Julien described his more recent film, Lessons of the Hour (2019), as “a series of still-life studies.” To create the multi-channel work, Julien shot footage at Frederick Douglass’s old home in Washington, D.C., capturing the famed abolitionist’s possessions to tell a larger story about freedom and ongoing struggles for racial justice. By documenting centuries-old artifacts, Julien said he’s trying to create a new kind of “aesthetic activism” that reinvigorates such towering historical figures as Douglass and “engenders new responses to contemporary challenges. ”

Lives and works in Tel Aviv

Guy Yanai

Plant in German Office I, 2020

CONRADS

Guy Yanai

Gilboa Plant, 2020

FLATLAND

Guy Yanai believes humans have a “simple and primal attraction” to the objects that surround them. When we paint them, he said, “they become vehicles for showing our inner lives.” Yanai’s domestic scenes feature twiggy plants in boxy planters, windows that reflect other homes or look onto a hilly landscape, and interior walls painted brilliant pinks and blues. Viewers can always make out Yanai’s underlying grids, which connects his practice to both traditional mosaic works and pixelated screens.

Yanai sounds omnivorous when he speaks of his influences, citing musician John Zorn; television shows; Etruscan, Roman, and ancient Greek art; Cy Twombly, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Philip Guston, and Willem de Kooning, among others. Both modern and ancient artists, said Yanai, shared a fascination with transforming the objects around them into “vessels for the most profound of emotions. ”

Despite the global pause of the pandemic, Yanai is enjoying significant attention from the art world at the moment. This September, he’ll mount a solo show at CONRADS in Düsseldorf—where he’ll show portraits for the first time—as well as a project with Niels Kantor in Beverly Hills. In the fall of 2021, both Praz-Delavallade in Los Angeles and Miles McEnery in New York will open solo presentations of his work.

Alina Cohen

Header Image: Stephanie H. Shih, “88,” 2018. Photo by Robert Bredvad. Courtesy of the artist.

Corrections: A previous version of this article incorrectly spelled Anat Ebgi, Miles McEnery, and Lucia Hierro’s “Bodegón series.” Additionally, Lucia Hierro has a show opening at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in June 2021, not February 2021. The text has been updated to reflect these changes.

The Best Contemporary Still Life Painting: A Complete Survey

Introduction: Reinvigorating an Undervalued Genre

Still life painting is historically one of the key genres in Western painting. It consists of depicting anything which does not live (anymore), or cannot move. Also known as Nature Morte, typically still life painting presents a composition of flowers, plants, food, or decorative objects such as vessels or fabrics. Is the genre still relevant today? Or is contemporary still life painting an exemplary case of nostalgia and obsolete glory?

The truth is – one of many misconceptions concerning still life painting – still life painting still is very alive. In fact, one might argue it never left. Although the genre is often considered as the lowest genre after history painting, portrait painting, genre painting (everyday life), and landscape painting, it can be filled with the most high-quality knowledge or painterly skill.[1]

Think of Jan Breughel the Elder (1568-1625) who painted a still life of a selection of very rare and exotic flowers with different flowering periods, all flowering at the same time in the same vase – not only showing his unique skill but also his extraordinary knowledge as an early modern natural scientist. Also, Nature Morte is often a celebration of the abundance and riches of life, but also a looming reminder of its ephemeral character and the transient of things.

The interpretation and the intention of the still life can vary strongly. In any case, it is a most valuable and subtle genre, taking on science, moral issues, philosophy, or pushing the boundaries of painting – be it by manner of mimesis in the 16th and 17th century, or by exploring the visual possibilities of painting during the 20th century.

The still life was a favorite subject for many prominent painters throughout Modern Art, think of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) or Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), and it still is today. Of course, still life painting has changed strongly due to the radical and ingenious influence of Postmodern art movements such as Minimal Art or Conceptual Art. Maybe that’s why one might think the genre has died, not by chance at the same when art criticism declared the death of painting. [2]

However painting survived, and so did the still life. Year in year out, we encounter established and emerging contemporary artists pushing the genre – and the medium of painting – with thought-provoking and visually dazzling works. In this article, we will be presenting you a complete survey of the very best contemporary still life painting, discussing the most relevant examples of the genre, and what makes them contemporary and relevant.

Who Are The Best Still Life Painters Today?

We are pleased to present you a very extensive and reasoned selection of artists and still life artworks. We have created a selection of the most renowned painters who are occupied with the still life, resulting in a total of 45 mid-career and highly established artists, presenting the most extensive online resource on still life painting today.

The top 11 consists of the most influential artists including a short introductory biography and further context – as we can only touch briefly on every artist, we have included links to the best monographic publication on the artist in question – followed by a visual anthology of highly ranked mid-career and established artists in alphabetical order. So let’s answer the big question, who are the most important still life painters today?

The most important still life painters today are Michaël Borremans, Fernando Botero, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Alex Katz, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Lichtenstein, Yan Pei-Ming, Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans and Andy Warhol.

Without any further ado, let’s discover the landscape paintings in question and the artists who created them.

1. Michaël BorremansMichaël Borremans, Coloured Cones, 2019. Oil on canvas – 88 x 120 cm. Courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp.

We start our lists of painters with a true painter’s-painter, Michaël Borremans. Born in 1963 in Geraardsbergen, the Belgian artist resides and works in Ghent, Belgium. He is best known for his strongly conceptual and neo-surrealist paintings, rendered in a traditional manner reminiscent to the Old Masters, creating an anachronism within the painting when it comes to form and substance.

Art history is always very present in Borremans’ works. As a result, he has taken on still life painting numerous times throughout his career. But his still lives are insidious in many ways. With Borremans, painting is a beautiful lie. He depicts fake plants, absurd machinery, dead plants and even – with his latest series of works – coloured cones. The Belgian artist installs and constellates these cones in different settings in the tradition of still life painting. However, the cones transcend their metaphysical state from objects to subjects.

For further reading on Michaël Borremans, we strongly recommend Michaël Borremans: As Sweet As It Gets, or his more recent but image-only monograph Michaël Borremans: The Badger’s Song.

2. Fernando BoteroFernando Botero, Still Life with Bananas, 2003. Oil on canvas – 38 × 41 cm. Courtesy La Maison de la Petite Sara.

Fernando Botero, born in 1932 in Medellin, Colombia, is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation, and a master of the still life. Botero is best known for his signature visual language in which he seems to inflate his figures into chubby and ’round’ subjects.

The self-taught painter, printmaker and sculptor implements this ’roundness’ of the subjects to objects with his still life painting. Bright colors and a certain ‘fullness’ off the setting result in naturalistically painted yet contemporary pictures.

For further reading on Fernando Botero, we highly recommend Botero: Paintings 1959-2015.

3. Damien HirstDamien Hirst, Skull with pills, 2008. Oil on canvas – 45.7 × 61 cm. Courtesy Gary Tatintsian Gallery.

Up next we have none other than the YBA poster boy Damien Hirst. Born in 1965 in Bristol, England, Hirst works and resides in London. Known as one of the most important contemporary artists in the world, Damien Hirst rose to fame with his provoking and boundary-pushing artworks, examining mortality and our inherently human structures and urges such as religion and desire. His installations consist of dead cows, a life sized shark, pigs, sheep or butterflies.

Beside installations, the British artist is also occupied with drawing and painting. Since the new millennium, he has also been taking on still life painting. Doing so, Hirst is filling his canvases with fruit, flowers, skulls and even fetuses, continuing his postmodern examination of mortality in a contemporary era, using the historical tradition of still life painting and its iconography.

For further reading on Damien Hirst, we highly recommend Damien Hirst: End of a Century.

4. David HockneyDavid Hockney, Plant on Yellow Cloth, 1995.

Oil on canvas – 66 × 45.7 cm. Photo: Sotheby’s / David Hockney Foundation (c)

One of the undoubted most famous painters today, David Hockney is a contemporary painter born in 1937 in Bradford, the United Kingdom, and currently lives and works in Normandy, France. His body of figurative works encompasses seven decades, and is marked by the influence of his direct environment. Think of the iconic pools in Los Angeles, his friends and family in his portraits and double portraits, his dogs, the fields of Yorkshire or the blossoms in the landscapes of Normandy.

Doing so, he also depicted the everyday objects in his environment, taking on the still life in a manner characteristic for the British virtuoso. Especially during the 1990s, Hockney strongly commits to still life painting, examining the genre in its purest form.

For further reading on David Hockney, we highly recommend David Hockney published by Tate in 2017.

5. Alex KatzAlex Katz, Rhododendron on Green, 2020.

Oil on linen – 213.4 × 152.4 cm. Courtesy Timothy Taylor.

Born in 1927 in Brooklyn, and currently living and working in New York City, the United States of America, Alex Katz is a contemporary painter who is one of the most influential painters today. His characteristic distinctively figurative visual language, marked by large and clear planes of colour inspired by Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, have been dominating the art scene since the 1950s up to this day.

Katz draws inspiration from contemporary life, encompassing his friends, films, ads, or items from his direct environment. Doing so, the American painter takes on still life painting in a similar manner as with his portraits. He uses photographic strategies such as cropping or decoupage, aiming to achieve the perfect fragment to paint.

For further reading on Alex Katz, we highly recommend Alex Katz from the Phaidon Contemporary Art Series.

6. Yayoi KusamaYayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 1992.

Acrylic on canvas – 60.7 × 72.9 cm. Courtesy Seoul Auction

Up next we have the Japanese superstar Yayoi Kusama. Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan, Kusama is one of the most influential contemporary artists in the world, and currently resides and works in Tokyo, Japan. Her trademark motives such as polka dots, pumpkins and the notion of infinity, function as a continuüm throughout her oeuvre, encompassing various media, including painting.

When it comes to still life painting, besides the pumpkin painting, one encounters the depiction of flowers, vases, ashtrays and much more. Yayoi Kusama takes on the still life in a way only she could do. Her visual language is the result of her mental illness in which she is disoriented by hallucinations, spots, and the dazzling sensation of experiencing infinity. Doing so, she depicts everyday objects the way she sees them in almost obsessive manner. The still life is a result of unconscious processes, which the Japanese artist aims to grasp and document onto her canvas.

For further reading on Yayoi Kusama, we highly recommend Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective.

7. Roy LichtensteinRoy Lichtenstein, Still Life with Palette, 1972. Oil and magna on canvas – 152.4 × 243.8 cm. Courtesy Gagosian.

As with out number 11 of this list, we are currently balancing between contemporary still life painting and modern still life painting. Roy Lichtenstein was born in 1923 and passed away in 1997 in New York City. The American artist pioneered Pop Art into the contemporary era.

Lichtenstein is best known for his distinctive use of illustrative and commercial painting styles. He painted works as if they were made mechanically, simulating the esthetics of silkscreens and cartoons, blending low art in a high art medium. Doing so, Lichtenstein produced dozens of still lives, resulting in a retrospective soloshow in this subgenre at the industry leading art gallery Gagosian back in 2010.

For further reading on Roy Lichtenstein, we highly recommend Lichtenstein published by Taschen in 2016.

8. Yan Pei-MingYan Pei-Ming, Installation, treize crânes et une bougie, 2020. Oil on canvas – 180 × 150 × 6 cm. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac.

Born in 1960 in Shanghai, China, Yan Pei-Ming is a contemporary painter living and working in Dijon, France. Pei-Ming’s oeuvre is build upon European painterly traditions. Think of his contemporary portrait paintings of politicians, actors, himself, or the pope.

The monochrome paintings with virtuoso impasto’s also take on the European tradition of still life painting. Fascinated by the Vanitus skull motive, but also by the cabinet of curiosities, or fruits, Yan Pei-Ming continues to produce stunning still life paintings in his very own style, hovering between reality and imagination.

For further reading on Yan Pei-Ming, we highly recommend Yan Pei-Ming: Tigres & Vautours.

9. Gerhard RichterGerhard Richter, Two Candles, 1982. Oil on canvas – 80 x 100 cm.

Courtesy the artist.

Arguably the most famous painter today, Gerhard Richter is born in 1932 in Dresden and currently resides and works in Cologne, Germany. Richter is best known for his pure abstract paintings on the one hand, and on the other for his meticulously painted photo paintings.

With his photo paintings, Richter encompasses numerous genres, including landscape painting, portrait painting, interiors, nudes, and of course, still life painting. Richter painted a vast amount of still lives, think of his immense production of paintings depicting candles, apples, flowers or every day objects.

For further reading on Gerhard Richter, we highly recommend Gerhard Richter: Panorama on the occasion of his eponymous retrospective at Tate Modern in London.

10. Luc TuymansLuc Tuymans, Untitled (Still Life), 2002. Oil on canvas – 347 x 500 cm. Courtesy Zeno X Gallery / Photo: Pinault Collection

Luc Tuymans, born in 1958 in Mortsel, Belgium, currently residing and working in Antwerp, is one of the most influential painters today and a pioneer of so-called New European Painting. His paintings are often muted in colour, effectuated with nervous brushstrokes, and take on a specific narrative creating an undercurrent within the image.

Tuymans takes on any genre with his specific style. With his still lives, it is clear something else is going on instead of the mere depiction of the selected objects. For instance, with Untitled (Still Life) from 2002, he created a monumental still life painting as a reaction to the trauma of 9/11. Tuymans flees to the Idyll as a counteraction, yet the painting is filled by the historic trauma which seems to reside in the painting.

For further reading on Luc Tuymans, we highly recommend the multivolume reasoned overview Luc Tuymans: Catalogue Raisonné.

11. Andy WarholAndy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962. Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, Each canvas 20 x 16″ (50.8 x 40.6 cm). Overall installation with 3″ between each panel is 97″ high x 163″ wide.

Collection MoMA.

We conclude our top 11 with an artist as iconic as it can get, Andy Warhol. Born in 1928 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Andy Warhol is an American pop artist with Austrian-Hungarian roots, and passed away untimely in New York City aged just 58 in 1987.

A man of many talents, Andy Warhol was a film director, a very successful commercial illustrator, a producer, and of course one of the most important artists who pioneered Pop Art during the 1960s. Inherently connected to Pop Art’s affinity with everyday objects, Warhol has created groundbreaking still lives, such as Campbell’s Soup Cans, banana’s, perfumes, dollar bills, coca-cola bottles, and much more.

For further reading on Andy Warhol, we highly recommend Warhol from Taschen’s Basic Art Series.

12. William BaileyWilliam Bailey, Septet III, 2015. Oil on linen – 45.7 x 61 cm. Courtesy Betty Cuningham Gallery

13. Claudio BravoClaudio Bravo, Stretchers, 2008.

Oil on canvas – 114 × 146.4 cm. Courtesy Forum Gallery.

14. Manuele CeruttiManuele Cerutti, La folla, personaggio secondo, 2015. Oil on linen – 35 x 29.5 cm. Courtesy of Artuner.

15. Holly CoulisHolly Coulis, Loops, Lemon, 2020. Gouache on Arches paper – 45.7 × 61 cm.

16. Nicole DyerNicole Dyer, At My Fathers Table, 2018. Acrylic on canvas – 116.8 × 101.6 cm. Courtesy ZQ Art Gallery.

17. Alec EganAlex Egan, Socks on Clothesline, 2021. Oil and flash on canvas – 76.2 × 61 cm. Courtesy MAKI.

18. Inka EssenhighInka Essenhigh, Full Bloom, 2020 Enamel on canvas – 152.4 × 111.8 cm. Courtesy Miles McEnery Gallery.

19. Scott FraserScott Fraser, Applied Reflections, 2014. Oil on panel – 71.1 × 96.5 cm. Courtesy Quidley & Company.

20. Raymond HanRaymond Han, Three Chairs, 1982. Oil on linen – 121.

9 × 137.2 cm. Courtesy Jason McCoy Gallery.

21. Yang JiechangYang Jiechang, These are still Flowers 1913-2013 No. 3, 2013. Ink and mineral pigments on silk, mounted on canvas – 88 × 70 cm. Courtesy Ink Studio.

22. Johannes KahrsJohannes Kahrs, Untitled (foul fruits), 2019. Oil on canvas – 41.3 × 53.5 cm. Courtesy MASSIMODECARLO.

23. Julio LarrazJulio Larraz, Catch from the Bay of Mirrors, 2020. Oil on canvas – 76 × 102 cm. Courtesy Galería Duque Arango.

24. Alan MageeAlan Magee, Stones, 1981. Painting on canvas – 116.8 × 172.7 cm. Courtesy Forum Gallery.

25. Nikki MaloofNikki Maloof, Dinner Is Served, 2020. Oil on canvas – 137.2 × 177.8 cm. Courtesy Nino Mier Gallery.

26. Justin MortimerJustin Mortimer, Breed 1, 2018. Oil and acrylic on canvas — 240 x 178 cm.

Courtesy Parafin.

27. Luca PancrazziLuca Pancrazzi, Untitled (Fuori Registro), 2005. Acrylic on canvas – 215 × 325 cm. Courtesy Galerie Andrea Caratsch.

28. Hilary PecisHilary Pecis, Outdoor Table, 2019. Acrylic on canvas – 152.4 × 121.9 cm. Courtesy Halsey McKay Gallery.

29. Timothée SchelstraeteTimothée Schelstraete, 20097, 2020. Toner and acrylic on canvas – 70 x 50 cm.

30. Ben SchonzeitBen Schonzeit, Lake Placid Bouquet, 2011. Acrylic on linen – 182.9 × 243.8 cm. Courtesy Plus One Gallery.

31. Michael SimpsonMichael Simpson, Squint 67, 2019. Oil on canvas – 230 × 115 × 9 cm. Courtesy Nosbaum Reding.

32. Mircea SuciuMircea Suciu, Still Life with Lemon, 2019. Oil, acrylic, monoprint on linen – 13 4/5 × 13 4/5 in / 35 × 35 cm. Courtesy Zeno X Gallery.

33. Kim Tschang-YeulKim Tschang-Yeul, Waterdrops, 1977 Oil on canvas – 150 × 150 cm.

Courtesy Metaphysical Art Gallery.

34. Gavin TurkGavin Turk, Kerze II, 2021. Oil on canvas – 318.8 × 243.3 cm. Courtesy Ben Brown Fine Arts.

35. Anna ValdezAnna Valdez, A Cabinet of Curiosities, 2020. Oil on canvas – 177.8 × 203.2 cm. Courtesy David B. Smith Gallery.

36. Luciano VentroneLuciano Ventrone, Raggi di Luce, 2014 -2019. Oil on mixed media on linen – 80 × 100 cm. Courtesy Albemarle Gallery.

37. Cornelius VölkerCornelius Völker, Petals, 2017. Oil on canvas – 260 × 200 cm. Courtesy Hosfelt Gallery.

39. Alison WattAlison Watt, Cartellino, 2017. Oil on canvas – 152 × 152 cm. Courtesy Parafin.

40. Matthias WeischerMatthias Weischer, Monstera, 2019. Oil on canvas – 285 × 300 × 4 cm. Courtesy KÖNIG GALERIE.

41. James WhiteJames White, The Foil, 2015. Oil and varnish on acrylic sheet in Perspex box frame – 124.1 × 149.

5 cm. Courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery.

42. Clare WoodsClare Woods, Slowness, 2020. Oil on aluminium – 100 × 100 cm. Courtesy Martin Asbæk Gallery.

43. Guy YanaiGuy Yanai, Plant in German Office I, 2020 Oil on canvas – 157 × 127 cm. Courtesy Conrads.

44. Cristof YvoréCristof Yvoré, Untitled, 2013. Acrylic on paper – 10 × 15.2 cm. Courtesy Zeno X Gallery.

45. Yang ZhenzongYang Zhenzong, Surveillance and Panorama #33, 2018 Oil on canvas – 200 × 196 cm. Courtesy Tang Contemporary Art.

Notes:

[1] Tate, Still life at https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/still-life consulted 17/01/2022.
[2] D. Crimp, “The End of Painting” in October (1981): p. 69-86 (consulted via https://doi.org/10.2307/778375).

Still lifes by contemporary artists - online gallery "Smart"

According to school textbooks, we remember that a still life is an image of objects, "inanimate nature". Pictures with flower bouquets and fruits, made in a realistic manner, pop up in my memory. Then we remember the still lifes that we saw in museums, but first of all, we also remember the classics - realistic art.

But contemporary fine art does not stand still. Do contemporary artists paint still lifes? What are they? The same as 100-200-300 years ago? Partly - yes, partly - a categorical "no".

Why yes? Because the genre of still life as it was, and remains. This is an image of inanimate nature. This definition in the theory of art does not change, it is static and stable.

What is changing? The life of people is changing, objects are changing - and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The main thing is that the styles in which artists work are changing. Their attitude towards this genre is changing. New techniques are emerging.

With the advent of photography, the majority of artists have ceased to aim to "draw similar". The uniqueness of the interpretation of old, understandable images came to the fore. What interpretations can be in still lifes, you ask? And let's see!

We have prepared a review of still lifes by our gallery artists!

Eduard Abzhinov's work "Cornflowers" is interesting for its technique (canvas, oil, wax). Few people work in such a technique, it is quite complicated. It is the wax that gives such texture to the colorful surface. Complex background color (gray-green) - as if aged, dusty. And against this background are bright blue cornflowers! A little naive, deliberately imperfect. No ceremonial glossy vases! No lush formal flowers! Quiet, modest cornflowers, which we remember more from childhood than today. All this together - aging, dustiness, textured waxy surface, simple wild flowers - builds some kind of simple village story. When everything is simple. When you don't have to "appear", but you can just "be".

"Balance" - the work of Yuri Grigoryan. This still life is about modernity, about the perfect balance (and about its fragility, instability). It is hardly possible to call this work a still life in its classical sense, but we do not have the task of checking with the theory of art. We think this is no longer about objects, but about the state. The state of balance - in the mood, in business, in life. This is not about "still life in the kitchen", you know, right?

"Melon at sunset" - the work of the artist Pavel Efanov. What colors! Bright, juicy pop art! Looks very modern! This still life is about a life that is in full swing, about youth and carelessness) Semi-abstraction, half-still life. But we still clearly guess the even slices of chopped melon.

The work "BREAD" by artist Mikhail Kaban-Petrov can hardly be called a still life. It is not a still life in the classical sense. The work is conceptual and philosophical. It's not just "I put a piece of bread on the table and drew it," as it may seem to an inexperienced viewer. In order to figure out how to relate to this kind of work, you need to familiarize yourself with the work of this artist, read / listen to his interview. And the puzzle will begin to take shape. But, we repeat, for an inexperienced viewer, this is "nature" "mort" - inanimate nature. We wrote about Michael's work here.

The work "Seven Pears" by the artist Sergey Kolevatykh. Bright cheerful composition! And this work can be attributed to still lifes. It reminds us of a computer game or some other digital illustration. The feeling of ultra-modernity and digital. Agree, it differs significantly from the classical still lifes that we remember from school?) This novelty is the meaning of the artist's search.

"Vase No. 3" from the "Holland" series by artist Dmitry Kolistratov. Look carefully - the vase is broken and glued together. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that the picture does not have to be "beautiful" - glossy, sleek and front. Often it is imperfection that "makes" the mood and evokes emotions. If you saw a beautiful, new, whole vase, you would think "Beautiful vase. " And that's all) And now even an inexperienced viewer will have questions - "Why is it broken? Did it break itself or did someone break it? Why was it glued together? Why is it important?" All these questions can lead to deeper thoughts - "Is it possible to glue what has already been broken? Profession? Relationships? Life?"

Is it just a still life? Is it just about the vase? Just about inanimate nature? Of course not. But at the core - the genre of still life.

"The gloaming (Twilight)", artist Korchagin Oleg. Black and white still life fading into twilight blue. Everything around becomes the same color - objects, houses, trees. And the bowl on the table - as a symbol of home, shelter, shelter. And it's not about the color, but about the feeling of home. Or maybe you remember your personal events. And from this this picture will become even warmer, even closer.

Look also at the writing technique: the surface seems rough, worn, uneven - as if aged, reminiscent of an old village. It's moments like these that really make a job stand out from the rest. The main thing is not to be "like everyone else." For a professional artist, this is death.

This is only a part of the works of the artists of our gallery, which we can combine in one word "still life". But now you know that they are very, very different.

Below are some of these interior works. Notice how modern they look.

You can see more still lifes here.

contemporary still life | Photoplay

May 14, 2020

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Quarantined New York-based photographer Sharon Radish has created a series of delicate still lifes using items found around her home. You also have the opportunity to try your hand at modern still life under the online guidance of Monika Dubinkaite.

April 30, 2019

alumni photoplay
instagram of the week
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student work
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November 20, 2018

student work photoplay
student work
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A course on Modern Still Life by Monika Dubinkaite has recently been completed. Students went to the museum for inspiration, came up with still lifes based on their favorite songs and took a lot of pictures. In general, it was a little difficult, very intense and super-interesting! And we made Monica's course in an intensive format, so if you want to create and experiment with us, this is best done during the winter holidays.

October 1, 2018

October 1, 2018 still life Surrealism, color-block, glass, packages, flowers and textured fruits - everything that modern stilllife photographers love to use not only in creative, but also in commercial shooting. Let's get inspired and go to Monika Dubinkaite's new course "Modern Still Life" to shoot in the same unusual and cool way!

September 4, 2018