Paul Cezanne, Still Life with Milk Jug and Fruit, c. 1900.
Photo accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/19/cezanne-a-life-alex-danchev-review. Their photo credit from the National Gallery of Art.
Maybe they call it a still life because it captures a moment of life in the midst of being lived. Forever there are nine pieces of fruit, not eight, not ten, and these pieces will never go soft or bruised or have bites taken in their crisp and mellow skins. This is what life looked like in this particular moment, before the child asked for a snack or the mother decided to bake.
Maybe they call it a still life because it captures a moment of stillness. The milk before it’s poured, the table steady, the water perfectly level in the glass, shining with a touch of iridescent blue the way water in a glass can shine when the light pours through. There is serenity here and calmness and the feel of a whole small world in the rectangle of the canvas, almost but not quite perfectly balanced because everything tips just a tiny bit to the left, reminding us that most of the time our world is not quite straight.
Maybe they call it a still life because there is life in it still, the painter’s cool straight lines punctuated by the round warm rims of fruit and bowl, jug and glass, his love for the day spilling over into our own day more than a century later, calling us to look, to notice, to look again. (~EMP, 1-19-16)
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Maybe they call it a still life because it captures a moment of life in the midst of being lived. Forever there are nine pieces of fruit, not eight, not ten, and these pieces will never go soft or bruised or have bites taken in their crisp and mellow skins. This is what life looked like in this particular moment, before the child asked for a snack or the mother decided to bake.
Maybe they call it a still life because it captures a moment of stillness. The milk before it’s poured, the table steady, the water perfectly level in the glass, shining with a touch of iridescent blue the way water in a glass can shine when the light pours through. There is serenity here and calmness and the feel of a whole small world in the rectangle of the canvas, almost but not quite perfectly balanced because everything tips just a tiny bit to the left, reminding us that most of the time our world is not quite straight.
Maybe they call it a still life because there is life in it still, the painter’s cool straight lines punctuated by the round warm rims of fruit and bowl, jug and glass, his love for the day spilling over into our own day more than a century later, calling us to look, to notice, to look again. (~EMP, 1-19-16)
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