Dutch Still Life Paintings

May 8, 2022 11:56 AM

A New York Times Close Read
posted by Bee'sWing (22 comments total)

Wonderful! I love these, I'm always in awe seeing the comparative still life being two centuries prior and thinking how far we've come from The Adventures of André & Wally B. to Luck.

I love the use of parallax and NYT's continual push to embrace the medium they're in and not content to just recreate a newspaper. For comparison my local newspaper, which is a total rag, literally has a horrible web app called PageSuite which gives you a DRM'd PDF of the paper that's so unintuitive there's a FAQ though given the demographics of the audience they'd be confused by a Clsoe Read.

Does anyone know if there's still a blog or Twitter feed on "how they did it?" The NYT had a really great and in-depth blog at one point on how they moved to digital and what libraries/processes they used in coming up with these ideas. An amazing collaboration between journalists and technical staff.
posted by geoff. at 1:38 PM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

That "unblemished towel, fringed and striped" in the Annunciation painting looks awfully like a tallit. I tried googling to see if there was other commentary on this saying "no really, that's a towel" but came up short. Anyone with art history chops have any commentary here?
posted by damayanti at 3:24 PM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

What a terrific read! I feel like I've been on a trip around the world, which may explain why I suddenly feel very hungry.

Also, although I am certainly not your art historian, this painting, done in the Netherlands in the 1460s, shows a man in a tallit that looks very much like the towel in the Annunciation painting. Which is, at least, intriguing.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 4:12 PM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Some of Willem Heda's other paintings. Note the recurring motifs!
Thanks for posting Bee's Wing.
posted by storybored at 4:39 PM on May 8, 2022

I *loved* this. Thank you for posting!
posted by dbmcd at 5:11 PM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

ALeaflikeStructure, thank you for linking to that blog, via which I found this, which I can only describe as "the least competent seder ever". Why are they dissecting a miniature horse? Why are bits of food just kind of randomly scattered around the table? Where are the fucking chairs? Excuse me, but I have way more than four questions
posted by phooky at 7:18 PM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

If I am limited in time at a museum, the still lives are in fact one of the things I am most likely to skip, as this article suggests, but recently I was struck by one in Cleveland, because the particular combination of items tickled my funny bone. I don't know why but the large chunks of uneaten meat just hit me the right way.
posted by Whale Oil at 8:44 PM on May 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Others have made the tallit comparison:

https://weirdcatholic.com/2019/03/25/the-devils-mousetrap-an-image-of-the-annunciation/

Also, clearly someone's teacher agrees:

https://quizlet.com/173093024/byzantine-flash-cards/
posted by lewedswiver at 9:25 PM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Busy Joseph in that Merode Altarpiece reminds me of Life in Hell
posted by chavenet at 12:38 AM on May 9, 2022

Relevant: study of still lifes to trace the evolution of food plants, from Smithsonian.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:56 AM on May 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

They mention Vermeer's hat briefly and there's an entire book on that topic. The thesis is similar: that globalization (and modern capitalism) began in 17th century Holland and this is reflected in paintings from that time.

The NYTimes piece is great and got me interested enough to go see the painting in person, since I live near the Rijksmuseum.
posted by vacapinta at 2:20 AM on May 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

Hats is it? There is a whole chapter on head-gear [every mortal human in every picture has a hat on] in Short Life in a Strange World: Birth to Death in 42 Panels by Toby Ferris: his obsessive quest to stand before, and reflect upon, all the acknowledged works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder / of Breda. Bruegel was born 100 years before Vermeer into a medieval world. The next century saw massive change. Here's a taster of the book.
posted by BobTheScientist at 5:23 AM on May 9, 2022

Great find. What a journey they take you on. Really enjoy NYT immersive pieces.
posted by myndwalk at 5:54 AM on May 9, 2022

That sure looks like a tallit to me. What an intriguing detail.

Another thing they may have missed is is where those lemons came from. Solar heated fruit walls, and later glass greenhouses, are the likely source.
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:56 AM on May 9, 2022

Oh I read this last night and was so impressed, almost to the point of detriment because the longer it went on (it's long!) and the greater it got, the more I kept thinking wow, I can't believe all the work that went into this, I wonder how many people are reading to the end, I wonder if they've been doing these previously and I missed it, etc., etc., instead of focusing on the thing itself.
posted by HotToddy at 7:05 AM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

That was amazing. I subscribe to the Times and we even get the physical paper on Sundays, and still I wouldn't have seen this or taken time with it if I hadn't seen it here. Thank you for posting it.
posted by Mchelly at 7:22 AM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Really enjoyed this, thanks! It was a well-executed use of the medium.

I wonder if they've been doing these previously and I missed it

Thanks to this post I learned that there are quite a few other entries in the NYT's Close Read series. I haven't had a chance to fully check them out yet but a quick dip into a couple of them indicate that they're of a similar format and level of quality.
posted by good in a vacuum at 7:29 AM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Thanks to this post I learned that there are quite a few other entries in the NYT's Close Read series.

Are there non-paywalled links to this one or any other?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:35 AM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is wonderful. I've pretty sure I have a postcard of this very still-life painting.
posted by of strange foe at 1:45 PM on May 9, 2022

This is really, really great. I never would have seen it had you not posted it here, so thank you.
posted by rp at 6:41 PM on May 9, 2022

I sent the link to my 80-year-old mother-in-law who is far more passionate about art than I am, and she called me up to thank me for it, just raving about it, except that "how did they not mention - they said about the oysters, and the pepper spilling, but look, there are two napkins - why did they not say that they are clearly having sex!"

So there's that.
posted by Mchelly at 6:29 AM on May 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

21st Century Still Life
posted by geoff. at 6:58 PM on May 11, 2022