Maybe This Will Be A Spiritual Experience: Still Life and Skulls

Our current project in art is working on a still life painting of some pears, apples, and peppers. Part of our thinking process/inspiration research was to look up a list of famous still life artists online and check out their work. I was kind of creeped out by some of these artist's still life compositions.....it seemed like a lot of artists really enjoyed throwing in a human skull into their paintings. Not only that but they have to have the skull in there with a dark background which makes it that much more depressing. I don't know. Maybe it was a huge artist trend back in the day. If there's no skull then it's not cool?? One artist even painted a stack of human skulls! He must have been the trendsetter.

Here is the list of artists that we were recommended to check out. Feel free to check them out yourself and make your own opinions.

Jan Bruehel the Elder

Juan Sanchez Cotan

Jan de Heem

Jean baptiste simeon chardin

Paul Cezanne

Georgio Morandi

Wayne Thiebaud

William Harnett

Marsden Hartley

Pablo Picasso

Henri Matisse

For example, look at what Googling Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin pulls up. It's kind of crazy that a lot of his still lifes involve some kind of butcher meat and a cat. I like the cat part actually. In fact I was really freaked out at first because I thought he painted a butchered cat. Anyways, I wonder how he painted the raw meat and how fast he was able to paint or if he kind of took his time and ignored the smell of it all. I wondered if he had any flies that were really in that picture like his cat supposedly was and he chose to not paint them in!

Here is an artist that really excited me though. His name is Wayne Thebauld and his still lifes are very different from everyone else's on this list. His work reminds me a lot of posters and of window shopping and delicious food.

Who needs skulls? They certainly aren't as tasty.

I scream for ice cream.