Close Looking: Chardin

Hi everyone, I'm Monique. I'm Aimee. And today we're going to be talking about a specific type or what we call a genre of art. Still life. Okay, so here we're going to look at a still life that is in the Art Gallery of Ontario. What do you notice in this painting? I notice a wine. I notice a big wine. A couple little wine glasses. And I see one with open end. And the next one that I see has more wine. And I also see a jar. You know what's in that jar? It looks a bit like honey. It's kind of a honey color, but it's actually a jar full of apricots and some juice. You see a spoon and what is the spoon in? Let's zoom in here. In a little tea cup. And what do you see coming out of the tea cup? This is one of my very favorite things about the painting. Steam. Exactly, steam. So even though this is a still life where we have objects that aren't living, it's almost brought to life here, isn't it? Through that steam that's coming out. It's kind of amazing that Chardin painted it this way. Someone who was writing about Chardin's painting at his time during his lifetime said that if you looked really closely at a painting by Chardin, you couldn't tell what an object was. But if you zoomed out, everything came to life. And it looks as though someone is right in the middle of eating this bread, this delicious jar of apricots, this wine, this steaming tea. Why do you think an artist would choose to paint these foods? They're probably good. They're probably foods the artists like to eat. Apricots! Apricots, like I love to eat, exactly. I don't like apricots. Well, you're very picky. What does looking at this painting make you wonder about? I wonder why the artist painted a package that only showed up inside and didn't eat all of the food that's sitting right there on the table. So still lifes often have fruit, food, shells, bowls, plates. We've seen knives in two of them, spoons, teacups, wine glasses. You can choose objects that you like, food that you enjoy to eat. Would you like to create your own still life? In her still life, Agnes chose to include a crystal ball, an egg, a cheese string, a book, a pony, which I'm told is more accurately described as an alicorn, a bowl of strawberries, and another bowl of fruit that includes a peach, which she prefers to apricots. We have to wash them first though. What would you include in your still life? We hope you enjoyed looking at, wondering, and learning about still lifes with us, and that you might be inspired to create one of your own.