How does still life matter? The two essays in this book, based on Carol Armstrongs lectures as part of the 2020 Franklin D. Murphy Lectureship at the University of Kansas, explore the concept of material thought as it relates to still life. Armstrong looks at two major figures of European still-life painting: eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. She discusses their paintings alongside the works of other European painters, philosophers, and critics. These close readings consider the question of how we understand materiality in relation to still-life painting and the material objects this genre represents.
Contents
Preface
1. Chardin, Diderot, and the Muteness of Made Things: Between Ekphrasis and
the Encyclopedia
2. Giorgio Morandi and the Matter of Still Life
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
Carol Armstrong is Professor of History of Art at Yale University, where she teaches nineteenth-century European art. Her most recent books are Cézannes Gravity and Painting Photography Painting.
