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How does still life “matter”? The two essays in this book, based on Carol Armstrong’s 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.
“Carol Armstrong’s rich and evocative essays will expand the way we think about still life. Through thickly descriptive language, painted things come alive even as they may remain poignantly mute. With a keen eye and exacting prose, Armstrong conjures the inner worlds of represented objects, evincing their deep material agency and generative possibilities.”—Marni Reva Kessler, author of Discomfort Food: The Culinary Imagination in Late Nineteenth-Century French Art
“The Matter of Still Life tackles the difficult and elusive nature of descriptive writing that argues for humility in presentness. It is a beautifully written volume that seamlessly integrates sociohistorical contexts into its poetic close looking.”—Jenni Sorkin, Professor and Chair, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara
“This book offers an exceptionally eloquent and sophisticated meditation on a topic that forms the very foundations of the practice of art history, namely, the complex relationships between pictures and words. It is most fitting that an art historian with an exquisitely compelling and utterly unique manner of writing about art and whose truly remarkable ability to make very close, careful looking into the most meaningful of interpretations should take on this subject.”—Michelle Foa, author of Georges Seurat: The Art of Vision
“Armstrong brings a powerful combination of historical erudition, critical intelligence, visual acuity, and tactile sensitivity. She undergirds penetrating visual analysis with relevant information, never losing sight of the goal of explaining in clear language why and how we should devote the closest attention to these apparently humble works of art."—Stephen Ellis, Director, LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art