For modern admirers – Still Life, Breakfast with Glass of Champagne and Pipe

Detail of Still Life, Breakfast with Glass of Champagne and Pipe by Jan Davidsz. de Heem. Image courtesy of Liechtenstein Museum.

Mid breakfast, pomegranate opened. Lemon peeled, bread roll broken.

For modern admirers the painting simply is, it is as if it never not was. At no time in history were we without this. Contemporary eyes can’t see the artist’s hand – to them, it was done by all and done by none. They can’t see parts of the artist in there. To them, these objects are Platonic, in the same way that their possessions, if removed from them, would not be recognised as ever being theirs. Not that it worries them.

Tired eyes, deep creases around the mouth. This person, who acts a certain way for so long that their friends and family stop being able to tell where the real them starts and the real them ends until finally they themselves can’t tell and that becomes who they are.

A face like porcelain, eyes like obsidian. She walked with a slight limp, a leftover from an accident in childhood. She placed the chalice in his hands. She wanted something of hers in the painting. It was a small joke between them, her joke. She liked him, she his patron’s wife. So he had to oblige. The lobster and oysters and fragrant lemons were theirs. He had to agree and accommodate the chalice’s placement in the painting, even if it was not needed. He held it in his hands, running a thumb along the carved design, trying to think of a way to tell her he didn’t want it. He wanted something on the right for balance, it is true. But he had his own ideas.

Think of a bust of Voltaire – is it the sculptor or the subject that we admire? Do we praise the builders of the minaret or the muezzin who calls from atop it, the casket or its contents, the perfume or the wearer?

The foremost grapes are full to the point of being translucent, ready to pop.

Still life, as if it’s a surprise. An attempt to capture a moment, a lavish breakfast, in time. It’s mad. I see, in this, as if it was a colour, madness. But what earthly undertaking is not? Nothing makes sense. Nothing is justified. Oysters not yet eaten. Those that will never be eaten are thick and snotty, the shells milky and in contrast to the table’s dark base which the light misses.

The breakfast is cluttered on the edge of the table. Perhaps it composed itself, by some miracle, in such a way as to inspire. Mid breakfast he decided to paint? No, the setup is obvious. The table cloth is pulled back to reveal the triangle’s corner, the champagne at its zenith. He had sketched it in brown chalk, changing the position of items sometimes on the same page. He sketched it a number of times and never quite felt it was right, beginning with a wince each time. This painting was proving troublesome, taking far longer than it should have. But he couldn’t just start. It had to be right.

Further, the illusion that this was painted in a single sitting – the grapes fresh, almost bursting, vine leaves still green – is also unreal, a contradiction of the still life, like a book that takes months and years of perfecting to create the illusion of capturing reality. But there are no drafts in life. There is beauty if one wants to look for it, love if one wants to feel it. But life is just life. Never is it still.

She brought the champagne to him, poured him a glassful. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still looking about him. She was pleased, surprised when he put it to his lips, but pleased; however, he was thinking, building, calculating how much of the champagne to drink – perhaps the glass should be empty? What if there was no champagne, just another overturned glass? He forgot she was there.

And where does one have such a breakfast? Lobster, champagne, a smoke, and lemons to temper the luxuriance. This is a breakfast from history, from art – not from here.

Instilling life with stillness is a practice in taxidermy. To be still is to be dead.

LI

Related posts:

1. Forms
2. Night out
3. On the train – part II