Vanitas :: essays research papers

VanitasVanitas, found in worldly concerny recent pieces, is a style of painting begun in the 17th Century by Dutch artists. contrivanceists involved in this movement include Pieter Claesz, Domenico Fetti and Bernardo Strozzi . Using still- smell as their milieu, those artists and others handle them provide the viewer with ideas regarding the brevity of life. The artists are giving us a taste of the swiftness with which life raise fade and death overtakes us all. Some late 20th Century examples were shown recently at the Virginia Museum of Art in Richmond, Virginia. Among the artists stand for in this show were Miroslaw Balka (Polish, b. 1958), Christian Boltanski (French, b. 1944), Leonardo pull (American, b. 1961), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American, b. Cuba, 1957- 1996), Jim Hodges (American, b. 1957), Anish Kapoor (British, b. India, 1954), and Jac Leirner (Brazilian, b. 1961). In the poem Vanitas Vanitatum by John Webster, we are given a clear view of this movement in the art world. ALL the flowers of the backfireMeet to perfume our burying is a beautiful juxtaposition of the sweetie of life and the sorrow of passing away. Actually, any definition of this term would be overshadowed by this poem, it so clearly sums up the meaning and importance bottomland the word Vanitas."Vanitas still life with portrait of a young puma " by David Bailly includes such objects as dying flowers, a skull, a painting of musician, musical instruments (recorder, conductors baton), statuary of a young, virile man and a young child, a portrait of another young man, and a clean palette wall hanging on the wall. The meaning behind these articles can be manifold, depending upon ones point of view, but I turn over they are all important symbols of the passing nature of vitality and life itself. The flowers, once brilliant and lovely, are now withering in their vase. Music, represented by a man playing a lute in a portrait on the wall and by numerous music related ite ms (a recorder, a conductors baton) is itself transient and elusive. Obviously a skull can represent death, but it can just as substantially be a reminder of what remains behind. The clean palette hanging on the wall is evocative of a clear start, a immature beginning, the option available to us all to begin again, before its too lateIn Wheel of Fortune, by Audrey Flack, umpteen objects illustrate the transient nature of this fragile life.