For centuries, artistic genres were placed in a hierarchy, said Laura Freeman in The Times. Top came history painting – stagey renditions of biblical and classical scenes. Next came portraits, then scenes of everyday life, followed by landscape and paintings of animals. It was only then that you got to still life, a style considered the “lowest of the low”. This new exhibition at Pallant House in Chichester “is having none of it”: it argues that still life was, and is, “a brilliant vehicle for expression, experiment and sheer artistic display”.
It brings together dozens of still lifes realised between the 17th century and the present day, its informative captions providing a “potted social history” of Britain over the period. With a dazzling range of works by everyone from Eric Ravilious to Walter Sickert to Damien Hirst, it mixes familiar names with new discoveries, “pretty pictures” with sombre meditations on mortality. It makes for a delightful and imaginative event.
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