What makes still-life paintings special?

Britannica Encyclopedia mentions ‘still life’ as ‘'depiction of inanimate objects for the sake of their qualities of form, color, texture, and composition.’ For a large part of the art movement, it was confined to its existence as a subsidiary element in a ubiquitous composition.

Early Netherlandish still-life painted works that depicted skulls, candles as well as hourglasses as allegories of mortality, or combined fruits and flowers of all seasons to allude to nature’s cycle. An interest in observing and representing the material details of the environment in realistic way was a key catalyst to the still-life style.

Sadly, this genre might some out of context, especially when several younger artists now evolve their practice with help and support of technology. It still plays a key role in their working processes, and they might have seldom sketched a bottle of wine or a vase of flowers sitting on a table, as most senior artists of the earlier era have dome to fine tune their craft. In fact, one can test the true mettle of an artist the way he or she draws/paints forms in still-life. Dwelling on the interesting topic, art critic Kishore Singh notes in a recent column:

“True, still-life as we know it is an inherited idea from the West, and one belongs in that sense to our painterly past. But in the way it continues to fascinate both artist as well as collector, I would wager that as a subject it is still to reach its sell-by date.”

We have witnessed some exquisite examples of still-life paintings at recent exhibitions. Though the fact remains that not many of these kind have managed to command the dizzy heights of record-breaking prices (that have come the way of fantastic figurative works), the expert feels that it still remains the best measure of an individual artist’s persona, his mood (while at the time of painting the work) and also his or her craft.