Looking at Vanitas

A still life artwork which includes various symbolic objects designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures.

The term originally comes from the opening lines of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’

Vanitas are closely related to memento mori still lifes which are artworks that remind the viewer of the shortnes and fragility of life and include symbols such as skulls and extinguished candles. However vanitas still-lifes also include other symbols such as musical instruments, wine and books to remind us explicitly of the vanity (in the sense of worthlessness) of worldly pleasures and goods.

Memento mori objects inspired Dutch artists living more than a century later to create works in a similar genre called vanitas. In vanitas paintings, allusions to inevitable change and decay loom large—but it’s easy for modern viewers to miss them.

Bubbles about to burst, shifting shadows, hourglasses, flickering candles, musical instruments (music, after all, is temporal)—all these images are meant to convey that everything is in flux and beauty cannot endure.

But vanitas symbolism, which is perhaps best known in the works of 17th-century Dutch painter Pieter Claesz, can be so beautifully rendered—each drop or insect’s wing on a grape looks like it could have taken a week to paint—that it’s easy to miss their ominous undertones.

These and traditional memento mori objects sit right on the edge between hopeful and morbid. They are, as Boehm says, “exquisite works of art that speak powerfully about the transitory nature of life.”

 

Picassso

Skulls, traditional symbols of the memento mori in Western art history, fascinated Picasso throughout his life. Throughout World War II in occupied Paris, Picasso produced many skulls and still lifes that captured the tense and uncertain mood of the city. While they may represent allegories of human mortality in art, the immediacy of Picasso’s paintings and sculptures transform his skulls into poignant emblems of human vulnerability, death, and the senseless destruction of war. Picasso created Skull in 1943 during the Nazi occupation of Paris, which he may have modeled off of skulls kept in his studio as many artists did, such as Paul Cézanne who stored several on his mantelpiece. Cézanne created several paintings of skulls not only because of his interest in the contemplation of death, but also due to his fascination with their shapes and forms.

 

Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood took this idea of mortality, from ‘Still Life’, and gave it a boost. In her 2002 installation film ‘A Little Death’, the artist substitutes the fruit for a dead hare, which is left to decay with the aid of countless maggots that emerge from the carcass. The decay has a strong effect on the surrounding area, as the walls dampen and the animal’s fur is left to carpet the table. Though interestingly, a peach is left next to the carcass which, throughout the film, remains fresh and ripe. Possibly a comment on the renewable qualities of fruit, along with the inevitable death and decay of all meat. Evidently, this film is far more grotesque than that of “Still Life”, however, the message is conveyed in a far more blunt way.