Caterpillage : reflections on seventeenth century Dutch still life painting / Harry Berger, Jr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berger, Harry.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Still-life painting, Dutch.

Death in art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (132 pages)

Edition:

[1st ed.].

Other Title:

Reflections on seventeenth century Dutch still life painting

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Caterpillage is a study of seventeenth-century Dutch still life painting. It develops an interpretive approach based on the author's previous studies of portraiture, and its goal is to offer its readers a new way to think and talk about the genre of still life.The book begins with a critique of iconographic discourse and particularly of iconography's treatment of vanitas symbolism. It goes on to argue that this treatment tends to divert attention from still life's darker meanings and from the true character of its traffic with death. Interpretations of still life that focus on the vanity of hu

Contents:

Prologue

Hyperreality and truthiness

Reading Blake's "The Sick rose"

Ethics versus technics in seventeenth-century Dutch still life

Vanitas : the McGuffin of still life

Still life, trade, and truthiness

The pretext of occasion : Floris van Dijck's Laid table with cheese and fruit, c. 1615

Nature mourant : the fictiveness of Dutch realism

The embarrassment of niches : Christoffel van den Berghe's Vase of flowers in a stone niche, 1617

Nature mourant : Bosschaert's Leaves, Merian's Caterpillars

"Small-scale violence"

The darker spirit : Van Huysum's heaps

Posies : the bouquet as pretext of occasion

Joris Hoefnagel and the roots of Dutch flower painting

Conclusion. Allegorical capture and interpretive release.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-8232-7506-X

0-8232-3315-4

OCLC:

923763539