Harvey Miller
K. Leonhard
The Fertile Ground of Painting: Seventeenth-Century Still Lifes and Nature Pieces
304 p., 162 colour ill., 225 x 300 mm, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-912554-06-5
Languages: English
Hardback
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Still Life painting thematizes the ability of Nature and Art to produce similarities and is therefore predestined for a theorization of mimetic strcutures of Art in general.
17th-Century Netherlandish Still Life painting actively participated in the intellectual discourse of natural philosophy and the natural sciences, even though art history until recently described it, somewhat simplifying, as realistic-representative painting. We urgently need a rehabilitation of the notion of Mimesis. The author restarts the discussion, by putting more emphasis on the historical notions of Nature and Image. She examines how mimetic structures acquired a biotic reproductive capacity in the 17th century. Still Life painting thematizes the ability of Nature and Art to produce similarities and is therefore predestined for a theorization of mimetic strcutures of Art in general.
Karin Leonhard is professor of art history at the University of Konstanz.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One - The Picture as Species
Chapter Two - The Picture as Pharmakon
Chapter Three - The Picture as Palingenesis
Chapter Four - The Picture as Ephemeron