Nature Morte — Still Life

“I’ve come to believe that beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas. It engages people when they might otherwise look away.” — Richard Misrach

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter — in French, nature morte: dead nature. Still lives have been part of our iconographic memory for centuries; a genre in itself, full of now often forgotten symbolism. The fact that the same image is described in one language as dead and in the other as being alive inspired Peter Bracke to confront animals killed by human intervention (pollution, plastic, road kill…) with happy beach scenes.

We are aware of the alarming state of our planet — warming, pollution, overpopulation. But once on the beach, the problem is swiftly forgotten, even if ten metres further a dead seagull lies entangled in a fishing net. The images of the dead animals are printed on coarse sea sand, fixed on a Dibond panel with acrylic medium — the animals almost fall away, disappear or dissolve in the sandy carrier. The volatile beach scenes, snapshots, are polaroids.

Nederlands Denker des Vaderlands

“Mooie spullen lijken me dat. Die foto’s. Fraai. Stranden zijn voor mij hoogst merkwaardige plekken die ik mijd als er te veel zonaanbidders liggen. Het is goed dat niet iedereen dat doet. Er ontstaat verontrustende kunst door. Met hartelijke groet, René”

Prof. dr. René ten Bos — Philosophy, Department of Management Sciences, Radboud University — renetenbos.nl