Still Life
in Ethnologia Europaea
Author:
Kathleen Stewart
Kathleen Stewart
The University of Texas at Austin
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A still is a state of calm, a lull in the action. But it is also the machine hidden in the woods that distills spirits into potency through heat, vapor and condensation. In painting, a still life is a genre that captures the liveliness of inanimate objects (fruit, flowers, bowls) by suspending their sensory beauty in an intimate scene charged with the textures of paint, experience, and desire. Hitchcock was a master of the still in film production. A simple pause of the moving camera to focus on a door or a telephone could produce powerful suspense.