The Matter of Still Life

How does still life “matter”? Through two essays based on Carol Armstrong's 2020 Franklin D. Murphy Lectures at the University of Kansas, this project brings into focus material thought as it relates to still life. Exploring two major figures of European still life painting—eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi—Armstrong provides close readings, discussing these artists' paintings in relation to the works of other European painters, philosophers, and critics whose works intersect on the question of how we understand materiality in relation to still life painting and the material objects this genre represents.