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.

About the author

Carol Armstrong is Professor of History of Art at Yale University, where she teaches nineteenth-century European art. Her most recent books are Cézanne's Gravity and Painting Photography Painting.

Product details

• Authors: Carol Armstrong, Armstrong Carol
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 15.05.2026
• EAN: 9780520416994
• ISBN: 978-0-520-41699-4
• No. of pages: 148
• Series: Franklin D. Murphy Lectures
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art; France, Theory of art, PHILOSOPHY / Aesthetics, ART / Individual Artists / Monographs, Italy, still life, Individual artists, art monographs, ART / Subjects & Themes / Still Life, ART / European / General, ART / European / French, ART / European / Italian