A still life by Chardin

A Still Life by Chardin Lisson Gallery

With works by Audrey Barker, Hanne Darboven, Moyra Davey, Jef Geys, Dan Graham, Pati Hill, Henrik Olesen, Cameron Rowland, Maud Sulter, B. Wurtz, Trisha Donnelly and Laurie Parsons.

A still life by Chardin, an exhibition organised by Maxwell Graham is a group exhibition that brings the patient, quiet and humble spirit of 18th-Century French painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin to life through the work of contemporary artists.

The exhibition focuses on the mundanity of Chardin’s paintings, his honest and deliberate focus on every day objects, and is sparingly filled with modest artworks by those keenly interested in the inverse proportions between captivation and pageantry – those that know and share the intense integrity of the common and remind us of the potent unknown.

Jean-Siméon Chardin was born in 1699 in Paris, the son of a cabinet maker. He spent his entire life in Paris. His first wife died in the fifth year of their marriage. Both of his daughters died young, one at the age of three one at the age of one. His son, Jean-Pierre, also a painter, was kidnapped for a time by English pirates off the coast of Genoa, and drowned in a canal by his own will in Venice in 1772, at the age of 41. That same year Jean-Siméon Chardin had kidney stones.

In the hierarchy of genres, which was broadly accepted in the 18th century, history painting was ranked the highest, followed by portrait painting, then genre painting, then landscape painting, then animal painting, and then Still Life. More than anything else, Chardin painted still lives, often very slowly, and often at a very small scale. He painted wicker baskets, plumbs, breadcrumbs, pewter dishes, grapes, a silver goblet, glasses of water, a pestle and a mortar, walnuts, pewter jugs, earthenware pitchers, flasks, dead partridges, dead hares, dead salmon, dead rays, apples, Seville oranges, dead mallards, onions, leeks, turnips, straw, chestnuts, more knives, teapots, apricots, olives, wild strawberries, white carnations, coffee pots, a copper cistern, stone ledges and white tablecloths.

Duration 07 July 2017 - 26 August 2017
Times Monday–Friday, 10am–6pm Saturday, 11am–5pm
Cost Free
Venue Lisson Gallery (67 Lisson Street)
Address 67 Lisson Street, London, NW1 5DA
Contact 4402077242739 / contact@lissongallery.com / www.lissongallery.com

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