My mom told me today that her favorite type of art, since she was a little girl, is 17th century, Dutch and Belgiumese Still Life art. I was rather surprised, for I can't stand still life. But I'm prejudiced see, because I naturally can't stand 17th century Dutch art. When I was a kid, I took an art class in Still Life and took quite a disliking to it immediately, for my drawing teacher would not allow me to stray from drawing the same fake bowl of fruit everyone else had to copy. Another factor was walking through dozens of halls of Still Life paintings in the Metropolitan, waiting restlessly for my parents who found the need to analyze each one.
So I asked my mom why she liked it.
My mom grew up on the outskirts of St. Petersberg, in a suburban- rural village. I guess that sort of makes her a 'village' girl. She lived in the house which my great grandfather built, surrounded partly by an apple orchard and a little chicken coop. During the winter, she would join in pickling barrels of cucumbers and tomatoes from their garden and during the summer she would go to the forest and collect mushrooms and berries. It was hard to grow food in Russia, and it was difficult to obtain anything that wasn't domestically grown, or brought in from Cuba. There never seemed to be enough either, so food was always a problem.
But my mom can't completely be considered a village girl though, because we have to take into consideration that she attended the top mathematics school in Russia. It required her to wait on cold mornings to take a train to St. Petersberg. Just like me, her mom would sometimes take her to the big art museum, the Hermitage, in order to instill some sort of appreciation for the arts. The art that attracted her the most, every time she went there, was those Still Lifes. The large, luscious, paintings of fruits and vegetables toppling over each other beside silver platters of fish and meat, was food that she never saw in her life, and in quantities that seemed unrealistically huge. She thought that some of those fruits were made up by the artist, just like some of the flowers in paintings were made up by the artist. It was fun to see all that food, even if it made her a bit hungry. But it was only on a canvas.
Later in life, my mom visited Brussels, Belgium with my dad. They walked around the restaurant district and it astonished her to see, that the restaurants had large tables, outside on the side walk, that was covered with heaps of fruits and vegetables laid upon delicate white tablecloth. Restaurant goers would pick out what produce they would like to be served. Of course, those restaurants were quite expensive, and my parents couldn't possibly go to them. But she realized at that moment, standing across the street, that she wanted to be those people, enjoying something that only seemed possible in paintings. And thats part of how my parents eventually got out of the Soviet Union and came to America.
Well, there other reasons too, but in a sense, those still life paintings are part of what got me to where I am today. Perhaps if they hadn't existed, this blog entry would be written in Russian, or not at all. But aside from that, I now understand the reason why somebody would want to have these paintings. Not only would they show their wealth to possible guests by affording such an elaborate picture, but it allowed them to see something rare, and so rich, and so beautiful, as tables of fresh food.
