Still Life With Chesapeak Analysis

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All of these elements within such a composition make for a very contrasting and sumptuous photograph. It exhibits a theatrical use of color and light, with contrasting textures and shapes. These textures coupled with the colors, lines, and placement of the objects speak to the consumer within the viewer. The placement is hierarchical, and the eye is kept engaged as it loops constantly from the asparagus, to the meat, to the turnip. As the eye loops, the viewer experiences the sensual textures along the way, and looks yet again, wanting to stimulate the senses once more. Every element within the photograph causes the food to appear worthy of display. Also, by placing the food in a decontextualized setting with a nondescript background and foreshortening the food, the viewer is invited to partake.
The traditional composition of Core’s photograph, with inanimate food placed in the center and surrounded by dark colors and atmosphere, directly refers to vanitas and Dutch still life painting. The overall lighting of the …show more content…

Core’s photograph is almost a direct quote of Peale’s style and his painting, Still Life With Steak (ca. 1817). Peale is primarily known as an early American still-life painter, and as an elusive individual who lived under the large shadow of his brother Rembrandt and the “tyrannical” man who was his father. His father became increasingly manipulative and controlling throughout Peale’s childhood of his son’s actions and path in life. Wishing his son to be his successor and a portraitist like himself and Peale’s brother Rembrandt, he was of course deeply disappointed when Peale rejected his wishes in order to paint still-lifes. Peale would often exhibit his still-lifes in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts exhibitions, and he was one of the only artists to exhibit work in this genre and these American venues during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

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