The art piece that the rest of these images will be related to is an art piece on display at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh called "Bride", a sculpture by Beth Lipman.
A still life image is a painting, photograph, or any manner of expression which depicts inanimate non-human objects as art. As The Art Factory puts it, still life “captures the natural beauty of transient objects like flowers or fruit or table elements… to express the abstract qualities of the visual elements”. Still life traditionally depicts typical objects you’d find in your house, usually set up on a coffee table or breakfast table. Still life is one of the most famous painting forms since it was incredibly popular around the turn of the 20th century. Beth Lipman’s art is reminiscent of still life, except in sculpture form. Much of her work, and especially “Bride” is modeled after still life in the way that she creates still life images out of glass. She doesn’t imitate others work at all, but she definitely is unique in her interpretation of sculpture as still life.
A traditional object synonymous with wedding ceremonies for centuries, the wedding cake itself is essentially a universal symbol for togetherness. As you can see by comparing the 2 photos, Lipman’s sculpture, “Bride”, is shaped similarly to a wedding cake with the multiple layers gradually getting smaller as the sculpture gets taller, just as a wedding cake does. This leads you to believe the sculpture has a theme of a wedding, a theme of a ceremony, or a theme of love. Also contributing to this is the fact that the sculpture is called “Bride”. I have a hard time believing the 2 aren’t related.
Further going into the topic of weddings, I was immediately drawn to the use of glass in this piece. The pieces on the upper layer are unbroken while the pieces on the lower layers are completely shattered. I started to think that this was for the purpose of symbolizing a broken marriage since the 10 foot piece was in the shape of a giant cake. Then, in researching more, Beth Lipman, the artist behind this piece, has a jewish name. Without dragging religion into this, and its kind of unavoidable when talking about marriage as its inherently what marriage is, the jewish religion has a history with breaking glass as a sign of marriage. Traditionally, a glass is shattered at a jewish wedding to symbolize the marriage of 2 individuals. So, depending on her message, the shattered glass could either be a symbol of broken marriage or, maybe less obviously, a positive symbol of new beginnings.
A still life image is a painting, photograph, or any manner of expression which depicts inanimate non-human objects as art. As The Art Factory puts it, still life “captures the natural beauty of transient objects like flowers or fruit or table elements… to express the abstract qualities of the visual elements”. Still life traditionally depicts typical objects you’d find in your house, usually set up on a coffee table or breakfast table. Still life is one of the most famous painting forms since it was incredibly popular around the turn of the 20th century. Beth Lipman’s art is reminiscent of still life, except in sculpture form. Much of her work, and especially “Bride” is modeled after still life in the way that she creates still life images out of glass. She doesn’t imitate others work at all, but she definitely is unique in her interpretation of sculpture as still life. 
No comments:
Post a Comment