Outdated, the still life? A minor genre, still life? Gérard Wajcman shows and demonstrates the contrary. He offers an innovative analysis of this “art of the portrait of the object”, through a fascinating investigation based on multiple works, from the oldest to the most contemporary and unexpected.

We say “still lifes”. This name after all is rather pretty, but it sucks. The still life does not tell stories of nature, it tells the story of bodies. Yet the body is absent, the great absentee of still life. No still life with bodies, by definition. So what is it? Still life tells the story of the body because it tells the story of the objects that make the body enjoy, that is to say that make it live. Because the life, it is the body which enjoys. An art of the material life. Neither nature nor death, here is the still life. The still life tells the life of the living body. In a word, the still life, it is the life.