Silent Witnesses on the Table. Still Lifes Today

The still life is alive and well in art. Most contemporary Dutch and Flemish artists regard the Christian message as outmoded, but some do not mind a bit of moralism, as long as it's ambiguous and only implied. The lusts and burdens of earthly sensuality should keep each other in balance. The still life is not a fashionable subject, one would think. The displays of fruit, game, flowers and skulls which were painted in the seventeenth century are so famous that they have become clichéd. One would not expect a twenty-first century artist to elaborate on this genre, since the first rule is to be original. Yet the genre is booming.