Is anything or anyone Everlasting? Death seems to be definite and continues in that there is no return from it unless one believes in reincarnation.
Using familiar still life objects Bak asks us to consider the impermanence of human existence. So many associations including the picnic of Édouard
Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. The picnic cloth is spread as the platform for still life objects:
Pear
Bottle
Cup with handle
Small wine goblet
assembled at the base of a rare companion. The facade of the uplifted house, a column that looks like a chimney and tree. The branches of this tree seem to be struggling to attract attention to assemblage. In the background a figure like a topiary ascends the hillside. The indentation into the form appears as the head and beak of a familiar Bak bird.
How have these items been assembled? They have emerged from the fertile imagination of the artist. The questions of the meaning are everlasting as are the uninformed answers.
What is the meaning of life? still life? Is it everlasting?
Bernard H. Pucker, BAK a Day, September 2, 2023
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Still life paintings evolved as a unique genre in the Netherlands during the 16th and 17th centuries. The compositional objects were mostly inanimate or non-viable and thus quite “still”. The settings were usually intimate views of a table in a restricted space. There were symbols of wealth such as gold and silver table ware, bottles of wine, fancy bound books; symbols of mortality and gradual decay with dead animals, candles and insects; and symbols of transient life and fertility with cut flowers and picked fruit. The choice of objects and the presentation chosen by the painter determined what message was intended.
This Bak painting uses a landscape setting with a picnic-like blanket or perhaps an altar covering, not a polished tabletop, in the foreground. Suddenly this still life takes on a much bigger presence and a more universal feeling. A ubiquitous Bak pear is present but the cup is broken, the chalice, bottle and pitcher are precariously tilted in support of one other. The largest objects in this painting are a tall solid tree with a severely damaged house partly attached. The house is markedly tilted and unlikely to stay upright in spite of additional supports. The lower column and left-sided lateral supports imply a cross which presides over the cloth beneath it. The concept of nature morte represented in ironic symbolic form.
Nothing in this painting looks “everlasting” except for perhaps the “still” nature of a broken world. The tree of life remains viable and is trying to hold up the relic of a home. Is it possible? This still life painting presents memories but little reason for optimism.
The struggle continues.
Dr. Carl M. Herbert (Guest Writer)
BAK a Day, September 28, 2022
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