ISBN LOOKING AT THE OVERLOOKED : Four Essays on Still Life Painting book English Paperback 168 pages

In this, the only up-to-date critical work on still life in any language, Norman Bryson analyses the origins, history and logic of 'still life,' one of the most enduring forms of Western painting. The first essay is devoted to Roman wall painting while in the second the author surveys a major segment in the history of still life, from seventeenth-century Spanish painting to Cubism. The third essay tackles the controversial field of seventeenth-century Dutch still life. Bryson concludes in the final essay that the persisting tendency to downgrade the genre of still life is profoundly rooted in the historical oppression of women.