How can materials change the way we perceive art?
Seventeenth century Netherlands was the first European society to experience oversupply — where food became a commodity, not just a necessity.
The abundance led to banquets of imported food, flowers, and fruits, with exotic birds and ornate vessels flaunting wealth and luxury.
These displays became an aesthetic and Dutch painters moved away from religious and political iconography, creating still lifes (or laid tables) where food and objects held symbolic and even moral meanings.
This genre of painting, known as vanitas (or vanities) used the lavish arrangements to allude to the transience of life.
In Laid Table with Bird, Goblet, and Fruit, Beth Lipman draws inspiration from the Dutch vanitas paintings where food serves as a metaphor for desire, consumption, and impermanence — but through glass.
Lipman brings these ideas into three dimensions, however, by presenting the objects transparently, she surprisingly obscures their clarity and form.
The glass makes them difficult to perceive individually, unable to consume the lushness of the color, weight, and texture of the paintings.
“I […] enjoy how the clear glass […] frustrates your eye,” explains Lipman. “You can see it, but you’re also seeing through it. It’s […] visually unattainable. You can own it, but you can’t […] visually own it.”
Lipman sees parallels not only in the Dutch paintings, but also with Colonialist Europe and our contemporary economy.
“Our love affair with material culture, with possessing things, is our religion,” says Lipman, “and we are consistently surprised at the lack of fulfillment it offers.”
Originally created in 2006, Lipman expanded Laid Table with Bird, Goblet, and Fruit, to commemorate the grand re-opening of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
Now presented on a custom wooden table designed by Lipman, the work includes 36 new glass pieces, such as a platter of fish, a bowl with ice, and assorted vessels and stemware.
Referring to herself as a minimalist-maximalist, Lipman calls into question the fragility of our desires.
