Barry Spacks Nature Morte The French call these paintings "Dead Nature." The optimistic English pretend they're "still life," merely playing dead. In either language the paint itself will drift away by molecules as time draws its tithe from imagined fruit. Takes eons, maybe, but that fine wineglass cracks, the glint of light on its rim goes dim, the apples and peaches piled in the pretty Dresden bowl will age like the sweetness in actual fruit, the painter's models, browning into space. These emblems, stilled, suggest to our eyes (that flicker even as they gaze) a certain metaphysical shimmer, a sort of religion of permanence that takes time's power out of the picture, claiming something vivid stays. |