Resumen de Laying the Table: The Procedures of Still Life
Drawing on Michel de Certeau's account of the microfreedoms that can be realized by ordinary people in the practice of everyday life, this contribution discerns a radical potential in seventeenth-century Dutch still life. The argument is made through an exploration of the character of still life as parergon and a consideration of the physical and hence conceptual arenas in which the still life scenario was situated. It is suggested that still life constitutes a virtual world in which there is a delicate and shifting interaction between the table of consumption, the tableau of artistic production and the light painted on the tabula of the camera obscura. The manifold satisfactions of still life lie in the thoughts provoked by these shifting and interpenetrating spaces of human consumption, production and perception. The article proposes an historical appreciation of still life in relation to the ongoing, everyday activities and labour of a broad human community and as membranes that sustain the diverse physical and symbolic effects of light.
