Nothing Empty in Things
Vanitas with Coins, Dice, Bones, and Crucifix. by Neal Auch
A peculiar demonstration of God’s existence was proposed by Dutch moralist Roemer Visscher in 1614. His book Sinnepoppen (“Emblems”) contains a series of captioned images, each offering some tidbit of wisdom. One emblem presents an upside-down bottle, partially submerged in a bucket. The air trapped in the bottle prevents it from filling with water. In Visschler’s view, this experiment proves that God is inside everything. The accompanying text explains: “Nothing useless or empty in things.” In other words: even the lowliest inanimate object can reveal profound truths about the universe.
Visschler made this declaration at a time when Still Life was ascending toward the peak of its artistic and commercial relevance. Although paintings of inanimate things were incredibly popular, they were seen as low brow and unserious by art critics, who tended to favour depictions of biblical or mythological scenes. Visschler offered a rebuke against such snobbery by reminding us that every inanimate object conceals hidden depth. His claim that there is “nothing empty in things” succinctly expresses the basic grammar of Still Life: bones represent death, coins represent wealth, flowers represent beauty, dice represent chance, and so on…
The motto “nothing useless in things” also brutally distills the logic of consumer capitalism. Those pretty consumer goods we collect aren’t just trinkets—they are manifestations of our God. In his novel Kingdom Come, J.G. Ballard depicted the shopping mall as a temple of worship. “Consumerism is the one thing that gives us our sense of values,” he wrote. “Consumerism is honest, and teaches us that everything good has a barcode.” In that same novel, Ballard noted that corporate logos are, in effect, the religious symbols of our age. To see that he was correct in this assessment, one need look no further than the recent moral panics about the Cracker Barrel logo redesign or the sexiness of the green M&M; we live in an age where altering a corporate logo or mascot is considered more scandalous than desecrating a religious object.
It is no coincidence that Still Life exploded in popularity during a period of unprecedented economic growth. These are paintings of consumer goods, after all, and such objects had come to occupy a prominent role in Netherlandish culture. By the 17th century, the Netherlands had ascended to a position of primacy in global trade. Amsterdam was a renowned entrepôt of a variety of imported commodities, ranging from staples, such as Baltic grain, to exotic spices and luxury items, including Indonesian pepper, Venezuelan tobacco, Chinese porcelain, Brazilian sugar, and Persian carpets. This influx of wealth and imported goods played a crucial role in the development of consumer culture as we know it today. This very same setting would also give rise to a number of important moments in the history of capitalism: the first stock exchange, the first publicly traded company, and the first commodity bubble.
It is easy enough to find Still Life paintings from the era which express some anxiety about the moral hollowness of all that consumption. Many arrangements place coins and expensive luxury items alongside bones—a clear warning to those who would elevate the fruits of commerce above important spiritual matters. Don’t get too caught up in material things, we are being told. Life is short and we all leave this world carrying nothing we can hold in our hands.
Of course, not every Still Life painting from this era issues a straightforward warning against greed. Of course, not every Still Life painting from this era issues a straightforward warning against greed. Many artists chose to omit the bones and, at first glance, their paintings are more easily interpreted as naked celebrations of abundance and affluence than they are as cautionary. Nevertheless, I will argue that, whether intentionally or not, these sumptuous depictions of wealth actually do conceal a very morbid story. To locate the horror in such imagery we need only ask one question: Where did all that wealth come from?
The uncomfortable truth is that the embarrassment of riches on display in the art of the Dutch Golden Age were gotten through rapacious extraction, vicious exploitation, and colonial theft. The global trade network which formed the basis of the Dutch economy was maintained by private entities who routinely engaged in appalling human rights violations, including the import of countless slaves from Africa, and the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants of the Banda Archipelago. The food and consumer goods catalogued in 17th-century banquet Still Life are certainly beautiful. But that beauty serves only to conceal the grotesque cruelty at the heart of their production. Sadly, the dark underbelly of capitalism hasn’t changed much in the centuries since the Dutch Golden Age. So many of the wonderful objects we all interact with on a daily basis conceal horror stories, from the slavery and extraction which puts batteries in our smartphones, to the cruelty and worker exploitation which puts meat on our plates, to the buildings which house us on stolen land.
And just as the allure of the marketplace distracts us from the horrors of production, so too does the pleasure of shopping conceal a grim facet of human psychology. “Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness,” wrote Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death. “Or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.” We consume, in other words, to distract ourselves from the uncomfortable truth of mortality. Don DeLillo’s White Noise makes a similar observation, presenting a cast of characters who seek to assuage their death anxieties with experimental medication, attempted homicide, and, of course, frequent trips to the grocery store. “Here we don’t die, we shop,” one character notes. “But the difference is less marked than you think.”
There is a school of thought in which every Still Life painting—even those without bones, extinguished candles, or other death-haunted symbols—contains a lament about mortality. After all, the food and flowers might be beautiful, but they are notoriously short-lived. Some scholars of art history reject this line of thinking. In truth, the Vanitas interpretation of Still Life seldom goes far enough. Visschler was quite correct when he claimed there is “nothing empty in things.” But it is not God lurking inside the consumer products which surround us. It is death. It is the death we mete out against our fellow humans, who toil away in the hidden abodes of sweatshops and mines and meatpacking plants. It is the slow death of this planet, hollowed out to appease our insatiable hunger. And, of course, it is the death we cannot face within ourselves—the rumble of panic lurking within our collective psyche, forever driving the cycle extraction, exploitation, and consumption.
I Wrote a Book!
If you enjoy this kind of philosophical analysis into the meaning of still life, you might enjoy the book I wrote on the subject.
The book is 412 pages, contains about 250 full-colour still life pictures, and about 27k words of analysis. There’s also an inexpensive e-book version available, if that’s your thing.
Vanitas with Coins, Crucifix, and Bones, by Neal Auch