To Be, or Not to Be. Four Hundred Years of Vanitas Painting

Vanitas is a type of still life painting that developed in Holland in the early seventeenth century. The title comes from a verse in the Latin Bible, from the Book of Ecclesiastes: vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas (vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.) This pessmistic reminder of the fragility and briefness of all human life was part of the unprecedented economic and political growth of the Dutch Republic during which average incomes skyrocketed and national wealth grew to dwarf that of other European states.

In the paintings of this exhibition, vanitas is portrayed through many symbols: the human skull, soap bubbles ready to pop, flowers and fruits with the first blotches of spoilage, insects and seashells, burnt out candles, crystal goblets, and signs of wealth and power like money, jewels and crowns.

The reasons for the appeal of such images in a time of prosperity and the circumstances of its decline in popularity are two of the questions examined in this exhibition. The widespread influences of vanitas painting went well beyond the realm if Dutch art.

In the last half of the twentieth century, American artists began to reimagine these themes; in a wide array of formats...Painters from Georgia O'Keefe to the contemporary Daniel Sprick show the full scope of modern vanitas.

The combined American and European paintings of the exhibition at the Flint Institute of Arts presents for the first time, the dramatic relations between the older and more contemporary vanitas images.