still life
11
3.7
- noun
- /stɪl laɪf/
:
naturaleza muerta
- The artist arranged flowers and fruit for the still life painting.
- still life painting
- still life genre
- still-life composition
I won't call them real drawings, but sketches laying out still life or a or a fashion shoot.
- I won't call them real drawings, but sketches laying out still life or a or a fashion shoot.
- A lot of schools want examples of observational still life drawing.
- And that's it's so true because to me, a still life is something that students do in in in art schools.
- So when you go to art school, it's something that art students know about when they when you draw still life.
- A simple, quiet, still life drops you off the grid quickly.
Examples
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I was just trying to do one of these still lifes.
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Essentially a quiet, unobtrusive genre, the still life requires a contemplative attitude of its audience.
Academic text (1993) -
Okay, today we're gonna do a still life.
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We have the still life art class.
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Go paint a still life, Charlie.
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And what about some still life photography?
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Hardly the enthusiasm that met the Spanish still life, but better than nothing.
Fiction book (1999) -
A perfect still life before the genre was even invented.
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The first of the Spanish still lifes sold the next week.
Fiction book (1999) -
Like all paintings, still lifes play upon vision and its transformation through art.
Academic text (1993)
Synonyms
∞
1.0
An image like a drawing or photograph that shows something
648
1.0
A picture made with paint on canvas or paper
81
3.0
A painting or sculpture that shows an artist's idea
How Detailed
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although 'still' (motionless) + 'life' (living things) has a semantic link — the idea of life rendered motionless — the compound is paradoxical and does not directly signal 'a painting of inanimate objects' to an average B1 learner. The meaning is conventionalized and somewhat metaphorical (depicting 'life' as static), and cross-linguistic expressions vary, so the connection is partially clear but not fully predictable without exposure.
Etymology
Still life comes from painters who showed life that was still — for example, fruit, flowers and cups set motionless on a table. That's why still life now means a painting of ordinary, 'not moving' objects.