Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was a French painter from the 18th century. He is considered the polymath of still life (nature morte), and is also greatly regarded for his paintings which depict mundane domestic lives and activities.
His work is characterized by his balanced compositions, granular impasto, and an artistic chiaroscuro. The fulcrum of his was interior scenes, exemplifying the women and children of 18th century paris. This artistic decision has cemented his decision to commit to the aforementioned chiaroscuro, mastering shades and light sources. In his time, the painting style was mainly the Rococo, exemplified through a pretentious style crammed with classical mythology imagery.
For Chardin, this approach transformed art into an intellectual installation instead of a solely artistic display. He used artifacts from his own home to paint, since he experienced unusual pleasure from looking at them. Ultimately, Chardin’s play with forms, colors, and darkness show the beauty of our mundane world and the fact that one can find beauty everywhere, even amongst the most menial things and our everyday still lives. In our studio, we draw great inspiration from Chardin and nature morte and aim to portray the beauty of everyday things and displaying them as artistic representations.
In our work for Ceasarstone, we created a still life, nature morte world where we showed how mundane everyday scenes can be part of a great artistic world. We adopted Chardin’s use of light by placing items adjoining a window, where we can capture a ray of light from a closeby window. In our studio of branding and design we aim to integrate our everyday farces with the passing of time, whilst halting this specific captured moment in time, turning it into a vivid memory that lasts forever.
