Honig, E. A. (1998). Making Sense of Things: On the Motives of Dutch Still Life. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 34, 166–183. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20140414

They seized upon the unique valuation of objects in their culture as part of their own project: hence, still life.

Honig, E. A. (1998). Making Sense of Things: On the Motives of Dutch Still Life. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 34, 166–183. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20140414

Honig, E. A. (1998). Making Sense of Things: On the Motives of Dutch Still Life. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 34, 166–183. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20140414

Hammer-Tugendhat, D 2015, The Visible and the Invisible : On Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [16 September 2025].

Caterpillage : Reflections on Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life Painting

(my notes the quote below)

- shows that dutch still life have traditionally highlighted wealth

- vanitas = historical framework (traditional interpretations)

- pleasure in material value, relating back to my question of how we can revalue objects through painting

it critiques dutch still life and reframes for better suited terms like consumption

Jr., Harry Berger,. Caterpillage : Reflections on Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life Painting, Fordham University Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=3239562.
Created from uow on 2025-09-16 05:18:42.

Stone-Ferrier, L 2020, ‘Glimpses, Glances, and Gossip: Seventeenth-century Dutch Paintings of Domestic Interiors on Their Neighbourhood’s Doorstep’, RACAR, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 25–46.

PART ONE

We are made to need to survive based from material objects like...

Food

Clothing

Shelter

This is the means of subsistence!

and in order to have these things we need more material value such as...

Land

Tools

Building Materials

This is the means of production!

Central characteristic of capitalism is needing the means of production but only having subsistence, therefore we are not able to survive without access to production.

How use of a commodity is able to for fill a need either through function, quality or quantity.

example:

Air = no trade value (free)

Shoes = trade value (not free, labour needed to create)

Money is a universal unit of account to compare objects value

In relation to still life this means when presented luxury goods they are presented in such a way that they already embody status of wealth.

These feitishised commodities in still life both conceal and reveal value, an important quality in a object to think about.

Adams, J., & Stoler, A. (1988). [Review of The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age., by S. Schama]. Contemporary Sociology, 17(6), 760–762. https://doi.org/10.2307/2073570

Mohr, E. 2021. The Production of Consumer Society: Cultural-Economic Principles of Distinction. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839457030

Gabriel, R 2013, Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, Bristol. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [16 September 2025].

Meneley, A 2018, ‘Consumerism’ K Strier & D Brenneis (eds), Annual review of anthropology, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 117–132.

Gabriel, Rami. Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1114559.
Created from uow on 2025-09-17 00:34:52.

Gabriel, Rami. Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1114559.
Created from uow on 2025-09-17 00:36:57.

Gabriel, Rami. Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1114559.
Created from uow on 2025-09-17 00:38:28.

Gabriel, Rami. Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1114559.
Created from uow on 2025-09-17 00:39:19.

Gabriel, Rami. Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1114559.
Created from uow on 2025-09-17 00:43:57.

acknowledges how the observer can see symbolic weight in object hood innately

"object code" ties into Marx's commodity fetishism: for my project this can link to how objects no longer valued fro their use but they still carry cultural messaging

therefore we live in an pervasive object code where our identity is defined by our consumption choices.

it is central to our individuality and echos mass production cultural impact

todays iPhone or branded sneakers function the same as a golden goblet in the 1600's in dutch still life: it signals socially value through interpretation

"Consumers now (in a developed consumer society) occupied a world filled with goods that carried messages … they were surrounded by meaning-laden objects that could only be read by those who possessed a knowledge of the object-code … more and more social behavior was becoming consumption, and more and more of the individual was subsumed in the role of the consumer. (McCracken, 1988, p. 20)"

Gabriel, Rami. Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1114559.
Created from uow on 2025-09-17 00:46:48.

Gabriel, Rami. Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1114559.
Created from uow on 2025-09-17 00:56:45.

this quote mirrors that consumption has become cultural entertainment, blurring art, commerce and leisure: we would rather go to the shops than an museum

aligns again w Marx's theory

can help me argue that consumer goods have shifted from private displays of wealth through art to a public format

"The difference between the mall and the museum as entertainment and the collection and accumulation of goods nearly disappeared. Furthermore, new avenues of consumption in the “experience” or leisure industry arose, for example, widely available forms of tourism, the availability of esoteric or obscure collectible goods, and the proliferation of cultural activities (Cross, 2001). It is fair to say people became separated from their communities as consumer goods fulfilled their social needs more conveniently."

Gabriel, Rami. Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1114559.
Created from uow on 2025-09-17 00:59:05.

2 Adam Curtis’s “The century of the self” (2002), BBC films, makes a similar argument.

3 For good compendiums on these issues, see The consumer society reader (2000). Juliet Schor (Editor), D. B. Holt (Editor), Douglas Holt (Author), The New Press: USA. And, Consumer society in American history: a reader (1999). Lawrence Glickman (ed.) Cornell University Press: USA.

4 See Schudson (1998), Breen (2004), and Zinn (2009), as well as many other titles in American History on Seven Stories Press.

5 American historians of consumer society, for example, Lears (1995), generally view 1880 as the beginning of a distinctly American consumer society.

6 See Etzioni (1998) for a contemporary call for moving back toward roughly Jeffersonian values.

7 This was even institutionalized in certain areas, for example, see Redlining: discrimination in residential mortgage loans (1975) created by the Illinois General Assembly, Legislative Investigating Commission.

Even though the twentieth century has shown that sometimes people are served better by following a centralized set of rules. This libertarian rhetoric continues in the Tea Party movement of 2010, see Lilla, M (2010). The Tea Party Jacobins. The New York Times Review of Books. May 27, 2010.

Gabriel, Rami. Why I Buy : Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America, Intellect, Limited, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1114559.
Created from uow on 2025-09-17 01:04:39.

what I possess and what I consume!"33 He contrasts this ‘‘being by having and ac-

cumulating’’ with the secular-religious vision of the city of being, in which human

Mohr, E. 2021. The Production of Consumer Society: Cultural-Economic Principles of Distinction. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839457030

belief that everything that is individually accumulated, is in principle available

for the compensation of the losers of individual action (Pareto principle). Under

these conditions, individual accumulation retains its basically favourable char-

acteristics.

Mohr, E. 2021. The Production of Consumer Society: Cultural-Economic Principles of Distinction. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839457030

one’s individual style as something one carries along, but one is one’s style – “Le

style c’est l’homme même”. One’ s own group does not have a common style, but the

group is that style. The style system does not have common styles, but it is they

who make it up. The individual has nothing to show or not to show, but shows

themself, and experiences not what others have, but who they are. There is no

having of basic conditions, which could be revealed by showing (possession sig-

nalling). Social identity is being in the style system.

Mohr, E. 2021. The Production of Consumer Society: Cultural-Economic Principles of Distinction. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839457030

search on happiness distances itself in its findings from the orthodoxy, in which

utility is the familiar term.34 As empirical science of what is actually good for the

human being, happiness research sides with Fromm: accumulation is not the

only source of human well-being. It is only one of seven factors (Big Seven): fam-

ily, finances (accumulation), work, community and friends, health, freedom,

and personal values.

Mohr, E. 2021. The Production of Consumer Society: Cultural-Economic Principles of Distinction. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839457030

consumer goods are not always based from greed but can be also deeply meaningful

Miller, D. (2008). So, what’s wrong with consumerism? RSA Journal, 154(5534), 44–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41380555

Miller, D. (2008). So, what’s wrong with consumerism? RSA Journal, 154(5534), 44–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41380555

inequality is the real issue here, consumption is bad when people get excluded from access to goods: could bring this point about elitism of painting/dutch works

objects can signify care, selfhood and status

Holmstrom, N. (1981). “Women’s Work,” the Family and Capitalism. Science & Society, 45(2), 186–211. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40402313

will be my bridging idea of inequality and value

how the histories of labour and production though hidden and subjective in its worth it can bring "invisible" histories to the forefront

Holmstrom critiques how capitalism value to profit

my project acts as a resistance in creating a new system of value, in memory, material.

inspired by Holmstrom's reading

Holmstrom, N. (1981). “Women’s Work,” the Family and Capitalism. Science & Society, 45(2), 186–211. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40402313

I begged the question to myself... do all the artists I have to research HAVE to paint?

Artists such as..

JUDE RAE

CORNELIA PARKER

SONG DONG

show how different media have the same thematic concern but recontextualise it in their material richness

I think in the essay I will just need to highlight the permanence of painting and the emphermerality of installation

emphasising Rae more due to her similarity to me in my concept

1. Slowness

2. Its a reflective process, forced to act with intention

3. Permanence of the medium itself

4. Historical Authority over time it has gained monetary value due to its slow nature of the medium

5. Narrative

Notes

Can't get book online but the story of art (1995) looks good

https://wildegallery.ch/artists/cornelia-parker/

(Quoted in British Art Show, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London 1990, p.88.)

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/parker-thirty-pieces-of-silver-t07461

https://www.artforum.com/features/hal-foster-on-cornelia-parker-252289/

112 x 137.5cm

Rae's previously minimal depictions of everyday objects have become increasingly rich and complex in recent years. Reflecting the history of still life painting, which reached a zenith in the 17th century, Rae merges this realist tradition within an exploration of formal concerns more often associated with abstraction. The memento mori symbolism of depicting fruit and flowers in traditional still life to remind us that death is as inevitable as fruit rotting and flowers fading is also present in this painting, but which in contrast depicts discarded industrially manufactured objects including gas cylinders and fire extinguishers.

Rae's skilful evocation of the volume, weight and tactility of her modelled forms sits in tension with the flatness of the picture plane. More than simply striking depictions of unlikely objects, they are studies in sensory apprehension, and in this regard Rae sees them as "providing an echo of the complexities and strangeness we edit out of daily life, the flesh and bones of the visual world that we ignore of necessity".

Jude Rae is the fifth recipient of the Bulgari Art award which was first launched by Bulgari and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2012.

Rae's skilful evocation of the volume, weight and tactility of her modelled forms sits in tension with the flatness of the picture plane. In spite of their tranquil composure, her paintings capture a dynamic moment of perceptual uncertainty, where subjects jostle to register with the viewer as either material object or image. In this sense, her works are equally engaged with the embodied experience of looking as they are with the artifice of representation.

The objects that Rae represents are more often than not a departure from the familiar domestic vessels and decorative arrangements that dominate the still life genre. The proposed work 'SL 266' exemplifies this approach. The austere composition features a white industrial oil can, behind which sits a black gas canister adjacent to a clear plastic water-cooler bottle that is partially filled. Next to this configuration, a single white electrical cable drops from an unseen anchor above and arcs out of the left hand side of the image.

Rae's juxtaposition of these objects amplifies their simple and unassuming character while also destabilising their spatial and material relation to one another. The eye flickers restlessly across surfaces that vary from opaque to transparent, curvaceous to flat, pliable to hard, and shiny to matte, in the process dissolving any sense of visual certainty. Even the support for these objects is elusive: a shelf balanced upon another flat surface, which is propped up by only one vertical support, implying the objects are somehow both heavy and weightless.

The impact of Rae's still lifes derives from the quiet yet insistent way in which they prompt the viewer to look again and more closely, subtly disrupting the assumptions formed upon first encountering her images. More than simply striking depictions of unlikely objects, they are studies in sensory apprehension, and in this regard Rae sees them as "providing an echo of the complexities and strangeness we edit out of daily life, the flesh and bones of the visual world that we ignore of necessity".

Bishop, C 2012, Artificial hells : participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, Verso, London ;

Kester, GH 2004, Conversation pieces : community and communication in modern art, University of California Press, Berkeley.

less has been written about representation through painting

economic values shift over time, meaning an object can become valuable if once deemed worthless

invisible narratives of objects isn't really discussed

Branch 1: Historical Anchors

• Dutch Still Life Tradition
    • Pronk still life & wealth display (Berger)
    • Vanitas, symbolism, moral warnings
    • Hochstrasser: material culture in 17th-century households

• Commodity Fetishism / Theory
    • Marx: labour erased, objects mystified
    • McCracken (1988): meaning-laden objects, “object code”
    • Gabriel (2013) citing McCracken

Branch 2: Contemporary Practices / Critics

• Jude Rae
    • Industrial / discarded objects (gas cylinders, crates)
    • Slow, contemplative, refined stillness
    • Tension between object and image

• Cornelia Parker
    • Thirty Pieces of Silver
    • Flattening, destruction, suspension
    • Memory, commemoration, eroded function

• (Optionally other artists, though I trimmed Song Dong)

Branch 3: Key Tensions & Theoretical Themes

• Permanence vs. Ephemerality

• Symbolic Value vs. Functional Use

• Memory / Residue vs. Erasure

• Critique vs. Commodification (paradox: art market)

• Slowness, materiality, historical authority

Branch 4: Your Practice & Contribution

• Medium: Oil Painting
    • Brings slowness, durability, painterly depth
    • Reclaims still life tradition for critique

• Reframed Objects
    • Op shop finds, ceramics, figurines, tagged items

• Shift in Value
    • From “trash” to cultural memory / carrier of stories
    • Provokes pause, reconsideration

• Gap Addressed
    • Contemporary critiques often use installation / assemblage
    • Painting is underexplored as a critical medium
    • Your work bridges that by reclaiming oil paint

Branch 5: Wider Implications

• For Art History
    • Re-centering painting in contemporary discourse
    • Re-reading still life beyond decorative / nostalgic

• Consumer Culture Discourse
    • Questions of obsolescence, waste, material value
    • How art can interrupt habitual consumption

In my essay I found the padlet and the way I structured it into segmented panels very helpful in how I wished to create/write my assessment.