The Vanitas in the Works of Maria Van Oosterwijck & Marian Drew

The Vanitas In The Works Of Maria Van Oosterwijck & Marian Drew Both Maria Van Oosterwijck and Marian Drew have produced work that has been described as the Vanitas. Drew does so as a conscious reference to the historic Dutch genre, bringing it into a contemporary Australian context. Conversely, Van Oosterwijck was actively embedded in the original Vanitas still-life movement as it was developed in 17th century Netherlands. An exploration into the works of Maria Van Oosterwijck and Marian Drew will compare differences in their communication of the Vanitas, due to variations in time periods, geographic context, intended audience and medium. Born in 1630, Maria Van Oosterwijck was a Dutch still-life painter. The daughter of a protestant preacher, she studied under renowned still-life painter Jan Davidsz de Heem from a young age, but Quickly developed an independent style. Her work was highly sort after amongst the European bourgeoisie, and sold to monarchs including Queen Mary, Emperor Leopold and King Louis XIV. Van Oosterwijck painted in the Vanitas genre, and was heavily influenced by Caravaggio’s intense chiaroscuro techniQue, as well as the trompe l’oiel realism popular in most Northern BaroQue painting (Vigué 2003). Marian Drew is a contemporary Australian photographic artist. She is known for her experimentations within the field of photography, notably the light painting techniQue she employs to create a deep chiaroscuro effect. This techniQue also produces an almost painterly effect in the final images, which she prints onto large- scale cotton paper. In Drew’s Australiana/Still Life series, she photographed native road kill next to household items and flora, in the style of Dutch Vanitas and game- painting genres. The Vanitas still-life movement was a direct product of its social context. In the 17th century, populations in major Dutch cities were soaring, as The Netherlands became a thriving economic capital and refugees from around Europe flocked to Amsterdam (Millner Kahr 1978). This, in turn, led to derelict living conditions, and a severe increase in the plague. The death and disease was seen as retribution for the luxurious and abundant material lifestyles of the newly rich country. The Vanitas genre developed from this sentiment as, Sonnema explains, ‘in Dutch Vanitas still- lifes, death is always implied as the result of earthly sins.’ (1980, 99). At this time, the Dutch Empire was exploring and colonising around the globe. For this reason, paintings of the day depicted exotic flowers, foreign ornaments and objects such as globes to illustrate the power of the Dutch empire. Bryson (1990, 161) equates Vanitas tables with the German phenomenon of the Wunderkammer, ‘a place for the extraordinary and exceptional.’ The term Vanitas means ‘a vanity of vanities’ and comes from a mistranslation of a biblical passage in Ecclesiastes. According to Bergström, Vanitas paintings were intended to make the viewer contemplate ‘the brevity of life, the frailty of man and the vanity of all worldly things’ (1983, 155). Rather ironically, as Barolsky observes, whilst these paintings were intended as a reminder of mortality and the insignificance of earthly goods, they ‘also most emphatically beautified, enhanced the lives of those who lived in spaces adorned by such pleasing illusions’ (2007, 38). 1 This pious attitude was largely influenced by the new Calvinist ideologies, which spread throughout The Netherlands after the Protestant Reformation in the previous century. Dutch art began to seek ways of portraying moral and spiritual scenarios without reverting to the Catholic tradition of religious iconography, as ‘with Calvin, the experience of devotion is necessarily aniconic’ (Bryson 1990, 119). The solution was to create paintings that contained moral allegories, without depicting specific religious scenes or people. Bergström describes Vanitas allegories as falling under three categories: symbols of earthly existence, symbols of transcience of human existence and symbols of resurrection to eternal life (1983, 155). Each category had its own established examples that were commonly used within the paintings. Van Oosterwijck’s Vanitas, painted in 1668, includes pictorial allegories that can be analysed according to Bergström’s categories. Vanitas depicts a clutter of objects on a table, against a black backdrop. A bouQuet of flowers and a globe sit behind a skull and a pile of documents, on which a moth rests. In front, a half-eaten corncob rests next to a bottle of wine. A Quill and porcelain inkwell adorned with Chinese patterns lay in front of an hourglass and a coin purse. The purse and documents connote material wealth and power, as symbols of earthly existence. The skull, flowers and hourglass symbolise the transience of human life, as they each relate to time and mortality. The wine represents ‘the various tastes of pleasure’ (Bergström 1983, 156) while the corn signifies the resurrection to eternal life. The Chinese porcelain and the Globe are reminders of Dutch exploration in foreign lands. These depictions of ‘our own increasing consumption and progress’ as Drew (pers. com. 2015) describes them are also present in her own work. Drew’s fascination with capturing road kill stems, she says, from a desire to depict our unnecessary consumption and waste (pers. com. 2015). Kitchen View with Mask (2003) depicts a windowsill, on which a dead fruit bat and potoroo rest. Beyond the window is a scenic Australian bush landscape. On the kitchen wall hangs a tribal mask, and kiwi fruits and coriander lay on the marble bench top below. In Vanitas, Van Oosterwijck seems intent on encapsulating the mindset or Zeitgeist of The Netherlands at the time. It was a country still attempting to comprehend its new identity as a protestant nation, and as global explorers and colonisers. All of this is represented in Van Oosterwijck’s painting, as if she were trying to come to terms with the identity herself. The struggle with a geographical identity is also conveyed in Drew’s work. Set against the Australian bush, Kitchen View with Mask consists of both native and foreign paraphernalia. The kiwi fruit and mask come from Australia’s close neighbours New Zealand and Papua New Guinea respectively, while the potoroo is only found in Australia. While Van Oosterwijck proudly presents the colonising power of The Netherlands, with her ‘exotic spoils of colonialism, ripe for the taking’ (Storer 2006, 79), Drew seems more hesitant about the status of Australia as a colonised place. The collation of foreign goods against the native backdrop seems to convey an uncertainty in the identity of the setting. Drew’s direct reference to the European genre of still-life reflects white Australia’s ongoing desire to be considered European, while the potoroo and backdrop are reminders of its geographical location, divorced from Europe entirely. Storer describes the work as 2 ‘pervaded by the melancholy that accompanies all colonial attempts at approximating the old country’ (2006, 80). It seems as if Drew, like Van Oosterwijck, is trying to understand a specific cultural identity through her work. As in Van Oosterwijck’s painting, Drew’s photograph depicts suggestions of a world beyond the setting of the image. Both portray the exotic. However, Drew’s works have been created in a time when globalisation is at its peek, and travel is no longer the prerogative of an empire, but the choice of the individual. Perhaps, then, Drew’s use of the ‘exotic’ mask is a reminder of Australia’s geographical context in the Pacific, and its identity as more than just a British colony. After all, geographically it makes greater sense for the mask to belong in Australia than for the still-life to. Both working through their cultural identities, and coming to terms with the world beyond their places of production, Vanitas and Kitchen View with Mask are highly relevant to issues of their own times and places. The two works were created for very different audiences, and methods of viewing. Van Oosterwijck sold her works to the bourgeoisie of Europe. The luxurious domestic scenes and coded imagery were not intended for consumption by the masses, but for the enjoyment of the upper classes alone. For this elite class of viewer, the Vanitas style was familiar and readily understood in the context of all its established allegories. In Vanitas, the visual imagery is reliant on prereQuisite knowledge of texts and established visual associations, which were not available to the uneducated (Bryson 1990). In opposition, Drew’s work was produced with the assumption that most viewers would be able to gain some understanding of the themes, regardless of their level of artistic education. Contemporary art does not have the same select number of specific and established pictorial allegories that were present in Van Oosterwijck’s day. Drew explains that she was not ‘interested at all in the historic symbolism of particular objects’ (pers. com. 2015) but instead focused on more accessible, general visual metaphors of mortality, temporality and displacement. Drew’s audience and distribution of her works is wildly different from Van Oosterwijck’s. Far from being confined to viewing by the highest class, Drew’s work is readily available on the internet, in publications and in exhibitions open to the public. It is perhaps for this reason that Drew has not chosen to use specific Vanitas allegories such as corn or dice, so that her works can be universally appreciated without the prereQuisite of specific text-based knowledge. While Drew’s medium of photography differs from Van Oosterwijk’s medium of painting, both have advantages. Drew’s work, like the original Vanitas works, has a focus on transience. Batchen (2006, 5) describes Drew’s photographs as ‘pictures of temporality itself’ and Storer goes on to say that the Australiana works ‘retain a sense of temporality, as their elaborate constructions, set up for the camera, record the passing of tiny lives’ (2006, 79).

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