PHENOMENOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF STILL LIFE THROUGH THE PRISM OF SCREEN ARTS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the phenomenological interpretation of the still life genre in the context of screen arts and focuses on the analysis of the manner in which, in the painting of the 20th – early 21st century, still life is transformed from a representation of objects into a self-organized space with its own internal logic, rhythm, and duration. At the center of the study are the still lifes of Paul Cézanne, Georges Braque, Giorgio Morandi, o Nicolas de Staël, Mark Geiko, and Myroslav Duzinkevych, considered as equal artistic strategies through which the evolution of still life toward a scenic and screen-thinking form is traced. The relevance of the study is determined by the need for an interdisciplinary comprehension of still life in connection with cinematography, in particular with such of its characteristics as the hermeticism of space, pauses, frozen time, mise-en-scenic nature, and the absence of narrative dynamics. The article proceeds from the assumption that these features were formed in painting long before the emergence of cinema as a medium, while simultaneously receiving theoretical and analytical formalization within it. The methodological basis of the research is the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Baumeister, and Gaston Bachelard, as well as art historical texts by Carl Einstein, Janet Abramowicz, and materials from the Nicolas de Staël retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. The cine-analytical dimension relies on the works of Gilles Deleuze and Fátima Chinita, who investigate the aesthetics of the frozen frame in the works of Roy Andersson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Béla Tarr, and Yasujirō Ozu. The article shows that in the still lifes of the specified artists, objects function as active elements of spatial composition, capable of maintaining tension, forming pauses, and condensing time within the material surface. Special attention is paid to the painting practice of Myroslav Duzinkevych, in which still life acquires a distinct screen nature and is conceived as an abandoned scene or a set after filming. Such an approach allows for the consideration of still life as a form akin to a film frame, where the absence of action enhances the ontological weight of things and the environment. In the conclusions, the prospects for further research of still life as a phenomenological structure that combines painting, scenography, and cinematography at the level of the organization of space and vision are outlined.