Victoria Stephenson
Art Analysis – “Still Life” (2001) By Sam Taylor-Woods
The two thought-provoking video-stills displayed above portray the work of contempory artist Sam Taylor-Woods. Wood’s vanita “Still Life” excellently depicts the universal themes of the transiency of life and the elapsing of time. The video’s subject matters consist of the classic bowl of fruit and a cheap plastic ballpoint pen. The bowl of fruit is shown to decompose slowly over an extended period of time, capturing the inevitability of aging and eventual death. The pen remains motionless and doesn’t decay along with the fruit. This portrays how little we leave behind once we have passed away. The piece expresses the fundamental social issues of how we perceive ourselves and our lives. It expresses how our vanity has caused us to believe we have left a huge imprint on the world when we have left little more than a “cheap, plastic pen”. It shows how short and fleeting our time alive can be, emphasizing our insignificance. The artist relied entirely on filming a direct view of the fruit to show the subject matter truly decaying over time. The meaning of this short artistic film is fairly difficult to decipher as the subject matters are being used as symbolism. The link between the slow decomposition of the fruit and the inevitability of death may not be immediately apparent until the film has been watched and considered.