Food on the tables, <br />bread, beer and wine, <br />still living fables, <br />silently sign <br />the life in the cheeses <br />and partridge and pheasant <br />more holy than Jesus, <br />the art of the peasant <br />whose substance transmuted <br />by retinal focus <br />sings essences rooted, <br />sans hocus or pocus, <br />as silent as dreaming, <br />whose plain dramaturgy <br />is sense that lacks scheming <br />of scholars or clergy. <br /> <br /> <br />Alan Riding ('Demonstrating How Exciting the Still Life Can Be, ' NYT, August 22,1999) reviews a new show at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, 'Still Life: Paintings from the Netherlands,1550-1729'. The first work in the exhibition is Pieter Aersten's 'Meat Pantry of an Inn, With the Virgin Giving Alms' (1551) , which appears to be religious but focuses on red meat, a cow's head and sausages with the Virgin visible only through a window in the distance. <br /> <br /> <br />8/22/99<br /><br />gershon hepner<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/still-life-16/
