Vanitas Complex

Vanitas Symbolism

 

A vanitas still-life painting or photograph represents an old genre that goes back at least to the 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painters (with some notable contributions as well from the Spanish). It’s moralistic through and through, its message deriving ultimately from passages in the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments, stressing the fragility and impermanence of life and life’s pleasures both intellectual, cultural, hedonistic, and artistic. From the Hebrew Bible: “Vanity of vanity, saith the preacher; all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 12: 8). From the Gospel of Matthew: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (6: 19-20). I hasten to add that I am not a religious person—but I find the vanitas genre fascinating. I tried to represent as many vanitas symbols as I could. What follows, for those academically inclined, is a brief explanation of the 5 categories covering the typical icons.

 

Category 1: Items representing hedonistic indulgence

 

- musical instruments: the gold clock behind, left, shows a woman playing a lute. Here, the green Russian balalaika is meant to stand in for the stringed instrument that (I presume) would have been readily available during the European Renaissance.

- alcohol and wine goblets: I have two decanters, one with orange liqueur, the other with what seems to be red wine to the left of the half full (or half empty) wine glass. That decanters and glass aren’t full symbolizes how quickly life’s pleasures disappear (see also Category 2).

- food: the limes and the lemon in the glass bowl to the left. The lemon especially is understood to be beautiful to the sight and smell but bitter, just like life can be.

- combs and mirrors symbolize narcissism, our infatuation with personal beauty (our vanity). We have a mirror, difficult to see, laying on its side just beside the fruit.

- objects of art: paintings, busts, statues, and the like. Here we have two paint brushes and a bust (of the ancient Greek poet Homer).

- jewelry: I meant to put some gold rings in there but I forgot. We do have what appears to be a heart-shaped blue diamond and, yes, it’s a replica of the Heart of the Ocean, the famous stone in Titanic and which I purchased for my wife (“she who must be obeyed”) at the Titanic exhibit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, when I was there a few years ago.

- perfume: we have two small bottles beside the mirror

- items of revelry or sinful living are represented here by dice and playing cards. Four of the five cards have an added, more modern, symbolic significance: two black aces and two black 8s comprise the famous Dead Man’s Hand, allegedly held by American gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok when he was shot down while playing poker. The mask—I can’t pretend to have seen one in a classic vanitas painting—was my idea as another symbol of revelry and reminds me of Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death,” which is a vanitas painting in prose.

- expensive items (“conspicuous consumption”) are represented here by the exotic red rug. Though we can barely see it, it’s a prized possession of mine all the way from Turkey.

- seashells are exotic and hard to acquire (see bottom left)

- a terrestrial globe, such as we see on the far left, back, is a meta-symbol of the world’s wealth and vanity (and is made, in this case, of semi-precious stones)

 

Category 2: Items representing life’s transitory nature and the decay of all earthly things

 

- music and instruments, while Cat. 1, also belong to Cat. 2 because music is transitory

- coins, as represented here by silver and gold pieces, are also transitory, never staying with us but moving from hand to hand

- bubbles, smoke, candles, butterflies: flame from candles eventually expires, as do we; its smoke recalls Psalm 102:3: “For my days are consumed like smoke.” Bubbles, like life itself, are short-lived, fragile and easily broken; butterflies are beautiful but fragile and easily killed.

- flowers symbolize beauty and so might belong to Cat. 1 but they are short-lived and soon wilt and die, as the photo’s Calla Lilies will. The Book of Job may have provided the inspiration: “Man that is born of a woman is of few days. . . . He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down” (14: 1-2).

- clocks, watches, hour-glasses are centrally significant because they measure and record time passing: with every second, we move closer to death. Here we have three kinds of time pieces: a sand-clock, a normal clock, and a little pocket watch in front of the books. This photo is a 30-second time-exposure: you can actually see the sliver of sand running from the top to the bottom of the sand-clock.

- the skull is the central symbol in a vanitas illustration, symbolizing our inescapable death and decay. We’s all gonna die!

 

Category 3: Items representing human achievement and culture

 

- books, for instance, represent the delights of reading. They also contain human knowledge but it’s only of this world, typically, and won’t endure. (Note that one of the two books is a collection of Poe’s works: he illustrates vanitas themes in “The Masque of the Red Death” and a few other tales.)

- writing instruments are related to books and we have a gold pen on top of the Poe edition—but, again, pens record and therefore symbolize human knowledge and culture, which won’t last as this world will eventually come to an end. Human strivings, achievements, and culture are futile and impermanent.

- weapons and armor are products of human culture as well (military culture), but even these can’t protect us from death. The knight’s helmet on the far right is here to remind us of that grim truth. Death is a great leveler: even the wealthiest and most powerful among us will come to the same end as the poorest and weakest.

 

Category 4: Items representing the permanent in the Christian context

 

- religious icons such as crucifixes, rosaries, angels, saints, certain types of flora (carnations, ivy, wheat, laurel): these remind us of or symbolize life after death—in other words, what’s truly important. Life in Heaven is eternal as opposed to the transient pleasures of Earth, which we should scorn. I have none of these symbols here because I don’t swing that way, baby. Not all vanitas paintings, even the classic ones, contain religious images.

 

Category 5: Written messages to clarify the moralistic meaning of the illustration

 

- for those viewers who can’t figure it out on their own, some painters provide messages, typically in Latin, explaining it all with well-known epigrams or quotes from the Bible. I have provided perhaps the most famous: Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas. “Vanity of vanity, all is vanity.”

 

In some respects I prefer this to one I posted a few years ago because this one has a dark backdrop, which reinforces the somber mood and meaning of the classic vanitas painting.

 

“The room itself is in messy disorder. On the table is a dish of fruit, which is real but appears artificial. Around it are grouped an ominous assortment of decanters, glasses, and heaped ash-trays, the latter still raising wavy smoke-ladders into the stale air—the effect on the whole needing but a skull to resemble that venerable chromo, once a fixture in every ‘den,’ which presents the appendages to the life of pleasure with delightful and awe-inspiring sentiment.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned)

Done