If you take drawing/painting class I guarantee you'll do still lifes.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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I think what OP means is that the invention if the photocamera left a lot of painters unemployed. Pralleling that to current times, where AI is threatening the jobs of many artists. Obviously still lives are still being made today, and a decade from now artists will likely still have a job as well, only the market is a lot smaller.
And cars cost the horses their jobs
And plenty of agricultural machines have removed thousands of jobs.
Humanity has been increasing efficiency since the dawn of humankind, there is nothing new there, not even with AI.
Even before AI I worked for a company that made ETL tools and that eliminated a bunch of people's jobs, because you no longer needed to do manual work with excels, only once when you setup the ingestion process, ofc for that you need a higher skilled worker who could work with the program.
Nobody cared to photograph apples in a bowl or flowers. It was obvious the photographs were nowhere near as interesting as paintings unless you were particularly gifted with lights and a camera.
Personal portraits on the other hand, were far more useful on everyday basis and more accurate as photographs, even if some glamour was sacrificed in the trade off.
There are significant parallels between still life depictions of feasts and instagram food porn content.
Some, yes, but that was not the case when photography emerged- the time when paintings were the way of showing and recording what things looked like.
Even today, most food porn photos are of prepared meals, not so much harvests which was the classic still life subject back then. I'd risk saying most people prefer paintings of harvested goods to photos even today, although you do have photos of them of course. Finally... People use paintings to embellish their homes and to display their wealth, which is not the case with insta images.
Still life was always considered the lowest tier of fine art in the hierarchy of genres. It was seen as mere rote or mechanical copying of what already existed with little creative additions.