EXHIBITION CONCEPT NOTES

VANITAS / NATURE MORTE
We see especially that transience is a part of life in the 17th-century Vanitas and Nature Morte paintings, which aim to remind us of life’s inevitable passage with images of beautiful flowers, fruits and animals. The collection of fantasy objects from natural history museums belongs in this category, as do Jan Fabre’s sculptures made of beetles. Images of death or working with dead people or animals (or their skeletons) are not only a clear reaction to a consciousness of ‘time’; they also allow us to escape ‘time’.