• Journal of the Korean Society of Floral Art and Design
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• no.44
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• pp.33-51
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• 2021

This thesis analyzes the formal characteristics of Dutch flower still life from the 17th century to the early 18th century and looks into the relevance with the Dutch art market from a macro perspective. The 17th Flower Still Life is to represent social hierarchy in that as the imported exotic, recherch items, the flowers were classified in the terms of their rarity and expensiveness. For this intriguing research, the subject is circumscribed to a vase of flowers, which is the quintessence of In the form of various Dutch Flower Still Life. Dutch society in the early 17th century was centered on the civilian class engaged in trade and commerce, which allowed them to purchase art works to show off their wealth, economic benefits and satisfaction of aesthetic tastes. Among them, the popularity of flower still life was related to the concentrated demand for rare flowers from the new continent. Accordingly, exact depiction and sense of the three dimensional manner were highly regarded in the early flower still life. For the tastes of the wealthy citizens who succeeded in business, the identity of flowers and the actual screen were considered as important. However, after the mid 17th century, economic growth in the Netherlands put an end, and the art market was also on a downward path. The demand class of flower still life has gotten farther away from the spirit of businessmen and has changed into city aristocrats who were stable rentiers. Their tastes laid emphasis on subjective sensibility, which meant that aristocratic, asymmetric, and dramatic chiaroscuro were preferred rather than being realistic. Furthermore, in the 18th century illusionistic realism was abandoned as an expression method of the planar characteristics and a new era in the floral still life was ushered with the reinforcement of decorative effect. From this perspective, it is not an exaggeration to say that romanticism, which is thought of as the beginning of Contemporary Art, originated from the aesthetic taste of Dutch civic culture.