Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life was published to coincide with an exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

When is a still life no longer a still life? This is one of the questions posed in the catalogue. In Domenico Gnoli’s painting Without a Still Life (1966), the empty tabletop serves as the perfect setting for a typographic still life. The painting becomes a tablula rasa where the words “still life” are no longer words but are transformed into objects with the metallic sheen of candlesticks or flatware.