Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Still life With More Bottle


Still life With More Bottles
 Oil and pigment mixed to a coloured mud and applied to the surface of  thin cotton stuck onto some kind of  corrugated plastic stuff
Something by something similar in mm or inches
 $ several pieces of printed paper or circular metal tokens

Well, I wanted to call this one "More Bottle". It's always a challenge coming up with interesting and relevant titles for still lifes (lives?)  I was trying to paint this one with more gusto and vitality, and the saying "more bottle" popped into my head. It's funny how certain phrases resonate from our past and I'm sure I'm familiar with this as a saying, meaning to give something more life and vitality, or "more balls" - a turn of phrase that seems to be in more common usage in these parts.  Anyway, I ran it past "She Who Knows" or "My Better Half",  and she had never heard of it and suggested I "ask Uncle Google". Well, Uncle Google doesn't seem to have heard of the expression either, so I'm wondering if I just made it up myself. The closest I could get was "bottled out" or "not much bottle" from the Phrasefinder:

"...that is, 'useless; no good for anything'. This usage is recorded in a glossary of 19th century street English slang The Swell's Night Guide, 1846:
"She thought it would be no bottle, cos her rival could go in a buster." "

Well it may be archaic, but if you can have not much bottle surely you can have more bottle?

Anyhoo... It gives me something to write about and I have bottled out and called it prosaically "Still life With More Bottles".

2 comments: