You gaze at his rabbits, partridges, thrushes or ducks in ways you could never look at a dead person. It's so voyeuristic and intimate it takes your breath away. Look at a heart-stopper like Girl with Shuttlecock, in which a young girl stares into space as she gingerly cradles a badminton racket on her hip and rests her hand on a chair. You can get lost in the multicolored feathered shuttlecock, feel the moisture in the interstices between her palm and the wooden chair, savor the succulent olive background and the wrinkles of her billowy dress. The closest thing to looking at a Chardin might be contemplating the almost-monochromes of Ad Reinhardt.
Tonalities change, the light flickers.
You pick up minute shifts in the direction of a brush stroke, an inconsistency of surface. Before long, what started out mundane transforms itself into something ravishing. Unfortunately, there are none of the late pastel self-portraits on hand to humanize Chardin. In the catalogue, they're captivating. At first you think he's in drag, some sort of goofball swami.