The latest in a series of absorbing theoretical essays edited by the curatorial dream team of Daniel Birnbaum and Isabelle Graw. In this pocket-sized paperback, Ewa Lajer Burcharth explores the practice and, as she attests, self-reflexive work by the 18th-century French master of the still life, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin. Lajer-Burcharth, a Guggenheim fellow and professor of the history of art and architecture at Harvard University, delves into the implications of Chardin's possessive and personalized approach to the process of painting, and asks why he abruptly stopped painting still lifes and began creating genre paintings. The essay becomes a dialog when Birnbaum and Graw respond and the author further replies. Other titles in the series include ''Under Pressure'' and ''Canvases and Careers''.