This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Food art is a type of art that depicts food, drink, or edible objects as the medium or subject matter of an artistic work to create an attractive visual display or provide social critique. It can be presented in two-dimensional or three-dimensional format, like painting or sculpture. Food art can also incorporate food as a medium.
Contemporary food artists have experimented using different method and techniques like photography to change its purpose and use it as a source of story telling, humour and highlighting current world issues, such as racism [1] and political activism. [2] Some food art works use materials, like stone, to replicate food.
Food art works possess their own characteristics that differentiates them from how food is traditionally perceived to be used. [3] They have their own features in terms of how they appear to the onlooker, the experience they offer to the public and their meaning.
Foodstuffs can be made into visual objects which can be considered as works of art, since they are not necessarily intended to be eaten. [4] Sculpture made from butter, sugar, corn and other agricultural products was a common feature at fairs in the later 19th and early 20th century [5]
Whereas, in the latter half of the 20th century and the 21st century saw the use of digital photography increase and be used as a new means to reach their audiences through modern art. Typically used in the commercial setting, food photography captures the still life representation of food used for advertisements, packaging, magazines and menus. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have allowed artists and amateur users to share their creations easily online and start trends like #foodporn and #instafood as a result. [6]
Traditional food art creations are portrayed in two-dimensional still life form, but some contemporary food artists have experimented using performance as a form of expression to transform our understanding of troubling issues.
Red Hong Yi (also known as 'Red'), a Malaysian artist and architect, recreated plate-sized portraiture entirely out of food. So far, Red has created works depicting Ai Weiwei's face from sunflower seeds, Jay Chou out of coffee stains and other contemporary Chinese icons out of various objects. [7] As well as humour, artistic works challenge current global and political issues with her most recent project involves a series of portraits of Asian individuals out of foodstuff such as cake sprinkles and matcha leaves titled "I am not a virus." This series attempted to address anti-Asian racism and violence around the world, especially following the Coronavirus pandemic. [1]
Food art can question, surprise and engage the visitor by prioritising social interactions and participation in the event to form discussion of the subject matter. In 1962, Alison Knowles, a founder of Fluxus, visual and performance artist debuted her artwork, Make a Salad (also referred to as Proposition #1: Make a Salad), at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. It has since been recreated at various different venues, such as the Tate Modern in 2008, the High Line in 2012, the Walker Art Center and most recently Art Basel in 2016. [8] Make a Salad involved Knowles and the participants preparing and tossing vast quantities of vegetables in dressing and then serving it to the spectators. At the time of its original showing, impresario, John Cage, coined the work to be "New Music". [9]
Furthermore, in 1992, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija staged an event in New York's 303 Gallery with the intention of "bringing people together". [10] While there, Tiravanija's work called Untitled (free) consisted of him serving free bowls of pad thai curry and rice to gallery goers to encourage a social environment where participants came together to take part in the activity. [11]
The meaning of food in the traditional sense is to be used functionally and to provide nourishment by being eaten. Artistic works that use food as a medium can be representational and express emotions metaphorically, as according to art critic Carolyn Korsmeyer, it can provide a perspective on what it symbolises. [12] However, it can also be unclear generally due to its transient form. [13] [3] Their interpretation would be reliant on the timing of which the visitor explores the artwork.
The Painting represents the scene of the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples from the Gospel of John, 13:21 where he announced that one of them would betray him. [14] It is thought to have been painted between 1495 and 1498. [15] Despite the painting focusing on Judas' betrayal, the depictions of the meal features the dense symbolism of the story with bread and wine incorporated to represent the body and blood of Christ, which he sacrificed on behalf of mankind. [16] Furthermore, plates of fruit and fish, likely eels or herring are displayed upon the tablecloth. Researchers have suggested that although eels would not have been served at the original meal, it is symbolic and popular during the Renaissance period when Leonardo da Vinci produced it. [17]
During the Renaissance period, Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo painted several human portraits where facial features of individuals were composed of fruits, vegetables and flowers with the intention of creating humorous amusement and symbolic curiosity. [18] The Four Seasons, a set of four portrait paintings produced between 1563 and 1573 for Maximillian II, Holy Roman Emperor represented the different seasons through arrangements of fruit, vegetables, plants and flowers. Each painting included fruits and vegetables appropriate of the time of year and that particular season. [19] Designed to distort and play on the viewer's mind with illusion, his work questions people's perceptions and existing concepts, as they must construct the puzzle-like image themselves. [20]
While Leonardo da Vinci's work of The Last Supper focused on religion and Anne Vallayer-Coster's on wealth and abundance, other artists, like Pieter Aertsen took a more promiscuous stance in the portrayal of food in his artistic works. Food was used, in many ways, to divert attention to the object in order to overtly symbolise eroticism. [21] [22] For instance, in 1569, Aertsen created a piece of a market scene depicting such subject matters titled Market Woman in Berlin. It showed a woman bending forward holding a cabbage in one hand and a knife in the other while catching the gaze of the (male) observer. [21]
Food also played a strong figurative role in still life, artistic creations. Particularly, what food items were displayed told a story by reflecting on societal culture and signified an individual's wealth and status, such as lobster, citrus fruits and cured meats. Like Dutch painters Pieter Claesz and Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Anne Vallayer-Coster took inspiration in using texture to showcase such opulence with her last painting Still Life with Lobster (1817). [23] Exhibited at the Salon and donated to King Louis XVIII, her work featured an elaborate arrangement of lobster at the foreground surrounded by mounds of fruit, vegetables, meats and a silver vessel. [24] Coined as "a summation of her work", [25] her specific brushstroke technique and use of vivid colours to create a luminous feature on the lobster shell seeks to appeal to the luxurious consumption of food and lifestyle of the French and Dutch elite. [23]
The Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth is renowned for using food as a medium, especially chocolate. Connected with the traditional Swiss culture, the use of chocolate identifies the national obsession and pleasure with the sweet-treat. [26] In the mid-1960s, he created a series of works where various different objects were submerged into chocolate cylinders, which included Untitled (Doll) in 1969. [27] Other pieces used motorcycles, toy airplanes and souvenirs. [27]
In 1970, the Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth began to use food as a material. He created a piece named Staple Cheese (A Race), a pun for steeplechase, which depicted 37 suitcases filled with cheese displayed on the floor at the Eugenia Butler Museum, in Los Angeles. [28] Over time, the cheese began to rot and attracted swarms of flies and maggots to the viewer's disgust. William Wilson, an art critic, found amusement in the exhibit and the overwhelming stench: [29]
″Each case is to be opened of a different day until the closing of the exhibition on May 33. Rot borrowed two days from June and called the gesture a 'Dislocation of Monthmass.'... the staple cheese is a race to see which flavor gets highest, fastest... Anyhow we have a chance to test the idea that art gets better as it gets older. Pure burlesque.″
— William Wilson
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works comprise a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.
Mannerism is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style largely replaced it. Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century.
The Last Supper is a mural painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1495–1498, housed in the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. The painting represents the scene of the Last Supper of Jesus with the Twelve Apostles, as it is told in the Gospel of John – specifically the moment after Jesus announces that one of his apostles will betray him. Its handling of space, mastery of perspective, treatment of motion and complex display of human emotion has made it one of the Western world's most recognizable paintings and among Leonardo's most celebrated works. Some commentators consider it pivotal in inaugurating the transition into what is now termed the High Renaissance.
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural or human-made.
In art history, the High Renaissance was a short period of the most exceptional artistic production in the Italian states, particularly Rome, capital of the Papal States, and in Florence, during the Italian Renaissance. Most art historians state that the High Renaissance started between 1490 and 1500, and ended in 1520 with the death of Raphael, although some say the High Renaissance ended about 1525, or in 1527 with the Sack of Rome by the mutinous army of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, or about 1530. The best-known exponents of painting, sculpture and architecture of the High Renaissance include Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante. In the 21st century, the use of the term has been frequently criticized by some academic art historians for oversimplifying artistic developments, ignoring historical context, and focusing only on a few iconic works.
Lillian F. Schwartz is an American artist considered a pioneer of computer-mediated art and one of the first artists notable for basing almost her entire oeuvre on computational media. Many of her ground-breaking projects were done in the 1960s and 1970s, well before the desktop computer revolution made computer hardware and software widely available to artists.
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance painter and polymath who achieved legendary fame and iconic status within his own lifetime. His renown primarily rests upon his brilliant achievements as a painter, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, being two of the most famous artworks ever created, but also upon his diverse skills as a scientist and inventor. He became so highly valued during his lifetime that the King of France bore him home like a trophy of war, supported him in his old age and, according to legend, cradled his head as he died.
Dieter Roth was a Swiss artist who gained recognition for his diverse body of work, which included artist's books, editioned prints, sculpture, and creations from found materials, including rotting food stuffs. He was also known as Dieter Rot and Diter Rot.
The Baptism of Christ is an oil-on-panel painting finished around 1475 in the studio of the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea del Verrocchio and generally ascribed to him and his pupil Leonardo da Vinci. Some art historians discern the hands of other members of Verrocchio's workshop in the painting as well.
Rirkrit Tiravanija is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Berlin, and Chiangmai, Thailand. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element in his work.
Anne Vallayer-Coster was a major 18th-century French painter best known for still lifes. She achieved fame and recognition very early in her career, being admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1770, at the age of twenty-six.
Susan Dorothea White is an Australian artist and author. She is a narrative artist and her work concerns the natural world and human situation, increasingly incorporating satire and irony to convey her concern for human rights and equality. She is the author of Draw Like da Vinci (2006).
Vincenzo Campi was a 16th-century Italian painter working in Cremona during the Late Renaissance. Campi is best known as one of the first northern Italian artists to work in the Flemish style of realist genre painting.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, also spelled Arcimboldi, was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books.
The Last Supper of Jesus and the Twelve Apostles has been a popular subject in Christian art, often as part of a cycle showing the Life of Christ. Depictions of the Last Supper in Christian art date back to early Christianity and can be seen in the Catacombs of Rome.
Sonja Alhäuser is a German artist.
A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms is a painting by the Netherlandish artist Pieter Aertsen (1508–1575). It was completed in 1551. A large painting, it depicts a peasant market scene, with an abundance of meats and other foods. In the background, it shows a scene from the biblical theme of the flight into Egypt, where the Virgin Mary is seen stopped on the road, giving alms to the poor. Thus, although the painting seems to be at first sight an ordinary still life concentrating on foodstuffs, it is rich with symbolism; it in fact hides a symbolic religious meaning, and embodies a visual metaphor encouraging spiritual life. Aertsen made a name for himself during the 1550s painting scenes from everyday life in a naturalistic manner.
The Seasons or The Four Seasons is a set of four paintings produced in 1563, 1572 and 1573 by the Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. He offered the set to Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor in 1569, accompanying The Four Elements. Each shows a profile portrait made up of fruit, vegetables and plants relating to the relevant season. The set was accompanied by a poem by Giovanni Battista Fonteo (1546–1580) explaining their allegorical meaning.
Untitled (free/still) 1992/1995/2007/2011 is a series of artworks by Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. Trained in Canada, the New York-based artist's installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socialising are a core element in his work.
Pietro Cesare Marani is an Italian art historian and curator. He is among the leading authorities on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci having written of over 200 publications on the artist. These include book-length studies on the Portrait of a Musician and The Last Supper, an overview on Leonardo's time in Venice, and one of the two modern catalogue raisonné of Leonardo's works, the other being by Frank Zöllner.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)