And, no surprise, it is a popular subject for art throughout the centuries and across cultures. In the moveable feast that is our collection, consider this both an appetizer and a guide.
A 17th-century market
In this market scene, the first of many that Flemish painter Frans Snyders would make to decorate the townhouses and hunting lodges of Belgium’s 17th-century elite, dead animals splay across the tableau, while a friendly stall keeper waves to the viewer, fresh fruit in hand. He hardly notices the young boy picking his pocket, much the way the two roosters fighting beneath his table pay no attention to the black cat lurking beside them. This frenzied scene, depicted on a nearly life-size scale, brought a new level of drama to still life. Plus, all the close looking it calls for is a good way to work up an appetite.
an ancient Chinese stove
If you’re someone who considers eating one of the best parts of this mortal life, you might appreciate that during the Han Dynasty, tombs often contained tiny stoves like this one to ensure that even the dead ate well. This particular object is decorated in molded motifs of kitchen utensils, bowls, and cups, alongside dishes like fish, stew, and skewers. Stoves were only one of the many everyday objects made miniature for a tomb, but they were easily one of the most important. During seasonal rites and festivities, Han families made offerings to the hearth god who watched over their homes and livelihood.
an american kitchen full of cooks
Thanksgiving—it’s the American holiday all about food. Doris Lee took on the beloved feasting day with her depiction of a kitchen bustling with meal prep—a turkey being pulled from the oven, pie dough being rolled out on the table, a basket of vegetables being carried in for chopping. While seemingly innocuous, even quaint, this painting provoked a firestorm of controversy when it was first shown at the Art Institute’s 46th Annual Exhibition of American Painting and Sculpture in 1935. Lee was awarded that show’s highest honor, the prestigious Logan Prize, and the work was purchased for the collection. The only problem: the patron of the award, Mrs. Josephine Hancock Logan, detested the modern style of Lee’s work, calling it “atrocious” and “awful.” Thanksgiving sparked a fierce debate about the state of contemporary art and its modern bent. Despite this initial controversy, Thanksgiving has become an Art Institute favorite, especially around the holiday season.
An egyptian feast for the afterlife
The ancient Egyptians believed that all things needed in this life were important for the next one too, and that of course included food. This belief can be seen on this stela (a commemorative slab that might have been part of a family’s tomb), on which a table piled high with bread, meat, vegetables, and beverages sits between a mother and son, Yatu and Amenemhat. While to our modern eyes, the food looks precariously stacked, this is the ingenious way ancient Egyptian artists showed each item without obstruction; items that appear lower are closer than those that are higher. So the five red ceramic vessels at the bottom are actually nearest to us, while the circular and long loaves of bread and poultry at the top are further away. The hieroglyphic inscription reinforces the message of the image, requesting access for mother and son to food and other essential goods in the afterlife.
A 16th-century salt dispenser
In medieval and Renaissance Europe, the cost of salt was roughly double that of grain, something hard to imagine today, given salt’s omnipresence in our diets. Tradition at that time held that salt cellars must be placed before honored guests at a feast or dinner, marking their distinction, a custom that slowly faded away in the 18th to early 19th century. This elegant and rare cellar, whose form mirrors those made of silver, was produced at Ambras Castle, Innsbruck, where the archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol sought to set up his own personal glass makers with Italian craftsmen, making a colorless Venetian-style glass. Perhaps part of the appeal in using glass was that it made the salt crystals more visible, encouraging diners to add just a pinch more.
a surrealist still life in motion
The term “still life” is a paradox: while the subjects depicted in paint—let’s say, fruit, flowers, or meat—don’t change, they would inevitably rot in real life. This specter of decay haunts the Spanish term for still life, “naturaleza muerta” or “dead nature,” a reference which Surrealist painter Remedios Varo plays with in the title of the last painting she ever made.
The fruits in Varo’s final masterpiece are quite clearly not still nor dead. Fresh strawberries, plums, mangos, and pomegranates swirl in a vortex above eight place settings, the tablecloth animated beneath them. As fruits collide in orbit, they burst, dropping seeds to the ground to send up new life. Wary-eyed mosquitoes hover at the edge of the agitated whirl, their part in decay denied them by whatever force animates these objects that, in the world of any other artist, would perish.
a fastfood advertising dreamscape
Hot dogs, a bottle of pop, cake, and ice cream cones—lots of ice cream cones. These types of foodstuffs, ubiquitous in advertising, have a large presence in Suellen Rocca’s Bare Shouldered Beauty and the Pink Creature. Inspired by imagery from hieroglyphics, advertisements, Sears catalogues, and children’s books, the artist creates a dreamscape of consumerist artifacts and tokens of womanhood such as price tags, furniture, exercises, and young girls playing, highlighting the fraught relationship between women and media. Rocca was a member of the Hairy Who, a collective of graduates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago whose work poked fun at social mores such as gender, sexuality, beauty, and consumerism.
A roman rating system
A beautifully finished cake is no small feat, requiring the skill and experience of a seasoned baker. And that is likely what this ancient Roman mosaic depicting a lovely almond cake intended to convey: that a skilled baker worked in the home. Roman houses were frequently adorned with wall paintings and floor mosaics depicting food and items associated with the preparation and serving of food. Such imagery was intended to signal to the home’s visitors ideas about the owner’s wealth and hospitality as well as about the quantity and variety of goods available in the house. This panel belongs to a set that includes a plated fish—luxury fare at the time—and a bound rooster, which might have suggested the abundant livestock of the host’s lands.
Gaze at more food in art until your eyes are full and content. Even better, use this as a guide on your next visit to the museum.
Topics
- Collection
- Contemporary Art
- Arts of Asia
- Arts of America
- Arts of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Worlds
- Arts of Africa
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Medieval and Renaissance
- Surrealism
