Food in Painting: Kenneth Bendiner

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Painting and cuisine use much in common: color, texture, pattern, and contrast. Chefs paint, artists eat: they feed each other. The plates of Nouvelle Cuisine where vegetables, meats, fish, and sauces were applied to the tabula rasa of a white plate like a canvas and bespeak of the close attention chefs pay to art and design. But what about the close attention artists pay to food and the work of chefs? Food in Painting: From the Renaissance to the Present (Reaktion Books, 2004) by Dr. Kenneth Bendiner, professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin/Milwakee, examines this question by examining Painting from the early Renaissance to the present in Europe and America. Dr. Bendiner writes in his introduction: Food paintings constitute a separate line of development that passes through the linear course of art history. Food images echo and revise their predecessors, incorporating the character of their different societies, but they are never quite divorced from their own particular history as depictions of food. (p. 8) This is true of the tastes and cuisines depicted in the paintings as much as the paintings themselves. We would no more eat a meal from the 17th Century than paint in the style of the Dutch Masters -- although culinary students study what their predecessors have done and why, just as art students practice the techniques of centuries ago. Bendiner divides his story into four chapters: The Market, Preparing the Meal, Meals, and Decorative and Symbolic Food. In each chapter he roams from great masters to moderns, from Rembrandt to Warhol. In the market chapter, Bendiner brims with admiration for a painting of lustrous white asparagus by a 17th century painter, Adriaen Coorte, which could easily fit on the cover of a cookbook by Alain Ducasse or Roxanne Klein: Coorte treated the little band of market produce with such sensitivity and gave the hypnotically isolated subject such effulgence that one wanted to see it as more than a bit of fresh greens, and, with Rembrandt's painting [of a beef carcass] something symbolic of God or humankind as a whole – with relations of the individual to the group set out in a problematic configuration. Rarely has the significance of the insignificant been so adeptly suggested. (p. 54) Just as the chef's position has been elevated by celebrity in America, so to are the usually overlooked paintings of still-lifes and markets and feasts. These paintings, typically hung in dining rooms, were usually meant to encourage a good appetite and celebrate abundance. Even when critical in tone, painters could not help but make food look appetizing and inviting. Bendiner goes on to explore the relationship of food and sex in paintings (pp. 56-59), the invention of the fork and its use at table (pp. 110-12), and even the sugar trade and the use of sugar by the poor (pp. 65-6). Bendiner discusses famous dining paintings like Edouard Manet's Dejeuner Sur L'herbe, which he compares to Claude Monet's nude-less painting of the same title (pp.167-9). All these pictures serve as more than mere justification for an outing. The meals make the trip into nature a social event. They are not lonely repasts to accompany individual meditations; they are group activities. The food acts as a congenial gathering point. (p. 169) While in essence it remains a history book of art, Food in Painting never loses sight of the food, the dishes, and the meals. It is a wonderful investigation of how we see food in relation to ourselves: the book celebrates what chefs celebrate in their everyday work. What better way for Fine Dining cooks and chefs to share their own Food passion with their family and friends (especially children) than to literally show them the beauty of their craft? Book information: Publisher Amazon.com Previous articles: [complete cookbook reviews] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, super chef, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, cookbooks, Art History --> back to superchefblog