A visual feast at the Norton Simon Museum
Throughout history, images of food have repeatedly conveyed the creativity of artists. From Arcimboldo’s portraits composed entirely of fruits and vegetables to Warhol’s austere “Campbell’s Soup Cans,” audiences have grown accustomed to portrayals of food in the domain of a canvas or sculpture.
The ubiquity of these objects in visual media has led to the development of a disconnect between the aesthetic image and the connotations lying behind: we might see an apple not as a product of complex labor systems, as a symbol of the Biblical fall or as a classical icon of fertility and desire, but instead simply as a lustrous, red fruit.
A new exhibition at the Norton Simon Museum seeks to allow rediscovery of the complex cultural significance behind these objects of nourishment. Curated by Maggie Bell, “All Consuming: Art and the Essence of Food” examines various presentations of food in around 60 artworks from the museum’s collections. Spanning across four centuries, the assortment ties pieces together across wide temporal and geographic expanses to reveal truths about human interactions with art.
Organized into three categories, “All Consuming” takes a thematic approach to the collection, exploring “Hunger,” “Sustenance” and “Excess.” As arranged in this show, these themes feel almost inevitable, encompassing the enormous variety of narratives around food.
“The objects kind of tell you what they’re all about. And so, in looking and spending time with these works, the stories that I realized I could tell became clear as hunger and deprivation, as sustenance and as excess,” said Bell in an interview with the Daily Trojan.
“All Consuming” presents the “Hunger” and “Excess” groupings first, contrasting human relationships to food in different cultural moments. Underneath these larger concepts, subthemes emerge, allowing for vivid dialogues between objects. For instance, the intersection between food and gender surfaces in many items, encouraging reflection on artistic portrayals/conceptions of identity (especially femininity) throughout time. This section also frequently arrives at issues of religion, as in depictions of sinful overindulgence or pious asceticism — posing questions about our moral or spiritual obligations in consuming food.
The exhibition then turns toward “Sustenance” (perhaps a mediation between the contradictions of the previous section). Featuring idyllic meadows and salivation-inducing still lifes, this theme initially portrays romanticized systems of agriculture and eating. Indeed, the poster child of the collection, Frans Snyders’ “Still Life with Fruit and Vegetables,” conveys an idealized vision of food, with 33 distinct plants represented (all identified in a guide by Sean Lahmeyer, an expert at the Huntington).
“The Snyders is this really fun image when you get to know it a little bit better … Those fruits and vegetables are recognizable now as they would have been then … But they all grew in different seasons. So yes, it’s a kind of realistic depiction, but also kind of a fantasy of an abundant kitchen and this comfort that comes from that,” Bell said.
As “Sustenance” progresses, viewers track an evolution towards greater artistic consciousness of the labor structures behind food. Naturally, the section features Pissarro’s “The Poultry Market at Pontoise,” a piece characteristic of the painter’s affinity with the working class. More surprising is a landscape pastel by Piet Mondrian (an artist best known for his pioneering work in color field painting). In his portrayal of an Amsterdam neighborhood, the tower of a chocolate factory protrudes above the horizon — implicating the complex legacies of imperialism and exploitation in the industry, while also signaling a new era of food production.
The final gallery of the exhibition showcases photography by Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Edward Weston, active during the early-mid 20th century. Even in black and white, the images seem to cut straight to issues we face today.
“I see the photography gallery as a kind of coda to the show … I wanted a bridge between pre-1900 to closer to our lived experience now. Both the images that I chose from Álvarez Bravo and Weston, are photographs of Mexico and California, so it felt geographically closer to home, in addition to temporally closer to home,” Bell said.
Full of surprises big and small, this exhibition packs a powerful punch over the course of its three galleries. Casting the foods of Rembrandt, Goya, Pissarro and others in a new light, the show transforms its objects into dynamic participants in a grand artistic narrative about eating and drinking – extending even to contemporary discourses about hunger, sustenance and excess.
“I think [“All Consuming”] just presents canonical artists in ways that haven’t really been discussed before. I think food is something that we can all connect with — and this offers a fresh perspective on representations of food,” Bell said.
“All Consuming” will be on view at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena until August 14. The museum offers free admission to students with valid ID.