Feasting on Art

In the mid-16th century, Spain began importing a vibrant red pigment from the New World that was so highly sought after that the source was held as a national secret. The dye was extracted from the blood of a female cochineal, a wingless insect that lives upon the leaves of the prickly pear. The dye was so valued that in the late 18th century, a French spy by the name of Nicolas Joseph Thierry de Menonville, snuck into the Spanish territory and successively procured a living specimen. The cochineal insect is closely related to the Indo-European kermes bug. Kermes insects live upon the scarlet oak and the red dye they produce was the most expensive pigment in the middle ages and very valuable to the Romans. According to Victoria Finlay, author of Colour: travels through the paintbox, “for many cultures red is both death and life – a beautiful and terrible paradox.” The connotations this colour, often made from the blood of insects, is embodied in Claude Monet’s Still Life: Quarter of Beef. This painting of a dead animal is created – is given life – through the death of the cochineal insect; yet represents a food source that sustains life. The small canvas represents the cyclical and paradoxical nature of the colour red.

Claude Monet, Still Life: Quarter of Beef (Nature morte : le quartier de viande vers), c.1864
oil on canvas, 24 x 33 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Read the rest of this entry »

The colour of a food or dish plays an important role in its appeal. Before tasting a tomato, we know that if it is green, it is unripe. These inherent expectations of the natural colouration of the world around us present an interesting challenge to artists. To represent skin tones in a portrait or the light hitting the flesh of a lemon, the right combination of colours must be mixed to determine the appropriate colour recipe for each painting. Some artists disregarded the traditional mode of colour representation and beginning with the Impressionists, colour was used to communicate emotion and highlight ephemeral experience. Colour has since been utilized as both form and symbol, as means for subjective expression, as a conceptual model and even to evoke realms of contemplation.

Read the rest of this entry »

This guest post is by my mother, Julie Fizell.

I thought it would be so fun to walk in Megan’s shoes for a while, and she agreed to a guest post.  Her father Ed and I quickly decided to make blackberry jelly.  We had made strawberry jam several times together and managed to stay married, so we thought we were up for the challenge.  The difference between jelly and jam is that jelly does not contain seeds.  No big deal, right?

We picked our blackberries along a secret dirt road in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  I’d tell you where the secret road is but I wasn’t paying attention as we bounced along.  We wore jeans and heavy shirts despite the hot weather – protection from the vicious thorns attached to blackberry brambles.  The blackberries in Raphaelle Peale’s still life look misleadingly innocent draped over the silver platter, so unlike their counterparts in the wild.  We were scratched, poked, and tripped by thorny stalks that attacked us as we waded through the thicket.  But we were successful!  After nearly an hour, Ed and I picked about three cups of luscious berries.   One cup I devoured immediately; the last two made it into our bucket.

Raphaelle Peale, Blackberries, c.1813
oil on wood panel, 18.4 x 26 cm, de Young Fine Art Museum

Read the rest of this entry »

As a Midwest girl I was very excited when Chicago blogger Dana from Real Food Rehab sent me an email regarding a collaboration. She very kindly interviewed me for her site and we quickly began to assemble ideas. The Art Institute of Chicago has always been very near and dear to my heart (it houses the painting that began my still life education) and I was delighted when Dana suggested we pick a painting to highlight an upcoming exhibition at the museum. Dana is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and combines a unique viewpoint to the vast food blogsphere. A few of my favorite posts are her pickled asparagus and the review of The Flavor Bible, one of my oft-used cooking resources. Thanks for collaborating with me Dana!

Visit Dana’s blog Real Food Rehab for a rustic apple tart recipe.

Henri Matisse, Apples, 1916, Oil on canvas, 116.9 x 88.9 cm, Art Institute of Chicago
© 2010 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Read the rest of this entry »

The day Ozoz’s package from the Netherlands arrived was a very exciting one, not only because of the delicious caramel cookies but  also the beautiful cookbook filled with the things I love. Ozoz writes the food blog Kitchen Butterfly and is one of the most dedicated bloggers I read, posting every other day. She kindly sent me a copy of the cookbook Dutch Culinary Art which she first wrote about on her blog back in December after meeting two of the three writers. The book is filled with traditional recipes introduced by sweet little anecdotes about their origin and history. Dispersed throughout are opulent still lifes and pleasant kitchen scenes. Ozoz’s blog is more than just a record of recipes and culinary delights, she provides useful travel guides as well as everything you would need to know about food before visiting the Netherlands. I only wish I knew about her blog when I lived in the UK and frequented the ‘Orange Country‘ – her affectionate name for the Dutch countryside. Thank you again Ozoz for the beautiful book and for working with me on this collaboration!

Visit Ozoz’s blog Kitchen Butterfly for a recipe for Pumpkin Ice Cream & Lemonettes.

Willem Kalf, Still Life with a Chinese Tureen, 1662
oil on canvas, 64 x 53cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Read the rest of this entry »