Feasting on Art

The artist Julie Green has been working for more than a decade on her series titled The Last Supper comprised of painted china illustrating the final meal requests of death row inmates in the United States. The menus, gleaned from newspaper clippings and websites humanize a sect of society typically disregarded by the general public. Green paints the menus of The Last Supper series with mineral paint on appropriated dishes she collects from shops and stores. The plates range from delicate white porcelain to heavy cream crockery and the foods from each menu inform the choice of dish, “For dinner food, a heavy plain plate would be appropriate. If the meal is lasagna and shrimp, that might call for a fine porcelain plate.” Gazing from one plate to another, a culinary portrait of the United States begins to emerge. The most beloved menus from each region are singled out to be the last earthly delight of a condemned inmate. From tamales and enchiladas in Texas to boiled crawfish in Louisiana, the regional menus give a sense of the ethnic background of each prisoner.

Julie Green, Mississippi 23 July 1947, 2011
Cobalt mineral paint on kiln-fired ceramic plates, 22.8 x 22.8 x 2.5cm
Fried chicken and watermelon served to a 15-year old and a 16-year old boy.

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Jon Feinstein’s 2008 series titled Fast Food features an assortment of sandwiches and sides purchased from chain restaurants. Stripping each foodstuff from a contextualizing background, the food floats against a stark black void — each detail meticulously recorded via the flatbed scanner. For Feinstein, the use of the scanner in place of a camera is twofold; it allows him to render the image in a “rigid, specific and typological manner” and it mirrors the “removal of the hand in food preparation.”[1] Represented sans the gloss of the company branding, the food is presented un-apologetically to the viewer, pressed against an invisible boundary. Each image is paired with a number followed by ‘grams’ to highlight the amount of fat in each meal, as demonstrated in the photograph 16 grams, conceded by the artist to be a Burger King cheeseburger. According to Feinstein, “These photographs investigate the love/hate relationship that many Americans have with fast food, and like many other aspects of popular culture, its ability to be simultaneously seductive and repulsive.”[2]

[1] Feinstein, Jon, email interview, 29 September 2010.
[2] Ibid.

Jon Feinstein, 16 Grams, 2008,
digital c-print, 50.8 x 50.8 cm, edition of 10 + 2 APs.

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Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were two of the most influential Modernist artists working in the first half of the twentieth century. The two artists met in 1905 at one of the gatherings of Gertrude Stein who was a patron of Picasso‘s. Their work was – and still is – often compared and upon meeting, the two become both lifelong friends and rivals. Whereas Picasso often conjured his compositions from his imagination, Matisse preferred to work from nature and would complete much more expansive interiors around his subjects.

Left: Pablo Picasso, Vase, Bowl and Lemon, 1907,
oil on panel, 62 x 48 cm, Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Right: Henri Matisse, Still Life with Blue Tablecloth (detail), 1909,
88 x 118 cm, oil on canvas, The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

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Recently I have been thinking a lot about meatballs. From Molly Wizenberg’s search for the perfect meatball for Bon Appétit to The Traveler’s Lunchbox’s adaption of Lynn Rosetto Kasper’s beguiling recipe featuring spinach, cinnamon, almonds and candied citron, I have been reading about delicious little orbs of meat in all of my favourite venues. Although the recipes certainly peaked my interest, I struggled to find a meal composed entirely of ground mince appetising, especially sans a generous portion of noodles. However, upon discovering an issue of Australian Good Food magazine nestled among the classifieds, I spotted a recipe for cabbage-wrapped meatballs and soon found myself in the kitchen rolling, wrapping and saucing. My grandmother affectionately calls this dish pigs in the blanket, a recipe she has made for as long as she can remember. The version my grandmother referred to has roots in Slovak cookery and is also known by the name gołąbk.

Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, Still Life with Vegetables, 1976
oil on board, 24 x 34 cm, Private collection

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Life has been hectic as of late. I am in the process of moving house and saying goodbye to my first Sydney home and the beautiful light the big windows provided. I have been dividing my time between cleaning, packing and doing a bit of home repair as an indoor painter with only a nominal amount of time left to cook. This recipe, a concoction of odds and ends from the pantry, was simple, quick and full of flavour. Rolled into a lettuce leaf, the spicy salad is edible on the go and keeps for a couple of days in the refrigerator.

Raphaelle Peale, Still Life with Steak, c.1917
oil on panel, 33.97 x 49.53 cm, Munson Williams Proctor Museum of Art

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