Feasting on Art

Three years ago today I posted an entry about Paul Cézanne and a recipe for cherry & nectarine clafouti. It was my very first entry on this site and it seems only fitting that it is included in Feasting on Art’s first major magazine spread. Pick up the April issue of Appetite and you can find four recipes inspired by art in the article ‘From palette to plate‘. I would also like to thank Saveur for recently naming Feasting on Art as one of their ‘sites we love.’ As a longtime reader of the publication it is an incredible honor.

Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Peppermint Bottle, c.1894
oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm, National Gallery of Art, D.C.

Read the rest of this entry »

Within the history of art, the egg has been used to symbolise life, rebirth, fertility and potential. The icon has a long history and according to Silvia Malaguzzi in Food and Feasting in Art, “They symbolise rebirth, and that symbolic value was subsequently christianized in biblical exegesis and took the form of Easter eggs, the food of the Resurrection since the Christian Middle Ages.” Left with an inordinate number of eggs after Easter (pending they have not all been hard boiled and dyed) this recipe is an ideal way to convey an indulgent breakfast into a hearty supper. Apart from a slick of butter in which the bread is fried and a layer of melted cheese, there is little fat alongside the protein in the eggs and the tang of the mustard. Paired with a bitter salad of greens, this recipe is the antithesis of the surgary croissant french toast inspired by Morandi.

Claude Monet, Still Life with Eggs (Nature morte aux œufs), 1907
oil on canvas, 73 x 92cm, Private collection

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Dating back to 1898, a tarte tatin was traditionally made by caramelizing apples in butter and sugar and baking upside down in an oven. The dish was allegedly created by accident at the Hotel Tatin when the tart was baked upside-down by mistake. I substituted chunks of  apple for thick slabs of juicy tomato and gave my tart a savoury bend with brown butter and balsamic vinegar. At this time of year the tomatoes are a brilliant shade of red and are perfect paired with a soft lump of goat cheese. I am having a great time in Michigan and thank you for all of the well-wishes from the previous post. It will be so hard returning to winter after eating fresh fruits and vegetables from the markets and my grandfather’s garden (not to mention saying good-bye to family and friends again)!

Paul Gauguin, Nature morte aux tomates (Tomatoes and a pewter tankard on a table), 1883
oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm, private collection

Read the rest of this entry »

The reduction of the genre of still life to its title produces a problem between languages.  In English, the name ‘still life’ carries certain connotations.  The word ‘life’ produces the idea of movement; the subject is living and has been captured or stilled within the painting.  The title creates the idea that ‘still life’ is a captured moment, perhaps a ‘snapshot’ of one’s Sunday dinner.  This name is entirely misleading, the still life genre often depicts fish, animals, plants, and commodities – all of which are dead.  The name still life is ironic, because life that has been stilled is death.  As French artist, Manet would have used the French title nature morte, which literally translates to dead nature.  The genre was previously known as vie coye, which roughly translates to ‘silent life.’ (1) The distinction between still life and dead nature is important.  Manet was certainly aware of the English title ‘still life,’ and this becomes apparent in the strange dichotomy in the painting between life and death.  The central image of the fish with its tail suspended in time embodies the living/dead aspect.  The fish looks like it is dead with its mouth gaping and eye bulging, yet the broad sweeping brushstrokes and tail flipped into the air, mentioned earlier, suggests movement and thus life.  This embodiment of the tension within the title of the genre is an aspect of painting unique to Manet.

Édouard Manet, Fish (Still Life), 1864
oil on canvas, 32.1 x 73.4 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago

Read the rest of this entry »