Feasting on Art

I rarely return home from the grocery store without some sort of brassica in my basket. This is the second week in a row we have enjoyed brussels sprouts roasted simply with a bit of parmesan finished with a squeeze of lemon. The cheese gives the dish a salty-meatiness and the lemon provides a balancing freshness. Excellent paired with an icy dry white wine, the dish could accompany a standard main course or stand on its own topped with a fried egg.

Edward Weston, Cabbage Leaf, 1931
gelatin silver print, 19.1 x 24.1 cm

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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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When making chipotle sweet potato mash for our Thanksgiving table, I grossly over-estimated the number of spuds needed for the recipe. Left with a very large potato in the pantry, a batch of salty, sweet and sour fries seemed the best solution. By baking the potatoes with a bit of oil, the desired crispiness is achieved sans the overbearing oil taste often found in the deep fried variety. The fries need to be left alone to toast and become slightly blistered in the hot oven.

Unknown, Still Life with Pumpkin, Book, and Sweet Potato, c.1855
daguerreotype with applied colouring, 6.3 x 5.1 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum

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In the last few weeks of September and the first few of October, the city of Munich holds a festival called Oktoberfest. The calendar is adjusted each year so that the festival will end on the first Sunday of October and this year is the 200th jubilee of the event. Revellers gather and enjoy hearty dishes ranging from sausages to sauerkraut and copious amounts of bier. The event is so popular that cities around the world hold celebrations to mark the occasion. I find that this recipe is best suited for any type of beer and would recommend using your favourite drop, as you are predisposed to already prefer the taste of the soup. I made the version depicted below with a light beer, Pure Blonde to be exact, and instantly wish I had used a stout to capitalise upon it’s sweet caramely flavours. It is also possible to swap the lemon juice with a preferred white wine. I have read other recipes that suggest this is a good way to achieve the light touch from the acidity.

Heinrich Kühn, Still Life with Steins, c.1900
gum-bichromate pigment print, 29.8 x 39.7 cm

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In her beautifully composed photographs, Marian Drew includes the lifeless bodies of Australian fauna collected from the side of the road. The photographs represent a meeting of Europe and Australia through the insertion of wallabies, kangaroos, and possums into the still life tradition. The images assume a painterly tone achieved by long exposures and careful application of light via torch. This process allows Drew to highlight important elements in the composition as well as experiment with shadow as a form.

Marian Drew, Crow with Salt, 2006
digital image on German etching paper, 112 x 134 cm, from the series Art Fair

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