Art, Culture, and Cuisine

Art, Culture, and Cuisine

Author: Phyllis Pray Bober

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2001-06

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 0226062546

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How we define, prepare and consume food can detail a full range of social expression. Examining the subject through the dual lens of archaeology and art history, this book argues that cuisine as an art form deserves a higher reputation.


Art and Appetite

Art and Appetite

Author: Annelise K. Madsen

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-12-10

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0300196237

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" Food has always been an important source of knowledge about culture and society. Art and Appetite takes a fascinating new look at depictions of food in American art, demonstrating that the artists' representations of edibles offer thoughtful reflection on the cultural, political, economic, and social moments in which they were created. Using food as an emblem, artists were able to both celebrate and critique their society, expressing ideas relating to politics, race, class, gender, and commerce. Focusing on the late 18th century through the Pop artists of the 20th century, this lively publication investigates the many meanings and interpretations of eating in America. Richly illustrated, Art and Appetite features still life and trompe l'oeil painting, sculpture, and other works by such celebrated artists as William Merritt Chase, John Singleton Copley, Elizabeth Paxton, Norman Bel Geddes, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, Wayne Thiebaud, Roy Lichtenstein, and many more. Essays by leading experts address topics including the horticultural and botanical underpinnings of still-life paintings, the history of alcohol consumption in the United States, Thanksgiving, and food in the world of Pop art. In addition to the images and essays, this book includes a selection of 18th- and 19th-century recipes for all-American dishes including molasses cake, stewed terrapin, rice blancmange, and roast calf's head. "--


Food is Culture

Food is Culture

Author: Massimo Montanari

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 0231137907

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Elegantly written by a distinguished culinary historian, Food Is Culture explores the innovative premise that everything having to do with food--its capture, cultivation, preparation, and consumption--represents a cultural act. Even the "choices" made by primitive hunters and gatherers were determined by a culture of economics (availability) and medicine (digestibility and nutrition) that led to the development of specific social structures and traditions. Massimo Montanari begins with the "invention" of cooking which allowed humans to transform natural, edible objects into cuisine. Cooking led to the creation of the kitchen, the adaptation of raw materials into utensils, and the birth of written and oral guidelines to formalize cooking techniques like roasting, broiling, and frying. The transmission of recipes allowed food to acquire its own language and grow into a complex cultural product shaped by climate, geography, the pursuit of pleasure, and later, the desire for health. In his history, Montanari touches on the spice trade, the first agrarian societies, Renaissance dishes that synthesized different tastes, and the analytical attitude of the Enlightenment, which insisted on the separation of flavors. Brilliantly researched and analyzed, he shows how food, once a practical necessity, evolved into an indicator of social standing and religious and political identity. Whether he is musing on the origins of the fork, the symbolic power of meat, cultural attitudes toward hot and cold foods, the connection between cuisine and class, the symbolic significance of certain foods, or the economical consequences of religious holidays, Montanari's concise yet intellectually rich reflections add another dimension to the history of human civilization. Entertaining and surprising, Food Is Culture is a fascinating look at how food is the ultimate embodiment of our continuing attempts to tame, transform, and reinterpret nature.


Cuisine and Culture

Cuisine and Culture

Author: Linda Civitello

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-03-29

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0470403713

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Cuisine and Culture presents a multicultural and multiethnic approach that draws connections between major historical events and how and why these events affected and defined the culinary traditions of different societies. Witty and engaging, Civitello shows how history has shaped our diet--and how food has affected history. Prehistoric societies are explored all the way to present day issues such as genetically modified foods and the rise of celebrity chefs. Civitello's humorous tone and deep knowledge are the perfect antidote to the usual scholarly and academic treatment of this universally important subject.


American Foodie

American Foodie

Author: Dwight Furrow

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-01-14

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1442249307

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As nutrition, food is essential, but in today’s world of excess, a good portion of the world has taken food beyond its functional definition to fine art status. From celebrity chefs to amateur food bloggers, individuals take ownership of the food they eat as a creative expression of personality, heritage, and ingenuity. Dwight Furrow examines the contemporary fascination with food and culinary arts not only as global spectacle, but also as an expression of control, authenticity, and playful creation for individuals in a homogenized, and increasingly public, world.


Italian Cuisine

Italian Cuisine

Author: Alberto Capatti

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2003-09-17

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0231509049

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Italy, the country with a hundred cities and a thousand bell towers, is also the country with a hundred cuisines and a thousand recipes. Its great variety of culinary practices reflects a history long dominated by regionalism and political division, and has led to the common conception of Italian food as a mosaic of regional customs rather than a single tradition. Nonetheless, this magnificent new book demonstrates the development of a distinctive, unified culinary tradition throughout the Italian peninsula. Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari uncover a network of culinary customs, food lore, and cooking practices, dating back as far as the Middle Ages, that are identifiably Italian: o Italians used forks 300 years before other Europeans, possibly because they were needed to handle pasta, which is slippery and dangerously hot. o Italians invented the practice of chilling drinks and may have invented ice cream. o Italian culinary practice influenced the rest of Europe to place more emphasis on vegetables and less on meat. o Salad was a distinctive aspect of the Italian meal as early as the sixteenth century. The authors focus on culinary developments in the late medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras, aided by a wealth of cookbooks produced throughout the early modern period. They show how Italy's culinary identities emerged over the course of the centuries through an exchange of information and techniques among geographical regions and social classes. Though temporally, spatially, and socially diverse, these cuisines refer to a common experience that can be described as Italian. Thematically organized around key issues in culinary history and beautifully illustrated, Italian Cuisine is a rich history of the ingredients, dishes, techniques, and social customs behind the Italian food we know and love today.


The Taste of Art

The Taste of Art

Author: Silvia Bottinelli

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2017-06-01

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1682260259

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The Taste of Art offers a sample of scholarly essays that examine the role of food in Western contemporary art practices. The contributors are scholars from a range of disciplines, including art history, philosophy, film studies, and history. As a whole, the volume illustrates how artists engage with food as matter and process in order to explore alternative aesthetic strategies and indicate countercultural shifts in society. The collection opens by exploring the theoretical intersections of art and food, food art’s historical root in Futurism, and the ways in which food carries gendered meaning in popular film. Subsequent sections analyze the ways in which artists challenge mainstream ideas through food in a variety of scenarios. Beginning from a focus on the body and subjectivity, the authors zoom out to look at the domestic sphere, and finally the public sphere. Here are essays that study a range of artists including, among others, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Daniel Spoerri, Dieter Roth, Joseph Beuys, Al Ruppersberg, Alison Knowles, Martha Rosler, Robin Weltsch, Vicki Hodgetts, Paul McCarthy, Luciano Fabro, Carries Mae Weems, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Janine Antoni, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Liza Lou, Tom Marioni, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Michael Rakowitz, and Natalie Jeremijenko.


Culture of the Fork

Culture of the Fork

Author: Giovanni Rebora

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2001-10-17

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0231518455

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We know where he went, what he wrote, and even what he wore, but what in the world did Christopher Columbus eat? The Renaissance and the age of discovery introduced Europeans to exotic cultures, mores, manners, and ideas. Along with the cross-cultural exchange of Old and New World, East and West, came new foodstuffs, preparations, and flavors. That kitchen revolution led to the development of new utensils and table manners. Some of the impact is still felt—and tasted—today. Giovanni Rebora has crafted an elegant and accessible history filled with fascinating information and illustrations. He discusses the availability of resources, how people kept from starving in the winter, how they farmed, how tastes developed and changed, what the lower classes ate, and what the aristocracy enjoyed. The book is divided into brief chapters covering the history of bread, soups, stuffed pastas, the use of salt, cheese, meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, the arrival of butter, the quest for sugar, new world foods, setting the table, and beverages, including wine and tea. A special appendix, "A Meal with Columbus," includes a mini-anthology of recipes from the countries where he lived: Italy, Portugal, Spain, and England. Entertaining and enlightening, Culture of the Fork will interest scholars of history and gastronomy—and everyone who eats.


Food in Art

Food in Art

Author: Gillian Riley

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2014-10-15

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1780231970

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From Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s painting of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II as a heap of fruits and vegetables to artists depicting lavish banquets for wealthy patrons, food and art are remarkably intertwined. In this richly illustrated book, Gillian Riley provides fresh insight into how the relationship between humans and food has been portrayed in art from ancient times to the Renaissance. Exploring a myriad of images including hunting scenes depicted in Egyptian Books of Hours and fruit in Roman wall paintings and mosaics, Riley argues that works of art present us with historical information about the preparation and preservation of food that written sources do not—for example, how meat, fish, cheese, and vegetables were dried, salted, and smoked, or how honey was used to conserve fruit. She also examines what these works reveal to us about how animals and plants were raised, cultivated, hunted, harvested, and traded throughout history. Looking at the many connections between food, myth, and religion, she surveys an array of artworks to answer questions such as whether the Golden Apples of the Hesperides were in fact apples or instead quinces or oranges. She also tries to understand whether our perception of fruit in Christian art is skewed by their symbolic meaning. With 170 color images of fine art, illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, frescoes, stained glass, and funerary monuments, Food in Art is an aesthetically pleasing and highly readable book for art buffs and foodies alike.


The Art of Cuisine

The Art of Cuisine

Author: Henry de Toulouse-Lautrec

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2015-03-17

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1466892358

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Henri de-Toulouse-Lautrec brought to his art a zest for life as well as an impeccable style. It is an exciting discovery to find that Lautrec applies this same exuberance and meticulous technique to the art of cuisine--that he invented recipes and cooked new dishes as an artistic creation worthy of his serious attention. This volume is a collection of the recipes that Lautrec invented, or were garnered in his company from acquaintances of all classes of society. It has been illustrated with the menus that Lautrec himself designed and decorated, as well as with a rich abundance of other appropriate Lautrec paintings and drawings. The frontispiece is a portrait by Edouard Vuillard of lautrec preparing one of his masterful dishes. The recipes are given here in their original form, retaining their color of thought and language. The only modifications are culinary notes that have been added to facilitate the work of modern cooks. Lautrec took great pride in his culinary ability, and if he felt it would not be appreciated, he would say that some people "are not worth of ring dove with olives, they will never have any and they will never know what it is." Lautrec planned meals carefully, made beautifully decorated menus, and was inspired by the dinners to draw more sketches of the dinners, and of the food. He also brought to cuisine, as to the rest of his life, a marvelous wit. Who could forget the invitation to eat kangaroo, in honor of an animal that he had seen boxing at a circus (it was replaced at the last moment by an enormous sheep with an artificial pouch): or the housewarming of the apartment of his friend Natanson, where in a crazy atmosphere, he managed to intoxicate the artistic elite of Paris and launch the fashion of cocktail food. We owe the record of this cuisine (and also of a great body of the art collection itself) to Maurice Joyant. Joyant and Lautrec had been childhood friends, and their intimacy was renewed and deepened during the Montmartre years, when Lautrec's fame was growing and Joyant was director of the same art gallery in Paris that Theo Van Gogh had run before him. Lautrec was, throughout their relationship, the artist and innovator; Joyant, the steadying influence, the protector, and, after the painter's death, the executor. This book is a tribute to their friendship and to their daily intercourse in art and in cuisine. Thus, art, friendship, and food have come together in The Art of Cuisine as a joyful legacy of Henry de Toulouse-Lautrec and Maurice Joyant.