Art as Aesthetic Statement

Lind, R.

doi:10.2307/3333244

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Yet paintings may generally reflect a different view of life because they have other purposes, such as providing an aesthetically pleasing product to the viewer (LeWitt, 1967), representing the wealth of the family who commissioned the painting (White, 1965), making a statement to the public (Lind, 1993), or inspiring a service aspiration (Arnheim, 1986). If a family commissioned an artist's painting as a wish to demonstrate its wealth to other families, the painting may depict foods that are aspirational, such as exotic fruit or seafood rather than the ordinary game most families consumed at the time (Bendiner, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food Art Does Not Reflect Reality

2016

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Can the frequency with which a food is depicted in paintings give historical insight into family meals over the years and across countries? To initially explore this question, 750 food-related paintings were screened down to 140 paintings from Western Europe and the United States depicting small, family meals. Quantitative content analyses showed the most frequently eaten foods (such as chicken, eggs, and squash) were least frequently depicted in paintings. In contrast, the most aspirational foods such as shellfish were commonly painted in countries with the smallest coastlines (Germany), and more than half (51.4%) of the paintings from the seafaring Netherlands contained non-indigenous tropical lemons. Moreover, although bread and apples have been commonly available over time, bread has been painted 74% less frequently and apples painted 302% more frequently. In general, paintings tend to feature meals with foods that were either aspirational to the commissioning family, aesthetically pleasing or technically difficult for the painter, or that encoded cultural, religious, or political information for informed viewers. Care should be taken to not project food depictions in paintings as indicative of what was actually served or eaten in that country at the time.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%