Abstract
While there is general agreement that food itself can be beautiful, thousands of still-life masterpieces over the years attest to this, depicting the act of eating, actually placing food in one’s mouth and chewing, is taboo. The environment created around consumption – dining rooms, linens, china, flowers- is consciously choreographed to provide a pleasing aesthetic experience. Yet artists, from Roman frescoes painters to contemporary photographers create images from grand feasts to solitary subjects, that rarely show food or drink touching lips, chewing or swallowing. Of the countless paintings of the Last Supper, the food remains on the table. Rarely is Adam or Eve shown taking a bite of the apple, initiating Original Sin. In the few examples when an artist does depict food-in-mouth, Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, or the ubiquitous photos of the “wedding smash” with brides and grooms pushing wedding cake into each other’s mouths, the images are clearly intended to be particularly ugly, unflattering or humorous in a distasteful way. By considering examples of “masterpieces of art history”, the acknowledged grand collections, including the Louve, National Galleries, Uffizi, Metropolitan Museum New York, Hermitage, Vatican this paper explores the theory that illustrating the act of eating itself is a metaphor for the sin of gluttony, and leads artists as well as subjects to avoid explicit depictions of this universally shared necessity and pleasure.
Presenters
Constance KirkerAssistant Professor, Retired, Department of Integrative Arts, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Religious Community and Socialization
KEYWORDS
Identity, Art, Sin
