"Secret messages" of food in pictures: Why famous artists painted food and why today many people photograph it

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Here you are preparing a complex dish from many stages, to which you have devoted half a day. Pets are already looking forward to a delicious meal and are salivating. You put everything on the dish, decorate with the final sprig of cilantro, but do not rush to serve. Photo first. What is it? Bragging or just a fashion statement? A huge number of food photos from ordinary netizens has long surprised no one, and their number is only just increasing.

However, our contemporaries are by no means innovators in the desire to multiply images of food. Artists of all times with special feeling depicted certain dishes on their canvases, and not necessarily still lifes. Most often, food was used to emphasize the overall mood of the picture, clarify details and give it a special depth. And this is no accident, the attitude of humanity towards food has always been as something more than an element of survival.

Food is not just something that gives us energy and allows us to live on, it is a symbol. It's not for nothing that they say that you are what you eat. However, if the meaning of the need for proper and healthy nutrition is put into this phrase, then in reality it is even more complicated. By demonstrating what he eats, a person shows his social status, his beliefs regarding nutrition, how he understands beauty and how he relates to life.

For artists of any period, "secret messages" made with the help of food are quite common, and if you try to uncover them, you may find very interesting facts.

Food as a symbol of human sins

In the Middle Ages, food was most often used to highlight class inequality and to demonstrate sinful decline. During the period when food was obtained by hard work, it could not be otherwise.

A court painter from Scotland painted the painting "The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus", which dates back to the 16th century. It demonstrates class inequality very clearly. Feudal lords enjoy the game, they are pink-cheeked, contented and happy. And behind the door there is a hungry poor man and requests to feed him are ignored and do not prevent the rich from eating further. The second part of the picture puts everything in its place, promising stingy feudal lords a place in hell for their greed and unwillingness to share food, which they have in abundance. The poor are destined for heaven and paradise.

"Bacchus" by Caravaggio depicts food more subtly, without drawing direct parallels, but rather with hints leading the viewer back to human vices. The fruit plate is often seen in paintings and is usually a symbol of fertility and well-being. However, in this picture, not everything is so simple, if you look closely, it becomes clear that the fruits are depicted deliberately spoiled. The apples have stale sides, in some places they are eaten by caterpillars, the leaves are withered, the grapes are also not the first freshness. It may seem that in a picture of a beautiful young man, stale fruits personify the transience of life. However, if you look closely at the hands of a young man, or rather his nails, the general meaning also changes. The fact is that the young sitter is depicted with a black border under the nails. Yes, artists often hired simple laborers to work on paintings, for whom dirty hands are an integral part. However, it is unlikely that an artist who has drawn all the little things in such detail would have made such an oversight. Rather, this detail, as well as fruits with foulbrood, demonstrate that external beauty not only passes quickly, but can also hide something truly unpleasant behind it.

Food that expresses class inequality

The topic of dirty hands and food is most dramatically revealed in the early work of Vincent Van Gogh "The Potato Eaters". This work of his was not appreciated, often even it was interpreted as an insult to working people and an attempt to ridicule the peasantry. The dark and gloomy picture in which the family gathered in the late evening, by the light of a lamp at a simple dinner - everything is depressing here. There are potatoes on the table, people are dressed warmly, it means it's cold in the room, they have gray, tortured faces, they themselves look like potatoes. The artist worked on this painting for a long time, he wanted to convey how hard the work of people who work day after day is, so that in the evening they have food on the table. At the same time, they eat potatoes in order to live and care for this very vegetable. Such is the bleak cycle of events. All the doom of the existence of this family, as it were, emphasizes social inequality in society. While some have breakfast with oysters, others depend on potatoes for their lives.

The hero of Pavel Fedotov's painting "Breakfast of an Aristocrat", judging by the decoration of the room and the dressing gown, does not live in poverty at all. Even his poodle is well-trimmed, and the leaf on the chair that says Oysters suggests that this room has clearly known better days. However, today for breakfast there is a crust of bread and an empty wallet. If it had not been for the unexpectedly announced uninvited guest, the host would have quietly had breakfast with bread. However, he does not at all want to discover the dissonance between his image of a burner of life and a meager breakfast in front of a stranger, therefore he hastily covers the table with an open book. By the way, the painting was originally called "Not at the Time of the Guest", the second name appeared after the death of the artist. The image that he portrayed in the picture is often found in literature and is called the "king of the middle link."

Still lifes as a symbol of the era

It is not necessary to know the history or possess a special artistic perspective to understand what symbolism the still life "Herring" by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin carries. This is practically an artistic chronicle of the era. Two potatoes, a herring, a piece of bread. An ingenious lunch set, on a red tablecloth symbolizing the revolution - everything is hastily assembled, even potatoes of absurdly different sizes and strange shapes, and the herring is wrapped in parchment. The bread is sliced as for a ration, as if demonstrating the limitations, the presence of standards in everything.

If Petrov-Vodkin used deliberate minimalism in his still lifes in order to emphasize the importance of other events taking place in the country, then the legendary canned food from Andy Warhol's Can of Soup was a real breakthrough in this area. If before the still life was considered exclusively something symbolic and special secret symbols were even developed to denote the messages (for example, grapes - the sacrifice of Christ, apricots - the fall, and the lemon - betrayal), then the vision of the American artist of the beautiful in the ordinary, went against familiar representation. Glory did not come to the artist immediately, but a can of soup became the personification of an era striving for mass production and blurring the lines between individuals. No politics, no symbolism. Just a can of soup for lunch. As simple as the way it is prepared.

Still lifes from netizens

At the very beginning of the article, we already mentioned some of the reasons that make netizens not only take pictures of their food, but also share it on the Internet. This movement has become so commonplace that the specialties of food photographer and food stylist have even appeared. Thus, the aesthetic qualities of food are put before its nutritional properties, it is not so important what you eat, it is much more important how it looks. Psychologists are sure that such a desire indicates a desire to compensate for the lack of attention and vivid impressions. Taking a picture of a dish so that it turns out to be beautiful and attractive is not so easy, it requires not only certain skills, but also the capabilities of a gadget. All these "dancing with the phone" around the plate delay the moment of eating and, as it were, stretch the pleasure. This funny feature can indicate a serious dependence either on the food itself or on social approval. After all, another reason why people post photos of their food on social networks is the desire to gain the approval of others, to demonstrate to them their level of well-being and to emphasize their importance. At the same time, it is not at all necessary that the food will be from restaurants or cafes, homemade dishes even have a certain intimate context, and their demonstration is a person's desire to share the details of his personal life with others. Many people are annoyed by photos of food in the news feed, and so much so that they unsubscribe or hide from the news a friend who posts culinary works. It is not surprising, because at a subconscious level, any person understands that this is not just a still life, but a kind of secret message, exactly the same as in famous paintings. The Dutch were especially successful in this direction, their "tasty" still lifes turned into a separate direction of painting.