FoodPorn, Circa 1600s: Then And Now, It Was More About Status Than Appetite

An article by Tove Danovich published on
The Salt at npr.org July 2016

A Jan Davidsz de Heem still life with ham, lobster and fruit, circa 1653

The table is set for dinner. Small cooked crabs and shrimp are laid out on the thick wooden tabletop next to succulent figs, grapes, pears and types of produce you can’t even name. There’s a citrus with a long coiling peel draped around it, and an entire roast of some animal’s leg that’s been cut down the middle — so you can see the thick layer of fat running around the edge. Just for good measure, a red lobster and ornate goblet of wine stand on a pedestal above it.

If this meal were laid out in 2016, you’d get out your phone and Instagram a perfectly filtered photo before digging in, #foodporn. But in the 1600s, when famous still life artist Jan Davidsz de Heem was eating, people showed off their meals with paintings instead.

Paul Cezanne 1890s

A new study by Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab found that capturing and showing off decadent and expensive meals is a decidedly old-fashioned practice. Brian Wansink, author of Slim by Design, and Andrew Weislogel, a curator at Cornell University’s Johnson Museum of Art, studied 140 paintings of “family meals” from 1500 to 2000 and found that the majority of foods depicted were not part of the average fare. Some of the most likely foods to appear were shellfish, ham and artichoke. For the common classes during the time these paintings were made, Wansink says, more likely items to eat would have been chicken, bread and the odd foraged fruit.

People don’t usually Instagram frozen foods they put in the microwave. Instead, the most successful #foodporn is often an item the photographer laboriously made in the kitchen or found in either an expensive or out-of-the-way restaurant. A recent top #foodporn on Instagram is a photo of seven elaborately decorated eclairs. In the caption the food blogger behind @dialaskitchen compares the Toronto-made pastries to some found a couple years ago, “while at L’atellier de l’éclair in Paris.”

Wayne Thiebaud – Cakes, 1963

Wansink says that today’s social media food posts often attempt to convey that their creator is worldly, adventurous and has money to spare. “None of these things are about food,” he says.

Food in Art

A series of paintings featuring food in different situations
found on foodmuseum.jigsy.com

Artists, photographers and illustrators seem to have been fascinated by food in all aspects of life up through history. Harvesting, cooking, serving and eating, all of it can be found in paintings in galleries all over the world.

Some pictures may show poverty, some quite the opposite. Some are kitchen scenes, some show people round tables ar home, some in restaurants, some again show people eating outdoors.

Common for all these pictures and illustrations is the food, be it a girl peeling a potato, a woman having breakfast or farmers showing their goods at a market or Andy Warhol’s famous Cambell’s soup tins.

I hope you enjoy this small collection of food in art  – Ted

Klick the thumbs to see the full-size pictures