A Comparison of the Depiction of Food in Ancient and Modern Art Pieces

Food has always been a sort of release to people whether it be for dining purposes, entertaining your guests, photographs, depicting it on an art piece from vases to scrolls to walls, but now due to the rising technology of the 21st century we can add social media to the list of where food is portrayed. As shown in our Food & Instagram day in class many people, mainly millennials, love to take pictures of their food and post it on social media especially Instagram. On Instagram, there are many food blogs or self-proclaimed “foodies” that either set up their meal time to look like a beautiful show or some just do it the casual way and post a picture of themselves shoving a donut with caviar on top in their mouth that they most likely waited two hours in line for and “actually tastes pretty good!” In ancient art food was depicted, for example, on vases showing a servant giving wine and grapes to their boss, in a beautiful mosaic on their walls of vineyards, or in the “standard art ways” of pottery and in painting while in modern art it can also be portrayed through many more mediums, such as, the food itself. For example, in a butter sculpture or through a movement type message, such as, when Lady Gaga wore a meat dress to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. The use of food has evolved immensely in many ways over the centuries but one thing always remains, food is LIFE. Food back then was depicted in the art piece while now food is the art. I will be comparing four art pieces; Modern art: Lady Gaga’s meat dress in the 2010 MTV VMA’s and the “100th Farm Show” butter sculpture by Jim Victor & Ancient Art: “The Holy Family” by Joos Van Cleve and a small clay sculpture of a women baking bread from an oven.

The Pennsylvania Farm Show Butter Sculpture,"100th Farm Show" Harrisburg, PA, January 2016 is a butter sculpture made by Food Sculpture Jim Victor. Jim Victor has made food sculptures, mainly butter, with his wife Marie Pelton out of their North-West Philadelphia home for the last 15 years. They mostly do projects for state and county fairs and corporate and public relations events. This is a modern way of not just portraying food in a piece of art but by making the food into the art. This piece shows a woman holding either a donkey or a cow with a huge wine bottle next to them with most likely her children standing and sitting around baby chickens and apples that fell to the floor. The sculpture could be a scene after winning first prize for their animal, for the pie that the daughter is holding in her hands, and for the apples that are falling out of the basket. This is one of the more recent cases where food is physically made into art. Other food into art sculptures are made out of cheese, chocolate, fruit, ice, and vegetables. It is a trend that is recently growing in the past decade and will continue on.

The Female baker taking bread from the oven. Early 5th century BC. Found at Tanagra north of Athens, Greece is an ancient art mini sculpture depicting a Greek woman taking out bread from an oven. Bread was a big staple in meals in the ancient times especially since it was cheaper and easier to make while pleasing the masses and was able to be eaten for a few days while meat would go bad quicker. This was most likely made out of clay or some type of stone. When many think of art pieces this is the type of art that people think of because it is not made of some type of food and has been around since the early 5th century.

Lady Gaga wore a dress made out of meat to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards as a statement to “that the meat dress was tied to her protest against the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and was a statement against the governmental restrictions placed on the rights of gay soldiers”1 even though most assumed that it was due to a statement against animal cruelty. Lady Gaga is a vegan herself and stated “If we don't stand up for what we believe in, if we don't fight for our rights, pretty soon we're going to have as much rights as the meat on our bones."1 This is another modern piece of art adapting to the ways on how food can make a statement whether itself is an art piece or if someone is wearing it. She chose to do this to take a stand for our rights and how the meat literally made a statement of its own. Many were not happy especially those of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and stated that she offended more people than she impressed. However, after the 2010 VMA’s Lady Gaga loaned the outfit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to display in their Women Who Rock exhibition. They preserved it by making it into beef jerky and now it stands on its own, boots and all.

“The Holy Family” by Joos van Cleve ca.1512-1513 refers to “The wine and fruits on the foreground ledge refer to Christ's incarnation and sacrifice. Presented as part of everyday life, they also testify to the emerging genre of still-life painting. The combination of quotidian domestic intimacy and symbolic meaning must have had mass appeal, since many variations of this painting were produced for sale on the open market.”2 It shows a baby sucking from its moms bosom with a servant or nurse behind them. It looks as it is dinner or lunch time due to the baby being fed and on the table there being some fruits and vegetables on a plate with utensils and what looks like a cup of wine around it. Meal time is very important especially when the child is an infant and needs breast milk from its mother especially since infant mortality was very high in those times.

I will be comparing The Pennsylvania Farm Show “100th Farm Show” Butter Sculpture and the mini clay sculpture of the woman baker taking bread out of the oven. I chose to compare these two because they are both sculptures but represent two totally different concepts. The butter sculpture represents how modern day art is depicted through food and that it can represent almost anything. It is also interesting because it is most likely a cow in the art piece and butter comes from cow’s milk. It represents a family happy from winning prizes most likely from a state fair for their cattle, pie, and what looks to be like a basket of fruit. This family may do this for a living. Raising cattle to win at shows and entering into contests. While in the mini sculpture the woman baker is baking bread for a living and she is not depicted to be smiling. The gray color makes me believe that it is more of a somber art piece because it is the woman’s job to bake bread all day so she is probably exhausted and is probably of a low-income percentage of the early Greek days. However, the mini sculpture can be put into someone’s house or into a gallery while the butter sculpture can only last a certain amount of time before it melts. Also, the butter sculpture is something that one would post on social media to show its unique work, how different it is, and the audience for it are people interested in sculptures made from unique objects while most people would not post a picture of the woman baker sculpture because it is more somber and not as happy. It would portably only go on the social media account of someone very interested in ancient art or is trying to sell pieces of that sort and its audience would be people of those same calibers and that can appreciate it more than a regular bystander. Both show the lifestyle of their time through their respective sculptures.

The second art pieces I will be comparing are the Lady Gaga 2010 VMA meat dress and “The Holy Family” oil painting. They both show strong women doing something they are good at Lady Gaga is known for her shocking outfits and ability to fight for what she believes is right while the woman in “The Holy Family” painting is giving milk to her child and in ancient times women of certain classes did not have jobs and that most woman considered their jobs to be mothering their children. Lady Gaga’s meat outfit is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and it is preserved as Beef Jerky would be and its audience are people really interested in Lady Gaga and all her quirky red carpet outfits, someone interested in music, or someone just really interested in seeing the dress in real life. Lady Gaga’s meat dress is still talked about in 2016 and has been posted and reposted on social media over a million times. While many may not think as her dress as a piece of art it is but art is all about expression from the eye of the beholder. The audience for “The Holy Family” painting would be someone who is very interested in classic or ancient art, a museum goer, and someone with more of an interest in art because they would appreciate it a lot more than a regular bystander.

In modern times people are wearing art and eventually it may go on display for the whole world to see it whenever they can and can possibly eat it. It is a way to express themselves about social issues and change while getting a gasping result from it even though it may not last forever as some ancient art pieces can. In ancient art pieces they were more about the standard art on walls, pottery, or murals and represented food in social ways but not always to express issues. They both are about expressing the social ways of the times and can range from a dinner party to friends hanging out to huge civil issues. Even though art is changing rapidly through the times it will always be a way for the artist to express him or herself in the way that he or she please while leaving a stamp of it on the Earth for however long it may be.