The Carter’s new show, which opens Feb. 22, is “Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture and Cuisine.” Organized by the elite Art Institute of Chicago, where it recently finished its inaugural run, the exhibition explores “the meanings and interpretations of eating in America.” It contains 60 paintings from the 18th to the 20th centuries, all by American artists (sorry, no apples and pears by Cézanne in this one), to demonstrate how depictions of food, in the words of the show’s hosts, “have allowed American artists to both celebrate and critique everything from trends in the national diet to the broader issues of society and politics.”
Margi Conrads, deputy director of art and research at the Amon Carter, says the exhibition presents at least one unavoidable side effect.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time with the material,” she says, “and I’m just hungry all the time.”
The show includes iconic works by such noted artists as Edward Hopper, Roy Lichtenstein, Rockwell and Warhol, who gets a showcase for his unforgettable Campbell’s soup cans.
Conrads credits the exhibit with bringing together “an absolutely stunning group of works of American art that tells a story we’re all intimately familiar with. It’s about food in all its aspects, eating, drinking and how it reflects moral, political and social messages and even national pride. And so, it’s a story that, no matter what walk of life you come from, you have a connection to it.”
The show carries with it what she calls “a chronological backbone” that serves as a history of food. Over the years, food has helped artists “think about design in their paintings,” Conrads says, “how to tell stories, how to use color, how to move toward abstraction, how to express personal meanings, how to use lines.” Figuring out the arrangement of “shape, space, line and color is at the heart of it, and food gives you all of those things.”
The exhibition offers a moving chronicle, from the origins of agriculture and its place in American history to the invention of the picnic; to the changing nature of breakfast, lunch and dinner; to the rise of the restaurant in American culture.
As Conrads says, “Art and Appetite” demonstrates “the marvelous history” of food, and the table could not have been set any better than by the Art Institute of Chicago.
Opens Feb. 22 and runs through May 18 at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth. Free. 817-738-1933. cartermuseum.org.