Food: Between Hunger and Consumption

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, turns its attention to a consumer good that is as essential as it is weary: starting April 14, the focus will be on European food culture between 1500 and 1900. The exhibition, All Consuming: Art and the Essence of Food, brings together 60 paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures from the Norton-Simon Collections to bring to the table how artists responded to the food situations of their time. The show divides into three thematic parts, Hunger, Excess, and Food, which it works through piece by piece.

While Hunger looks into the many faces of food shortages between charity, war, and religious asceticism, Excess reveals depictions of morally questionable consumption and exotic decadence. Food draws on the agricultural aspect of food, foregrounding labor and commerce. In a final room, the exhibition brings together overarching themes through the photographs of Edward Weston and Manuel Alvarez Bravo. They are from 1930s Mexico and California and move the audience away from the European perspective. Until the exhibition closes on August 14, visitors may view both Weston's sweeping views of ranches and vineyards and Bravo's photographs of restaurants and drinking fountains.