Art and Appetite

Friday September 17, 2010 - Sunday December 12, 2010
Art and Appetite

Claes Oldenburg (American, born 1929), Flying Pizza, from New York Ten, 1964, color lithograph. Weedon Endowment funds, 1965.13.1.9. Photo courtesy the Oldenburg van Bruggen Foundation. Copyright 1964 Claes Oldenburg (photo: R. J. Phil).

From ordinary bread to elaborately frosted wedding cakes and pig roasts to pizza, food has been the delight of artists throughout the ages. This exhibition of more than fifty prints and photographs from the Davison Art Center collection explored the depiction of food and drink across five centuries.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder designed the engravings Fat Kitchen and Thin Kitchen, 1563, as comic allegories of feast and famine. Käthe Kollwitz protested starvation among the working classes in the 1920s. Pop artist Claes Oldenburg monumentalized modern fast food with Flying Pizza, 1964, and Dieter Roth used cheese as a printing material in his Small Landscape, 1969.

Whether allegory or artstuff, the work in this show left visitors wanting more!

Art and Appetite was organized in conjunction with Wesleyan University's campus-wide exploration, Feet to the Fire: Feast or Famine.

Related Event

Opening reception
Thursday 16 September, 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Gallery talk by Curator Clare Rogan, 5:30 p.m.
Open to the public free of charge