Frida Kahlo – Shellfish Ceviche
Ceviche is a seafood dish that originated on the Mexican coast. The seafood is marinated in citrus juices which pickle the meat and effectively cooks it without heat. The flavors are sweet and spicy with a hint of sour from the lime. Frida Kahlo completed Still Life: Viva la vida y el Dr. Juan Farill (1953-54) at the...
Frida Kahlo – Coconut Milk Ice Cream with Caramelized Papaya & Lime
Although Frida Kahlo is best known for her striking and emotionally revealing self portraits, she created about 40 still life paintings that provide just as much insight into her preoccupation with death and her overwhelming loneliness. Coconuts are a familiar foodstuff in many of Frida Kahlo’s still life paintings. The nut is differentiated in many...
Vincent Van Gogh – Holiday Lefse
In addition to decorating mountains of gingerbread and sugar cookies, a beloved Christmas tradition in my family was eating lefse on Christmas Eve. My Norwegian Great-grandmother would cook the thin potato pancakes every year in her tiny apartment on a piping hot griddle. As soon as the pancake was golden and toasted, we would slather...
Paul Signac – Roasted Vanilla Orange Juice
The period of art known as Pointallism was evolutionary due to the mathematical approach to colour and optics. The art up until the late 1880s was driven by the emotive qualities of colour and location. Pointallism marked a scientific foray into the arts similar to the complex perspecitval theories developed by Renaissance artists. The beauty...
Marian Drew – Berry & Lemon Cheese Pie with Lemon Butter Crust
In her beautifully composed photographs, Marian Drew includes the lifeless bodies of Australian fauna collected from the side of the road. The photographs represent a meeting of Europe and Australia through the insertion of wallabies, kangaroos, and possums into the still life tradition. The images assume a painterly tone achieved by long exposures and careful...
Soren Emil Carlsen – Spice-Rubbed Turkey with Cranberry BBQ Sauce
Soren Emil Carlsen was a Danish born artist who was heavily influenced by the work of Jean-Siméon Chardin. His paintings featured simple objects in muted tones. His limited palette produced moody canvases and he worked carefully to create seemingly haphazard compositions. He was a contemporary of William Merritt Chase and was part of the European...
Vincent van Gogh – Chipotle Sweet Potato Mash with Fresh Lime
The dark and dreary interior of Vincent van Gogh‘s The Potato Eaters (1885) is a stark juxtaposition to the colour and the flavor of the sweet potato mash. With Thanksgiving being such an important meal in the North American calendar, I felt it was appropriate to include a painting of a familial supper in this...
Louis Comfort Tiffany – Pumpkin Chipotle Tartelette with Beetroot Jam & Chevre
Louis Comfort Tiffany was originally trained as a painter before pursuing the art of glassmaking in the late nineteenth century. He is linked with the Art Nouveau movement which embodies floral motifs with flowing and stylized curves (1). Tiffany preferred to work with glass that contained mineral impurities and often composed his decorative arts with...
Julian Opie – Green Beans with Red Onion & Mustard Vinaigrette
For fans of the band Blur, contemporary British artist Julian Opie is perhaps best known for the cover design of their ‘Best of’ album. His iconic and often replicated style of flat areas of color delineated by thick black lines is created by reducing photographs to their most basic elements. Still Life with Green Beans,...
Andy Warhol – Upside-Down Banana Cake
The Polaroid camera fit perfectly into Andy Warhol‘s artistic methods of mass production. Warhol began working with Polaroid cameras in the early 1960s and according to him “There is something about the camera that makes the person look just right” (1). Often if Warhol particularly liked a photo he would turn it into an acetate...
Frédéric Bazille – Prawn Pho
Frédéric Bazille was an impressionist painter interested in the effects of light who worked with a dark palette. His peers included Pierre Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Édouard Manet, although it was the work of Eugène Delacroix that inspired him to become an artist. While simultaneously studying art and medicine Bazille struggled to...
Edvard Munch – Pink Peppercorn Ice Cream & Bittersweet Chocolate Chip Cookies
I am delighted to introduce my October blog collaborator, Siri from The Transplanted Baker. The title of her blog refers to Siri’s status as an American ex-pat living on the west coast of Norway. We decided to continue with the Norwegian theme with the art selection so we chose the famous painting The Scream by...