CYNTHIA D. BERTELSEN

“As for the garden of mint, the very smell of it alone recovers and refreshes our spirits,
as the taste stirs up our appetite for meat,”
~~ Pliny ~~

Meat enjoys a reputation as a controversial subject these days. As well it should, in the food system now in existence. There’s even a vastly insightful magazine called Meatpaper. And some authors have begun to examine the modern, rather oppressive, presupposition that meat is bad.

But what many advocates of a meatless diet seem to ignore, whether willfully or out of ignorance, meat contributed profoundly to our survival as a species.

In the not-so-distant past, meat figured prominently in the diets (and hence in the art) of anyone who could afford it or could hunt (which meant very few people, because of restrictions on hunting to all but the nobility, for whom it became a metaphor for much of life).

But for artists, from early cave paintings to the art of Pinar Yolacan and Victoria Reynolds and Mark Ryden, meat models certain truths about society. Don’t forget the work of Gabriela Rivera, who photographs herself draped in meat, in the same way that Pinar Yolacan designs meat-clothes for her human models.

The following paintings shows what happens when artists think of meat beyond the societal norms of nourishment (click on each to find out more about the paintings and the artists) … meat as metaphor?

Mark Ryden: “The Meat Show” (images and commentary)

For more on food in art, see Food and Feasting in Art (Guide to Imagery), by Sylvia Malaguzzi (2008) and  Food in Painting: From the Renaissance to the Present, by Kenneth Bendiner (2004).

© 2009 C. Bertelsen