Looking for texts and images about food and art

January 24, 2010 9:38 AM

Please help me collect short quotations, texts and images related to food and art. It's ok if it's mostly food and just a little bit of art, or vice-versa.

"Food" includes drink, cooking, farming, etc. and "art" can be music, literature, and so forth. John Cage's favorite mushroom recipe?

I'm going to be laser-etching the best of these on all the dishes from the kitchen of a local arts organization. High-contrast images like pen drawings and engravings are more likely to be usable than paintings.

posted by moonmilk to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

"If music be the food of love, play on." From the Shakespeare play Twelfth Night, said by a lovesick duke.
posted by bluedaisy at 9:48 AM on January 24, 2010 [1 favorite]

I eventually want to make art for my kitchen from the lyrics to Everybody Eats When They Come to My House by Cab Calloway. (Lyrics here.)

And yeah, I'm totally going to be that person. I hope you're not directly ripping off others' artwork, but instead creating your own versions of it.
posted by runningwithscissors at 9:59 AM on January 24, 2010

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are. ~Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Chowder breathes reassurance. It steams consolation. ~Clementine Paddleford

What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child? ~Lin Yutang

Hunger is the best sauce in the world. ~Cervantes

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink... ~Epicurus

All sorrows are less with bread. ~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
posted by cooker girl at 10:00 AM on January 24, 2010 [1 favorite]

Giuseppe Arcimboldo made many paintings along the lines of Autumn, from his Four Seasons series.
posted by Flunkie at 10:22 AM on January 24, 2010

"A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou..." - Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
posted by illenion at 10:41 AM on January 24, 2010

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet that I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: `If all the trees were bread and cheese' - which is indeed a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. -GK Chesterton
posted by nangua at 10:43 AM on January 24, 2010

foodimentary.com might be a good resource.
posted by shopefowler at 12:34 PM on January 24, 2010

find the exhibition catalogue for "Sex and Food: a Memorial Exhibition, and at the Centre Pompidou"
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 12:41 PM on January 24, 2010

Oh, Salvador Dali was all about food!

Here's a few relevant paintings, but I'm sure there are dozens.

For instance (via google):

Egg Sun!

Fish on a Table
posted by Truthiness at 7:19 PM on January 24, 2010

Don't judge fruit or people by the color of their skin. - from an old Origina bottle
posted by alice ayres at 7:53 AM on January 25, 2010