Since the last post there has been half term, and that combined with pouring boiling water from the kettle onto my hand while cooking has meant this has been a week of very little art production. I’ve been doing a bit of reading, see list at the end of this piece if you’d like to follow suit.
I have recently come across these granadilla in markets all over London, externally very pretty, they open up to be like passion fruit but with bigger grey seeds and a slightly milder, sweeter, less tangy taste than the more familiar varieties of passion fruit. They seem to be a newish South American import. So for a new fresh view, last week we had a look at how food and guilt have been long expressed in art: This week I want to look at the history of food and pleasure, and later food as treasure, none of these ideas are new.
So thinking about the exotic and new: Just as a reminder of the symbolic role of the apple in Sri Lanka, a luxury and rare product in the early twentieth century, I would like to share a recent story from Padma. Picking up an apple from the fruit bowl she said
“Oh, this apple is delicious. Do you remember my sister, my younger sister, she was beautiful, and she was clever, you know she’s not alive any more…When we were children she would bribe me, she would get me to do things and promise an apple, so I’d do her jobs for her, and then she’d just show me a picture of an apple on the calendar!!!”
So for all my interest in art and food it has to be remembered that the symbol is never a replacement or the real thing. In addition the real thing can have a symbolism of its own, it’s enjoyment can prompt access to memories that are hard to retrieve otherwise.
In contrast to the last blog which concerned food as symbol in the Early Renaissance and late medieval period it is also possible to find examples from that period of food as nurture and health giver, so the work of monks and nuns collecting and copying herbalist texts, and the work of the Nuns with Hildegaard of Bremen, in describing both horticultural practice and the heath giving nature of plants as food as a spiritual gift from God (Causae et Curae) are in direct contrast to the ideas of food simply as an expression of desire and a symbol of sin which underpinned the art for public consumption I looked at at the National, which were about the subjugation of the physical in pursuit of the spiritual.
And to think about some questions:
Are the contradictory attitudes to food expressed in different art forms of the late medieval early Renaissance period an expression of anxiety at social change, and is that the same for us? Is it that living in politico-economically changing times where power structures fall and rise that social anxiety is expressed through anxiety about the very sustenance of life? Or is it that at the basis of our relationship with food there has always been contrary pressures, and that what is different now is the abundant availability of imports and “new” technically developed foods and really big business with massive advertising budgets and a weakening state?
I think the complexity of Western attitudes to food are long term. In the late medieval period people moved away from the feudal structures of the rural environment and trade became central to material survival. There was a growth in the guilds, becoming a baker , or cook, or market stall holder provisioning the city was a source of income new migrants to the city and in particular for the first time lower class women, independently of husbands, could make their own livelihoods. This is the point when lower class women became able to own property and business rather than solely being regarded as property themselves.
I also think that current socio-political and technological changes are relevant: Why as reported recently in the Guardian in its review of the British Birth Cohort Studies does it become apparent that the current rise in obesity in the UK started in the 1980s? In contemporary culture, especially as expressed in a city like London, this is also a period of flux and change. There is the increased power of Transnational Corporations, the changing and weakening role of government, in particular the expression of these in the context of global economic crises, massive advertising budgets cthat can be contrasted with the increased democratisation of communication though the internet, added to which a marked rise in consumerist culture.
This is at the same time as a shift towards increasing women in the workplace, contrasted with the pressure on those women to conform to unachievable ideals, and without a sufficient corresponding shift towards shared domestic duties across gender. Also it is a period of increased difference in the wealth from the top to the bottom of society. We are in a period where we are struggling to understanding our ideas of a social contract which underpinned the health gains of the period between 1945 and the 1980s where the extreme excesses of income differential were compensated for by the welfare state. The cohort studies have been a useful source of information that has lead to progressive changes in maternity care and other areas. Let’s hope they become a source for change in food relationships based on concrete research.
In the middle ages the plague and the freeing up of people from bonded labour led to increase trading and population drift towards cities like London: This move to urban centres and the building up of trades, selling of produce or the early processing of produce to make them easier to keep and sell is the start of the city as market and reflects the move to a money economy . The plague really was the beginning of the end for bartering, it was from this time that peasants were paid rather than indentured, but this transfer to monetary wealth caused the old powers great anxiety. During feudalism food produce was either grown directly by the powerful or collected as taxes from their indentured peasants. At the top of the feudal heap was the King, then came the Lords and Monasteries The feudal lord/monastery taking most of the produce in exchange for the land and ‘protection ‘provided. So the late medieval early Renaissance saw a break down in the social order as it was understood at that time.
In reaction what people from any class could consume was strictly and directly controlled through the Sumptuary Laws which covered not only clothing but also food. The greatest part of everyone’s income was spent on food and it was an important symbol of wealth. On the part of the Royals, the sumptuary laws were brought in to control conspicuous consumption by lower class people and to shore up the powerful classes, and as a sort of protectionism, to discourage the importation of cloth from Europe and increase the use of wool from the UK, and the consumption of fish rather than meat. In addition they had a public order aspect where clothing was an official indicator of class and gatherings of groups of peasants could then be easily recognised for their potential threat. Food preparation and selling businesses were incredibly materially important. And in response to periodic shortages and the expansion of the known world food importation grew. The feudal system gave way to money, money and trade was controlled through guilds some of which are still important in the city of London.
And in contemporary London the growth of Farmers Markets allows access for the more wealthy to fresh produce. Traditional street markets which serve the less well off are in places being revived and others under threat from the privatisation of the land they have been on for centuries.
An appreciation of the sensory can be found still within the ranks of work by Monks and Nuns during the medieval period, including work by the Nuns led by Hildegaard of Bremen(*1 & *2) show that food was also understood in relation to health and religiously as a gift from God to be enjoyed.
These Herbalist texts are contained in books rather than alter pieces, and interestingly would have been largely exclusively in the hands of the educated religious elites who were the literati, and in fact though more religious also more likely to have access to excess: In the Feudal period taxes of produce would have been paid to the monasteries and convents. And in a sense it could be argued that the convents and monasteries were often centres of consumption, certainly the allowances for eating and drinking for monks and nuns may give some truth to stereotyped fat monks like friar Tuck. They are beautiful works, and there were herbal manuals that were beautifully illuminated and illustrated. They also link food with pleasure and mental and physical well being. (G Riley*1) So do these books have a relationship to the many and various cook books that sit on out shelves?
However at the time of the witch hunts the knowledge contained within could get you accused of witchcraft. The witch hunts were a hysterical reactionary force which had their roots in puritanism, magical thinking and anxiety at social change. As is often the case the socially less powerful were held to blame for societies ills, and so unmarried women, travelling medicine people, and people otherwise marginalised by society were far more likely to be accused.
The shift of people and power to urban rather than rural settings created an environment, much like our own of flux and change, of power shifting from the hands of one elite into the hands of another, and of counter cultural manifestations which looked back at an idealised past. That sounds very familiar, and in addition the increased literacy of the urban trading classes has its parallels in the increased democratisation of communications in the current age of twitter, blogs and e communications.
It is not surprising that food had strong emotional connections both positive and negative when very high proportions of incomes of the both rich and poor were spent on food so it was even more powerful as a symbol of wealth and power. And women who were less powerful had less food security in society, where they were expected to eat last in the family, were unable to secure land, and if nuns were more likely to fast (Law), was giving way to women able to feed themselves. In the same way the shift in social structures that allowed women to own property rather than be regarded as property have their parallels in increased participation in the paid work force by women in the 20th and early 21st centuries, and just as then there is a backlash surrounding that change.
But the greatest threat to your ability to survive was, as it still is, poverty.
Food as a marker of status was well established.
Material consumption was clearly controlled, more controlled than it is today where in places like London excess provision is more the norm ( Bee Wilson). So can we link the idealisation of a non physical spirituality, the antagonistic duality of the human as expressed in Thomism and later Puritanism, can this be compared with some of the more extreme versions of diets? The kind of purist diets which are not successful as a means to achieving health, as they don’t lead to the development of healthy moderate eating habits, but are more related to a disordered relationship with sensuality? And that idea of extreme control of the physical which appears to underpinning of anorexia?
So while there is a long western history of anti-sensuality including food and linked to sex, there is also a long history of food as health giver and linked to the pleasures of life in a good way and the struggle between the two has a long history of duality in our culture.
The conflict between food as a basis for health and pleasure, and food as a source of guilt persists in contemporary London food culture within the frame work of overall excessive consumption, waste and uneven availability of fresh produce which actually threaten health. In addition there is interference of the most powerful forces the promotions of the large corporations of foods which have been developed with the subsidy of the state (US space and military food technology sold on in products to the public) countered by promotions of food concerned with naturalness or the ability to trace the food to its producer. Both sides of this argument fall into two camps: Using guilt and sensuality within the context of “naughtiness” or “sinfulness” and puritanical arguments for health and goodness. Sometimes sinfulness is poised as environmental degradation, sometimes the promotion of fresh food is posed as oppressive to women, an alternative “sin”.
So that while we may feel like we live in a modern largely secular society, we are still dominated by ideas about sensuality which link food with sex sin and naughtiness, illustrated by hashtags like foodporn. This does not help us to develop a healthy relationship with food
Desire has always had its complexities, there have always been forces trying to influence and distort desire because it is powerful and at the basis of human nature. In a society which is increasingly consumerist it is not that surprising that more people are consuming more. It is in the interest of business that that is so.
If you are interested in reading more around the subject, or more lazily feel like watching a bit of TV here are some useful books and TV programmes, many of which are available online.
1. Gillian Riley, Food in Art 2015
2. Whitney Chadwick, Women Art and Society (1980s edition)
3. TV: “Cooked”, Netflix
4. TV “Food Unwrapped” Channel 4
5. TV ” Huw’s War on Waste” BBC
6. Jay Raynor “A Greedy Man in A Hungry World”
7.Jennifer Lawler, Encyclopaedia of Women in the Middle Ages,
8 Bee Wilson “First Bite: How we learn to Eat”
9 Features on UK Cohort Studies Guardian, Saturday/Observer Sunday 27/28 Feb 16
