ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Food Art
THE ART OF LIFE WITH MAYA Image belongs to Maya Apostoloska
“An excellent served dish has to contain the whole universe served on the plate.” -MAYA APOSTOLOSKA
I
remember the day I went to work at a restaurant in Scheveningen Beach, and as usual, encouraged by my passion and energy I always used to check the reservations. I noticed a reservation under the name “Blije Leven” this caught my attention as it was common to make a reservation under the name of the person who made the booking. Receiving orders for the breakfast and lunch period, it was quite a busy day in the kitchen. Every free second was committed to preparing for the dinner patrons. I was 8
eYs Magazine
improvising at certain moments, but all meals were made with a lot of love, and they were elegant served. Blije Leven ordered. I stopped everything, made some space at the work table, took new gloves, a cutting plate and knife. I used a new technique and concept, unique in the kitchen routine. Happy with the results, I tasted the food and checked if the temperature was right. It was perfectly delicious and ready to be served. I didn’t breathe while serving the
final touch of the meal. I had created a painting of food on the plate especially for Maxima – The Queen of the Netherlands. Looking back, food has always played a significant role in art. Food as a subject matter inspired the artists from the OldWorld Classic Era, through narrative and still life, to Pop Art. Food roots an image in time and place. In the Stone Age, the cave painters’ artists used vegetable juice and animal fats as binding ingredients in their paints. The Egyptians, who were drawing food even inside the Pyramids, were carving pictographs of crops and bread on hieroglyphic tablets. In the Renaissance, Giuseppe Arcimboldo painted puzzle-like portraits composed of fruits, vegetables and flowers. The Post-Impressionist Cezanne’s was painting apples and oranges. The Modern Era, Avant-Garde Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti thinks of the preparation and the consumption of food as art. In the Pop art, food became a social metaphor where Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist focused on Campbell’s soup cans, the hot dog and the spaghetti. In the 1970 ’s artist Dieter Rot began using real food as an art material, an exhibition in Los Angeles presenting cheese placed in suitcases hung on the walls in the gallery, which later became surrounded by flies and the show is closed down by command of the public health inspectors.
