ESNA Conference
Food, glorious food: Food at the heart of nineteenth-century art

Organized by ESNA (European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art) and MAS (Museum Aan de Stroom) Antwerp, in conjunction with the exhibition "Antwerp à la carte".

This year’s two-day international ESNA conference intends to study the various and complex relations between food, the experience of eating, and nineteenth-century art. Although food has always been a subject in the arts, the modes of production, distribution and consumption of nourishment changed radically during the course of the nineteenth century. Food decisively entered the public sphere and consciousness in cities where new sites of consumption in the form of mouth-watering food shops and restaurants emerged. At the same time food became a marker of national identity, of gender identity, of ‘taste’, of affluence, and of social and economic status.

Modern phenomena such as industrialization, liberalization of the market, urbanization, rise of the middle class, issues of nationality and gender, leisure time and economic upheaval affected the gastronomic field as well as the depiction of it in the visual arts. A new fascination for food emerged and was reflected in the entire panoply of the artistic field, ranging from recipes, food literature, decorative arts and interior design to works of art and art criticism. This conference unravels how the development of the food industry and the changing notion of ‘taste’ and social mores are reflected in nineteenth-century art in the broadest sense.

Registration fees:
Regular: € 60 (both days) | € 40 (1 day)
Student: € 40 (both days) | € 25 (1 day)

PROGRAMME

Thursday 8 June

10.30
Registration / Coffee and tea

11.00
Welcome
Mayken Jonkman (RKD) and Leen Beyers (MAS)

11.10
KEYNOTE LECTURE
Food Visibility and Urban Identities
Peter Scholliers | Professor and Head of the Department of History, Free University of Brussels

11.50

SESSION 1. Identity and Nationality
Chair: Maite van Dijk | Van Gogh Museum

Restorative meals: Culinary pride and the rehabilitation of Paris (1872-1885)
Andrew Eschelbacher | Susan Donnell and Harry W. Konkel Assistant Curator of European Art, Portland Museum of Art

Russian artists, Russian menus: Gastronomy as means of painting identities in nineteenth-century Russia
Alexandra Grigorieva | Core Research Fellow, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

"… acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people": Depictions of Thanksgiving in post-civil war American visual culture
Ekaterini Kepetzis | Professor, Department of Art History, University of Cologne

13.00
Lunch
Incl. Poster Presentations

14.30

SESSION 2. Food and Gender
Chair: Marjan Sterckx | Ghent University

"Impressionist market gardener specializing in cabbages": The cabbage as metaphor in Camille Pissarro’s critical reception
Allison Deutsch | Teaching Fellow, University College London

Sweet images: Gender, color, and confection in nineteenth-century France
Frédérique Desbuissons | Maître de conférences en histoire de l’art moderne et contemporain, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne

Femininity, fertility, and the cult of Les glaces in post-revolutionary Paris
Heather Belnap Jensen | Associate Professor of Art History, Brigham Young University

15.45
Introduction to the exhibition
Ilja van Damme (UA) and Leen Beyers (MAS)

16.00
Visit to the exhibition "Antwerpen à la carte"

17.00
Drinks

18.00
End

Friday 9 June

09.00
Coffee and tea

09:30
KEYNOTE LECTURE
Mapping Oranges, Berries, Pears, and Grapes: Gustave Caillebotte’s Fruit Displayed on a Stand
Marni Kessler | Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kress Foundation Department of Art History, University of Kansas

10.10

SESSION 3. Professionalization and Mediatization
Chair: Allison Deutsch | University College London

Photography and the rise of a global trade in meat
Emily Morgan | Assistant Professor of Art History, Iowa State University

Between consumption, advertising and high art: Portuguese still lifes of food at the end of the nineteenth century
Foteini Vlachou | Postdoctoral research fellow, Instituto de História Contemporânea, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Flames of gas, electricity: Advertising displays news firings in the late nineteenth century
Jean-Pierre Williot | Professor of contemporary history, University François Rabelais

The Chef’s Image: Presentation and self-representation of chefs in the nineteenth century
Felix Bröcker | Trained chef and PhD fellow at the Offenbach Academy of Art and Design

11.45
Chefs as artists – creativity in modern cuisines
Guus Thijssen | Gastronomic speaker

12.15
Lunch

13.45
Slow food: Still lifes of the Golden Age
Charlotte Rulkens | Mauritshuis The Hague

14.05

SESSION 4. Agencies: Social and political connotations
Chair: Rachel Esner | University of Amsterdam

Hungry eyes: The politics of taste in nineteenth-century American still-life painting
Shana Klein | Post-doctoral Fellow in Global and Trans-regional History at the German Historical Institute and Georgetown University

Potato eaters, potato painters, and the taste of critics
Lieske Tibbe | former assistant professor at Radboud University Nijmegen

Tongue-tied: Raphaelle Peale’s Still life with steak and the ecology of food
Jeff Richmond-Moll | Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Art History, University of Delaware

15.20
Coffee and tea

15.50
Concluding remarks
Ilja van Damme | Director of the Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp

+ Discussion

16.50
End