Art and Cuisine

A six part lecture series, held on Monday evenings on the Zoom platform.  This Special Event series, combines the nourishing of the mind and spirit with that of the body.  Shundi culminates the series with a special dinner to raise funds for the Center. 

About the Class: 

 From Alex Shundi: 

"For me food has always walked along the same path as art: one nourishes the body, one nourishes the spirit.

Preparation, strategy of manufacture, choice of ingredients, satisfaction, intrigue and pleasure of the senses have traditionally been attributed as the property of both.

Culture is the “cultivation” of the soul and spirit, thought and dreams in night and day, fantasy and imagination, as culture of food gives vivacity and health to the body.

Painters and musicians, opera singers and film-makers, writers and poets have been attracted to cuisine, from Dante to Verdi, Toulouse Lautrec to Monet, Pound to Wagner, on and on, all the way back to Pliny and beyond, I’m sure.

Artists have more than often used food as inspiration, dinners and kitchens, hunts and harvest, from Carracci to Brueghel. One is offered the day’s menu on walls of Pompeii, painted 2000 years ago.

Surrealism, Cubism, Impressionism, Dali, Magritte, and early on Arcinboldo and even Da Vinci, all explored recipes, origin and preparation, execution and presentation.

There are intricate recipes written with divine calligraphy on ancient Islamic texts in Isfahan Damascus and Istanbul, and relief tablets of food preparation and offerings on countless walls flanking the Nile in Egypt.

Many books have been written about how and what artists like to eat, and in museums one finds thousands of works of art that treat food as subject.

Here in my studio I have books on Pollock and Krasner, O’Keefe and Monet, Kahlo, Lautrec and Marinetti, all with their recipes and food preferences, Impressionist cuisine, Venetian and Florentine, Bolognese and Dutch, Aragonite and Provencal, Arabic and Andalusian. Roman and Egyptian, Indian to Chinese.

Hunger has been correlated with the need to create, need of the physical, need of the spirit ( the “starving artist” was hardly the case…)

All tradition invent specific food preparations to celebrate political, social, or spiritual events and yearly festivals, all with myths attached as to the symbols of its preparation, from births to marriages to wakes.

This series explores that connection. We will study the provenance of foods through trade and conquest, the symbolism of food as presented by artists, within the social-religious context of its formulation and the endless avenues of trade and influences: think of the spice trade and the crusades.

It will be a wonderful plunge into food and art, with the promise of pleasure and understanding-historical, geographical, scientific and aesthetic while being purely fun-filled and nourishing.

A great marriage, and a delight in every way."

Best of all, the series will culminate in a dinner party prepared by Shundi who along with everything else is a master chef. Held at the Center, proceeds will support the Art Center.  The tickets will be sold separately from the lecture series, however participants in the series will have first choice for the available 30 seats. Its going to be a great feast for the mind, soul and body! Cost for the dinner party will be $80 per person, all for a great cause!. The dinner will be in January with the specific date and more details coming soon.