Consuming Painting: Food and the Feminine in Impressionist Paris

Allison Deutsch's book, "Consuming Painting," challenges the pervasive view that Impressionism was above all about visual experience by focusing on the language of food and consumption as used by prominent critics such as Baudelaire and Zola. She rethinks French modern-life painting in relation to the visceral reactions that these works evoked in their earliest publics, using culinary metaphors to describe the appearance of paint and the painters process. These metaphors provide important insights into the fabrication of the feminine and the construction of masculinity in nineteenth-century France. The book is essential reading for specialists in nineteenth-century art and criticism, gender studies, and modernism.

Format: Hardback
Length: 216 pages
Publication date: 01 February 2021
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press

In her groundbreaking book, Consuming Painting, Allison Deutsch challenges the prevailing notion that Impressionism was primarily concerned with visual experience. Instead, she delves into the language of food and consumption as employed by renowned critics like Baudelaire and Zola, offering fresh perspectives on familiar works by artists such as Manet, Monet, Caillebotte, and Pissarro. By reexamining the culinary metaphors these critics used to express their admiration or distaste for painting, Deutsch reimagines French modern-life painting in relation to the visceral reactions it elicited in its early audiences. Writers likened viewing to ingestion, drawing comparisons to food to describe the appearance of paint and the painter's process. The specific food metaphors they chose were aligned with particular female types, such as red meat representing sexualized female flesh, confections representing fashionably made-up women, and hearty vegetables representing agricultural laborers. Deutsch argues that these culinary figures of speech provide valuable insights into the fabrication of femininity and the construction of masculinity in nineteenth-century France.

Consuming Painting goes beyond mere aesthetics, delving into the social politics embedded within the deeply gendered metaphors of sense and sensation. Deutsch's original and compelling analysis upends traditional narratives of the sensory reception of modern painting, making it an essential read for scholars in nineteenth-century art and criticism, gender studies, and modernism. Through her meticulous research and insightful interpretations, Deutsch offers a new lens through which to appreciate the complex interplay between art, culture, and gender in nineteenth-century France.

Weight: 1116g
Dimension: 214 x 265 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780271087238