Art and food have a long and fruitful history, both on and off the canvas. As far back as the stone age, cave dwellers used vegetable juice and animal fats to paint. Ancient Egyptians carved pictures of crops on hieroglyphs in the pyramids.

In the Dutch golden age of the 1600s, food took the art world's center stage with Still Life paintings. Artists found inspiration in nature and the ethos of antiquity to freeze a moment in time with their still-life portraits of objects. Each food in the image, its arrangement, and level of consumption held symbolic significance referencing biblical or cultural texts. The artworks signified the owners' wealth and intellectual prowess to society. This link between food and status quickly became a point of discussion for Dutch artists. Vermeer's famous painting, The Milkmaid, challenged the status quo by portraying commonplace goods: milk and bread.

Fast forward to 1932, Futurist artist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti continued challenging the status quo by publishing The Futurist Cookbook. In the book, Marinetti wrote about food consumption as an avant-garde performance reflecting a new way of life. Marinetti described cooking with the same language formerly reserved for art: originality, harmony, sculpture, and form. With The Futurist Cookbook, Marinetti helped pave the way for food to join the realm of art in the modern age.

In the 1960s, the Eat Art movement emerged. Artists in this movement used food as a material to create immersive pieces. Riskrit Tiravanija was one of the most notable artists of the Eat Art movement. In the 1990s, Tiravanija organized events where he would cook and serve Thai meals to viewers at galleries. He would leave the pots and dirty dishes in the gallery for the duration of the exhibition. The food became a conduit for interaction, and the audience actively participated in the artwork. Artists of the movement titled these interactive events "social sculptures," where eating together was an art form of its own accord. To the present day, artists have continued to incorporate cuisine into their practice, from experimental restaurant projects to elaborate sculptures made of food.

Eating together is an art form in many ways. Studies show that the people we are with and the environment we are in have an impact on our dining experience. For example, food and wine often taste better on vacation. When you bring home wine from a trip, it can be disappointing to discover the taste is not as vivid as you remember when strolling in a sunny vineyard with a loved one. The taste difference results because experiencing food is a subjective experience, like encountering art. Before you even take a bite, your body processes sensory and emotional factors in your interpretation of the food. When you are on vacation, the relaxing environment improves your culinary experience.

Studies have also shown that color and sound impact the way we taste. Professor Charles Spence conducted an experiment called Colour Lab with winemakers and their wine. Spence mixed different music and light pairings to study how the environment impacts the taste of wine. Green light increased the wine's freshness for the drinker, whereas red light improved the fruit notes in the wine. One winemaker said his wine tasted remarkably better when you drank it while listening to The Door's People Are Strange than the Beach Boys' California Girls. The study revealed that light and music can change the overall enjoyment of wine by up to 9%. Synesthesia is a neurological feature that describes the linking of the senses. Spence's study is a prime example of the solid synesthetic bond between food and aesthetics. It is no surprise that restaurants put so much effort into the art and design of their spaces because when we eat, we taste the sensory stimuli of our environment.

Conversely, what we eat impacts our ability to make art. Artists often follow strict diets tied to their creative output. When he created art, Andy Warhol's diet consisted of cakes, candy, and cold milk. Jack Kerouac would live off of Chinese Food and apple pie when writing. The eating habits of artists are so unique that Michelle Gerard recreated the meals of 12 creatives in a photo series called The Artist Diet. There is a science behind these artists' eating eccentricities. Dr. Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at UCLA, studied food and creativity, revealing that diet changes have a powerful impact on cognitive abilities. Young adults who ate a high quantity of fruit and vegetables reported more intense feelings of curiosity and greater creativity than the demographic average. Andy Warhol must have missed the memo.

While supported by modern science, the ethos that food is an integral part of the creative spirit goes back to ancient times. Food has long been a feature of rituals and communal events. Historically, people believed that food involvement in routines could nourish deities and act as a conduit for guidance between the spiritual realms and our own. Banquets celebrated religious holidays in ancient Greece and Rome with special foods to inspire music and painting. In the 18th century, affluent Victorian women would host intellectual "salons" where they paired meals with the evening's performance and held seances to make art dictated by specters. In the modern day, arts festivals have discovered that the presence of food offerings improves visitors' engagement and encourages positive community relationships.

Ignoring the many benefits of bringing together food and art is impossible. With this rich legacy in mind, we are expanding the offerings of 1515 Lincoln Gallery to bring catering to our gallery and offer it as a rental space for events. We believe a gallery is more than a place where art hangs on walls for observation. A visit to our interior or exterior space can be a moment in time, a social sculpture, and a synesthetic experience. Our gallery is a multifaceted salon to engage with your senses, connect with the community, and find inspiration. Whether it is an artist gathering, a business meeting, or a bitesize vacation, 1515 Lincoln Gallery looks forward to offering delicious food and fine wine for events to satiate your appetites and spark your creativity.