Food allures our ocular faculties as much as it gratifies our alimentary and salivary organs. We devour visual stimuli with our eyes just as we ingest edibles through our mouths. It thus seems felicitous that the word “taste” applies to aesthetic predilections as well as culinary concoctions. Art is cultural sustenance, food for thought. “You are what you eat”: No wonder victuals have served as popular and powerful muses throughout art history. Given the fact that bodies require nutriment and social lives revolve around eating, it’s easy to see why viands are such irresistibly appealing artistic subjects. Provender aptly symbolizes humanity, custom, appetites and consumption of all kinds. From fruit-laden still lifes to Pop Art soup cans, painting lends itself uniquely to portraying comestibles. Paint’s fluid organic qualities echo the elasticity of foodstuffs and bodily matter. Mixing paints is comparable to baking; applying pigment to canvas is like spreading jelly or butter over bread. Since edibles are about the here and now, these fresh paintings were picked for being in season: all embody playful or intriguing qualities appropriate to summer, with food as the compositional main course; and most of the artists have recently shown in Los Angeles. From Mondongo’s bread mosaic of Eva Peron, to Junghwa Hong’s woman-cooked banquet partaken only by men, to John Kilduff’s fast food parody, each of these paintings depicting appetizing dishes proffers emotive and conceptual substance. Feast your eyes!

  • Gina Beavers, Grillin, 2012

  • Katherine Bernhardt, Jungle Food, 2015, courtesy CANADA New York

  • Dike Blair, Untitled, 2008, courtesy Karma, New York

  • Frances Cocksedge, The Hyatt Lobby, 2015

  • Holly Coulis, Hot Dog Sun, 2017, courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, © Holly Coulis

  • Michael Dopp, Capriccio_10, 2016, photo by Robert Wedemeyer, courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles

  • Junghwa Hong, Where are you, dear?, 2018, photo by Brian Thomas Jones, courtesy of the artist and CB1 Gallery

  • John Kilduff, Aquarium Burger, 2013

  • Judith Linhares, Stack, 2017, image courtesy the artist and Various Small Fires

  • Jean Lowe, Ephemera (Oh thank heaven!), 2013, photo by Grant Mudford, courtesy of Rosamund Felsen Gallery

  • Mondongo, Eva, 2006, Serie Retratos Argentina, image courtesy the artist and Track 16 Gallery

  • Ariana Papademetropoulos, 710 N. Normandie, 2017, courtesy of the artist and Wilding Cran Gallery

  • Kenny Scharf, ORBITAL PINK FROSTED, 2015, photo by Josh White, image courtesy the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery

  • Eric Yahnker, Cheese Slice with Garland, 2010