Reading List: A Feast for the Eyes

In celebration of National Cookbook Month in October, the Frick Art Research Library invites you to feast your eyes on a selection of books from our collections that celebrate food and art. Spanning time periods and media, these volumes offer insights into diverse cuisines and illustrate how artists have used food as a powerful symbol to reflect and critique society.

Stay tuned for the Frick’s grand reopening in early 2025, when you can savor these culinary treasures in our renovated reading room.

1. Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life

   By Donna R. Barnes and Peter G. Rose (2002)

   Learn about Dutch culture through art and food history with this catalogue, published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title at the Albany Institute of History & Art. The catalogue features a pocket with a supplementary cookbook, Matters of Taste: Dutch Recipes with an American Connection, by food historian Peter G. Rose, with recipes ranging from salads to olie-koecken (which are similar to donuts).

   

2. The Modern Art Cookbook

   By Mary Ann Caws (2013)

   Cook up some recipes from celebrated modern artists such as Paul Cézanne and Helen Frankenthaler. From appetizers to desserts to beverages, this cookbook covers all the culinary bases across the history of modernism. Plus, don’t miss Frick Collection artist Claude Monet’s recipe for madeleines!

   

3. Les Dîners de Gala

   By Salvador Dalí (2016; originally published 1973)

   This delectable volume invites us into the surreal gastronomical world of Salvador Dalí. The newly reissued and richly illustrated cookbook contains 136 recipes from French cuisine that were selected by the artist, who was known to throw lavish, eccentric dinner parties with his wife, Gala.

   

4. The Art of Food: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation

   Edited by Carolyn Vaughan (2021)

   Discover how a selection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists have used food as a vehicle for expression. This exhibition catalogue—with parallel text in English and Spanish—explores the symbolic power of food in art through themes such as community, pleasure, and social justice.

   

5. Dinner with Jackson Pollock: Recipes, Art & Nature

   By Robyn Lea (2015)

   Enter the kitchen of Abstract Expressionist painters Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner with this cookbook of their own recipes, as well as those of their family and friends. Part cookbook, part biography, this volume provides readers with a more intimate understanding of life in the Pollock-Krasner home on Long Island and includes recipes ranging from borscht to chocolate-and-coconut blancmange.

   

6. The Edible Monument: The Art of Food for Festivals

   Edited by Marcia Reed (2015)

   Feed your interests in all things related to food and celebration. Focusing on ephemeral food-based artworks created for festivals in early modern Europe, this exhibition catalogue is a treat for those interested in the historical predecessors of today’s state fair butter sculptures. You can also find fascinating reproductions from early cookbooks.

   

7. Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine

   Edited by Judith A. Barter (2013)

   Dig into the American artistic landscape to investigate the interconnections between art, food, and culture. This exhibition catalogue takes a chronological approach to analyzing how artists’ depictions of food and dining relate to broader sociopolitical contexts in the United States.

   

All photos by Joseph Coscia Jr., The Frick Collection