THURSDAY, FEBURARY 26 | 6:00–7:00 p.m.
Picturing the Kitchen: Food, Art, and Labor in Early Modern Spain
Daniela Gutierrez-Flores, Assistant Professor of Spanish, University of California, Davis
Produced during the height of Spanish imperial expansion, paintings of still lifes and kitchen scenes—known as bodegones—have often been understood as richly symbolic commentaries on vanity and the fleeting nature of life. Yet before it designated a pictorial genre, the word bodegón referred to a space of eating and provisioning, where food was prepared for ordinary and often poor people. This talk invites viewers to look again at these images not simply as displays of Baroque abundance or moral allegories, but as windows onto the lived realities of food-making labor in the long seventeenth century.
Focusing on works by artists such as Diego Velázquez and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, alongside lesser-known and anonymous painters, the talk explores how kitchen scenes encoded ideas about culinary labor at a moment when cooking was beginning to gain professional recognition. By examining how food is prepared and represented, these seemingly humble scenes reveal larger questions about social status, racialized and gendered labor, and the value of manual work. Drawing connections between visual culture and contemporary writings, the talk reveals the kitchen as a contested social space, one in which the ideological tensions and political dynamics of the Spanish Empire became visible through the everyday act of making food.
Bob and Jean Smith Auditorium
Space is limited; register online in advance
Meadows Museum members: Free
SMU students/faculty/staff: Free
Non-members, Paperless Pass: $10
Members, please note that you must sign in to receive your complimentary admission. If you are having trouble purchasing tickets online, please contact the museum box office at: 214.768.8587