Carolyn Brady at Nancy Hoffman - New York - Brief Article

Carolyn Brady has temporarily abandoned her immaculate round-the-house still lifes, her inside/outside interior and exteriors, and her glimmering English and French gardenscapes to concentrate on a subject that fascinates almost everyone: food, painted lush and medium-large in watercolor. Among the 35 works dating from 1997 to 2001 in this show were several suites in which she goes in for course-by-course breakdowns of the meals that mark the days of the American upper middle class. There is a glamour to this esthetic menu that serves Brady well in her perfect gustatory recall.

What distinguishes this work from her previous evocations of food is her absolute dedication to summoning it up intensely. The gentle hunger, the fresh rite, the sensation, the facticity of tabletop dining are all captured with both precision and painterliness through a photographic preparatory stage. But Brady has never been a Photo-Realist. Her sensual and psychological appreciation for the elements of her meals takes them out of the category of reportage and into poetry.

Food painting is a Western tradition that goes back as far as Greco-Roman times. Mounds of fruit and meat were favored by the painters of the Northern Baroque. Here, the cuisine is always haute, the menu international, the table set charmingly. The scene is both social and solitary: while multiple place settings and sometimes a fragment of a figure can be glimpsed, Brady focuses on the immediate foreground, the food before her (and us). In Plantains and Salsa/Latin Lunch (2001), we see in the background a bit of a sweater and jacket and a hand reaching peremptorily for a fork, but the main attraction is a blue-glass plate full of crisp plantains heaped high with salsa.

From the "Le Vieux Manoir Suite" come lunches with a zesty melon soup, a wild mushroom and tuile salad, a blue-plate dessert. Brady is out to prove that food can be afforded an esthetic grace, making it, somehow, all the more palatable. She delights all the senses, as well as the soul.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group