Food and drink appear nearly everywhere in the history of art, whether in luscious still-life paintings or in scenes of sumptuous meals and bustling markets. Such images not only offer aesthetic appeal but also reveal actions and dynamics—indulging, abstaining, buying, selling, making, growing, craving and sharing—that give food profound cultural meaning.

All Consuming: Art and the Essence of Food explores how the production and consumption of food entered the imaginations of European artists from 1500 to 1900. A diverse array of objects, nearly all drawn from the Norton Simon’s collections, is organized into three sections—“Hunger,” “Excess” and “Sustenance”—which delve into a range of relationships with eating and drinking, both positive and negative.

These works of art shaped, and were shaped by, real social conditions. In the broad time span represented in this exhibition, Europeans dealt with famine, revolutionized their agricultural methods and imported goods from non-European countries and colonized lands. Artists interpreted these events through stylistic and cultural trends that were often grounded in moralizing biases or in the fantasies and ambitions of wealthy patrons.

The exhibition’s conclusion brings us closer to home through Edward Weston’s and Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s photographs of California and Mexico in the 1930s, which represent food in the context of land, labor and community.

This online companion offers further exploration of a selection of fascinating images from the exhibition All Consuming: Art and the Essence of Food.