This dissertation considers foodways as a vital symbolic and material force in the arts of Mexico’s volatile postrevolutionary reconstruction (1920 – 1960). Although Mexican food history has stood at the forefront of a growing food studies movement, the field has been slow to appropriate image-based methodologies. Likewise, art history has been hesitant to embrace the historical performativity and materiality of foodways. This project thus seeks to fill a gap at the margins of food studies and art history, particularly at the nexus of indigeneity and urbanization. The dissertation traces the shifting relationships between art and food during a period of rampant modernization, in which the rise of modern cookery through electrical appliances and industrial foodstuffs converged and clashed with the nation’s growing nostalgia for its pre-Columbian heritage. The book focuses on three case studies of artistic production and alimentary consumption—Tina Modotti and pulque, Carlos E. González and mole poblano, and Rufino Tamayo and watermelon—that highlight the various ways in which visual renderings of food were used to frame indigenous culture as both the foundation of and a threat to the modern state. Each case study engages the convergence of racial imaginaries, artistic production, and foodways to show how conflictive attitudes toward indigenous heritage and bodies were made manifest through images of food and foodways. Therefore, this project demonstrates how seemingly innocuous images of foodstuffs and consumption became implicated in a broader visual, experiential, and commercial battle over the definition of nationalist attitudes toward indigeneity. The manuscript consists of five chapters and an appendix. Chapter 1, “Introduction,” surveys Mexican food and art histories and establishes my intersectional framework. Chapter 2, “Nursing the Nation: Pulque and the Indigenous Body in Tina Modotti’s Baby Nursing,” argues that Tina Modotti’s celebrated photograph Baby Nursing (1926) invokes the problematic consumption of pulque, an indigenous fermented beverage, as a metonym for nationalist ideologies that simultaneously celebrate and rebuke indigenous lifeways. Chapter 3, “The ‘Spirit of Mexico’: Consuming Heritage in Café de Tacuba,” demonstrates how an iconic but previously unstudied painting depicting the mythic invention of mole poblano, commissioned for Mexico City’s famous Café de Tacuba (1946), negotiates modern consumption by evoking colonial production. Chapter 4, “Mister Watermelon/Señor Sandía: Fruitful Anxieties in the Work of Rufino Tamayo,” argues that Rufino Tamayo’s still life mural Naturaleza muerta (1954), commissioned for the Sanborns department store café, mediated the state’s aggressive removal of fruteros [informal fruit vendors] by acting as both an icon of Anglophone modernity and a visual celebration of Mexican tropicalia. Chapter 5, “The Colonial in the Contemporary: On the State of Mexican Gastronomy,” presents the book’s conclusions while engaging in a critique of Mexico’s contemporary gastronomic movement and its reliance upon colonial aesthetics to veil Mexico City’s socio-economic fragmentation. The Appendix catalogues recipes for pulque, mole poblano, and watermelon-based dishes, all of which have been compiled from nineteenth- and twentieth-century cookbooks and manuscripts. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / April 30, 2018. / Art, Consumption, Cooking, Foodways, Mexico, Nationalism / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael Carrasco, Professor Directing Dissertation; Robinson Herrera, University Representative; Paul Niell, Committee Member; Karen Bearor, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_650758 |
| Contributors | Wolff, Lesley Anne (author), Carrasco, Michael (professor directing dissertation), Herrera, Robinson A., 1966- (university representative), Niell, Paul B., 1976- (committee member), Bearor, Karen A., 1950- (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Fine Arts (degree granting college), Department of Art History (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (325 pages), computer, application/pdf |
| Coverage | Latin America, United States |
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