Abstract

This article represents an experimental and interdisciplinary approach to the history of art, gastronomy, and modernist studies. I demonstrate that the application of art-historical methodologies to forms of cultural expression typically considered outside the realm of visual culture to be a fruitful and worthwhile endeavor. By analyzing artist manifestos in tandem with recipes and chefs’ statements and conducting visual analysis of paintings alongside gustatory analysis of composed dishes, new forms of innovative scholarship can be generated. In this article, through an examination of art-theoretical writings, visual analysis of Piet Mondrian’s paintings, the critical musings of twentieth-century chefs and critics, and stylistic analysis of Nouvelle Cuisine recipes, I explain that some of the chief modernist values, beliefs, and ideals espoused by Mondrian and found in his paintings later came to be distilled and translated in the composed dishes of Nouvelle Cuisine chefs of the 1970s. Part of this investigation involves the restaging of a quintessential Nouvelle Cuisine dish in order to engage in heuristic modes of gustatory analysis to draw multi-sensory conclusions about the similarities and differences between De Stijl painting and Nouvelle Cuisine cooking.