The Mexican aesthetics of food as subjugation and liberation. From the Colony to the Revolution

Abstract

This essay proposes that the culinary encounter between Europe and America not only provoked a reciprocal
food enrichment, but also the creation of the very imaginary of the“NewWorld”through food. During the
first centuries of the conquest, the abundance of products from the Americas promoted the birth of modern
botany and the still life genre in art. Through the study of these two genres we can see how the image of
America was built with the formula of exoticism, sweetening the roughness of the Conquest. On the other
hand, with the Mexican revolution these genres become part of the construction of a national imaginary.
Mesoamerican culinary culture is then exalted, studied and integrated into art. Without denying the European
heritage, Mexico is consciously accepted for the first time as a mestizo society. Popular art, considered
the consignee of indigenous culture, is taken as a model by artists who did not identify with the muralist
movement. Still life – a typical genre of popular art – and the figuration of food, find in them their best receivers:
Rufino Tamayo, Frida Kahlo and María Izquierdo, to mention a few.