Vegetable Dinner

Media - 1984.101 - SAAM-1984.101_1 - 7833
Copied Peter Blume, Vegetable Dinner, 1927, oil on canvas, 25 1430 14 in. (64.276.8 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1984.101

Artwork Details

Title
Vegetable Dinner
Artist
Date
1927
Dimensions
25 1430 14 in. (64.276.8 cm.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase
Mediums
Mediums Description
oil on canvas
Classifications
Keywords
  • Figure group
  • Occupation — domestic — cooking
  • Waterscape — coast
  • Architecture Interior
  • Object — vegetable — potato
  • Object — vegetable — squash
  • Object — vegetable — carrot
Object Number
1984.101

Artwork Description

The two women in Vegetable Dinner are both images of Peter Blume's companion Elaine, with whom he lived during the 1920s. The woman on the left, with her fashionable clothing and lit cigarette, evokes his love of parties and freedom, while the woman on the right chops vegetables to represent commitment and domesticity. This expresses Blume's conflict between his affection for Elaine, who "had very competent hands," and his need to live the bohemian life of an artist. (White, "Slicing and the Dionysian: Domesticity and the Artist in Peter Blume's Vegetable Dinner," unpublished ms., SAAM curatorial file, 1994) The dramatic cropping of the two figures, together with the knife pointing ominously at one woman's thumb, transforms this ordinary scene into something far more menacing, and suggests that neither of Elaine's roles would have made the artist completely happy. Blume eventually parted from Elaine, remembering later that their relationship was "always in a state of high tension anyway. It could never have survived as a marriage" (interview with the artist, 1983, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution).

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