Art History of FAT

Willendorf Venus, 30,000 BC

"Corpulent Cavalier" by Jacques Callot, 17th century

"Feeding Gargantua", fictional glutton by Francois Rabelais,a 16th-century medical doctor and Catholic monk, who spent decades writing a series of five books, collectively known as "Gargantua and Pantagruel," that became wildly popular for their dark and bawdy humor.(Image credit)

"Three Graces" by Peter Paul Rubens

"Bacchus" by P.P. Rubens

"Bathers" by Renoir

"Walk in the Hills" (1977) by Fernando Bottero (image credit)

"Fernando Botero's (born 1932) paintings and sculptures are, on first examination, noted for their exaggerated proportions and the corpulence of the human figures and animal figures. The "fat people" are often thought by critics to satirize the subjects and situations that Botero chooses to paint. Botero explains his use of obese figures and forms as such: "An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it." He is an abstract artist in the most fundamental sense of the word, choosing what colors, shapes, and proportions to use based on intuitive aesthetic thinking. This being said, his works are informed by a Colombian upbringing and social commentary is woven all throughout his work." (Read more about this artist here.)

Fatmen sculpture, anonymous, late 20th century

Yellow Bikinii by Sartre V

Magnani Paolo, artist

Slowinski, "Fat Black Guy" (1995)

1The black figure in this painting is symbolic of urban black America, tortured by McDonalds, Kentucky Fried and government sponsored lotteries.
winski’s painting is symbolic of urban black America, tortured by McDonalds, Kentucky Fried and government sponsored lotteries.

Jeramy Turner, "Moon over America"
. In this painting, even the hills have morphed to reflect the national condition.

This painting was stolen from a Chicago gallery in 1991. Anyone who has seen this painting please call the artist at 718-499-7274

1991, 65" x 65", oil on canvas. In this painting, even the hills have morphed to reflect the national condition.

This painting was stolen from a Chicago gallery in 1991. Anyone who has seen this painting please call the artist at 718-499-7274

Bulging Through History by Dawn Debeli intro

duces our subject well.

We are born, live and are held prisoner in our bodies. As a collection of bodies, we like to look at pictures of ourselves, whether it is in a painting, a photograph, a movie or on TV. Likewise, since the beginnings of art, the human body has been the primary subject. Yet while the body as subject remains a constant, the form the body takes has varied greatly over time. In general the form of the body in art reflects the culture in which the art was made, for art is a reflection of a culture as much as a product of it.

The earliest works known are large obese nudes with exaggerated breasts and buttocks. These sculptures are believed to have had ritual or religious significance relating to fertility. In this sense the body image reflected in the work did not relate to an actual human form, but to an imaginary, magical one. The anatomical elements were distorted to give the work a symbolic and spiritual power.

Natalie Angier author of Who is Fat? It Depends on Culture continues the discussion.

"For the millions of years of our evolution, there wasn't much food around, so our bodies are designed to keep from losing weight," said Dr. Fitzgibbon at Northwestern. "When we start to lose weight, our metabolism slows and our appetite increases — we burn less and we want more."

But the body is not nearly as efficient at shedding excess weight. Some evolutionary biologists believe that the difficulty of getting enough calories is one reason why humans have a preference for rich, fatty foods — if there's a choice between a marbled hunk of fawn thigh or a handful of rice, our sinewy ancestors did well to go for the meat.

That may be one reason some of the earliest depictions of human beings are fabulously fat. A number of the famed Venus figurines, palm-size statuettes carved between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago, depict women with corpulent thighs, buttocks, breasts and bellies, and estimated body mass indexes well over 30.

As a rule, archaeologists say, only the most important elements of ancient life and society were immortalized in stone, suggesting that the obese women who served as models for the figurines were either royalty, or were accorded superhuman powers —specifically, the power never to go hungry.

The early Christians also looked scornfully upon the obese, counting gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins. In some medieval paintings, sinners were shown as fat and Christ's disciples as slender.

Dawn Debeli in Bulging Through History again:

Historically, while the method of portraying the body has changed, the image has remained consistently healthy, trim and reflecting the ideal beauty of the time. There are moments in history, such as we see in the works of Rubens, or Renoir, when a bloated figure was seen as desirable. Yet unlike today such mass was not seen as a sign of ill health. To the contrary, in these times before the discovery of saturated fats,trans-fatty acids and heart disease, such plumpness was seen as a sign of wealth and good health.

Dr Peter N. Stearns, author of Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West writes this:

In non-Western cultures, fatness often was associated with high status. Polynesian kings were frequently quite fat, while the girls of Banyankole in East Africa were fattened in preparation for marriage like so many Christmas geese. Dr. Watson of Harvard said that when he began doing field work in Hong Kong in the 1960's, women who were slender would not have been marriageable. Men who were heavily muscled were considered the lowest of laborers. They were the ones who had to lift backbreaking loads for a living, and their prospects were dim.

Natalie Angier (Who is Fat? It Depends on Culture): With the 20th century came spectacular innovations in agriculture and food processing that made food cheaper, easier, more abundant and more calorie-dense than ever before. At the same time, labor-saving devices made sweat ever scarcer.

And as adiposity was democratized, the elite in industrialized countries began seizing on thinness as a sign of high status, not to mention of a good education. For it was the most educated sector of the population that learned first about the benefits of fruits, vegetables and whole grains over such American staples as meat, milk and Wonder Bread, and that began adjusting its eating habits accordingly.