Van Gogh Painting Gets Name Change After Chef Spots Error In Vegetables
Image by Minke Wagenaar from Amsterdam, NL / Flickr via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
While food and culture complement each other like cheese and wine, art historians aren’t foodies—and a newly-corrected mistake by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam puts this proof in the pudding.
Vincent van Gogh’s 1887 still-life, long referred to as Red Cabbages and Onions, has been renamed after a Utrecht, Netherlands-based chef identified the “onions” as bulbs of garlic.
Chef Ernst de Witte, who visited the museum last year, later wrote to its staff that he suspected there was a mixup in the naming of the vegetable. When pressed for evidence, Witte—who has seen a lot of root vegetables at work and is also a visual artist—worked with his wife to create a PowerPoint presentation pointing out the stylistic differences between the bulbous produce in this painting and the onions in the Post-Impressionist’s 1889 work, Still life around a plate of onions.
The chef also recorded a video distinguishing different types of alliums down to shape and color. In it, he also noted the clove segments that Van Gogh had created under the garlic skin.
👨🳠There once was a debate about the objects in the foreground of this painting: were they onions or garlic? Chef Ernst De Witte believed it was garlic, and the museum later confirmed this.
— Van Gogh Museum (@vangoghmuseum) April 19, 2023
What do you think? pic.twitter.com/uiQvWWHmG7
After checking with its in-house research team and an independent researcher, the Van Gogh Museum finally concurred and renamed the work to its rightful title, Red Cabbages and Garlic. It also updated the painting’s description on the wall and online.
“Van Gogh could not have chosen a simpler subject: some garlic and a few red cabbages. But by working with color contrasts, he was able to turn them into something special,” the text now reads.
De Witte shares with Hyperallergic that the establishment took his theory “seriously from the start.”
Energized by the experience, the chef has crafted a new dish of red cabbage and garlic in his restaurant, Feu, featuring a poached red cabbage over a creme of puffed garlic. To pay further homage to the artist, the meal is even drizzled over with his favorite liquor, absinthe.
[via Hyperallergic, ArtDependence, Van Gogh Museum, images via various sources]
