viz.

Lee Price, Sunday.  H/t to Jezebel, Sociological Images

Lee Price paints photorealistic portraits of her subject (usually herself) consuming food that we might label "bad:" for example, McDonalds, cupcakes, pie, and so on. While Dr. Lisa Wade's piece for Sociological Images focused on the way these paintings make public what is often a shameful, private act and elevate it through the use of "high" medium (painting), I was most interested in the way these images seem to acknowledge these commonly held beliefs about indulgent consumption even as they complicate them. I'd like to take a stab at raising more questions about Price's work and how it formulates an argument about bodies, pleasure, shame, and excess. Pictures after the jump are NSFW.

For me, these images as a collection walk the line between embracing a bottomless desire (hence the sometimes enormous amount of food) and lingering painfully in a temporary and shameful pleasure. The bird's eye view in the image at the top of the post suggests spying; additionally, the subject is hunched with her face hidden. This composition contrasts sharply with the image below, which, while it retains the bird's eye view, is somewhat more focused on open indulgence.

Lee Price, Grilled Cheese II

The different settings in Price's work contribute to their arguments as well. The subject in Sunday appears to be in a living room, perhaps her own; the lovely furniture indicates some degree of affluence. While the living room is more public than the bathtub/bathroom or, in the image below, the bedroom, it is hard for me to read the affluence without thinking about the prevalence of eating disorders in upper middle class "Western" women. While the image in the bathtub seems more celebratory, the image in the living room almost seems to indicate an unproblematic open secret; that is, a behavior that is less secret than it is too obvious or ingrained to be worth mentioning.

Lee Price, Refuge

I will say that Price's more recent work seems to skew more toward the pleasurable sides of indulgence. The images below are all from the section labeled "current work" on Price's website, whereas Sunday and Refuge are both older pieces.

Lee Price, Jelly Doughnuts

Lee Price, Lemon Meringue

Lee Price, Happy Meal

When the piece on Price ran on Jezebel, several commenters also noted the rhetorical effect of Price's body size. While showing women of a variety of sizes--including obese women, who are more likely to be publicly judged for their eating habits--would make a different argument, but the repetition of the same woman also has an interesting effect. Looking at the paintings as a series constructs a narrative of repeated, consequence-free indulgence which is, in some ways, a fantasy. But the repetition also emphasizes a point: savoring something delicious, even when it is "bad" and even in excess, can be a source of decadent pleasure.