Professor Rod Phillips will give a lecture and lead a wine tasting at San Diego’s Timken Art Museum in August. His lecture is titled Intoxicated by Art: Wine and Art in the Age of Temperance (https://www.timkenmuseum.org/calendar/event/wine-masters-intoxicated-by-art-wine-and-art-in-the-age-of-temperance/), and it will explore representations of wine and its social effects in art between about 1830 and 1930. In this period, temperance movements around the world pressed for controls on alcoholic beverages. From 1910 to 1935 there were experiments with nation-wide Prohibition in Russia/the Soviet Union, the United States, and elsewhere.
The politics of alcohol were often transferred to canvas (and other media) and Rod’s illustrated talk will show the role of art in the social discourses on drinking. Some artists normalized alcohol by showing it as an integral part of dining, celebrating, and other social events. Others depicted men, drunk on wine, assaulting their wives; raucous revellers; men seducing women with wine; and people sleeping off hangovers. Rod will focus on wine, which was often treated as a more sophisticated beverage than beer and spirits, and thought less likely to lead to intoxication and negative social results.
The Timken Art Museum is a privately owned gallery with an impressive collection (including San Diego’s only Rembrandt). It offers free admission to the public. In 2019 Rod was invited to give a talk on wine and art, and he spoke on wine in the paintings of the Masters, 1500-1800. The event was so successful that he was invited to give an annual talk on wine and art. But covid prevented in-person events in 2020 and 2021, so Rod is resuming the series this year.