Many craft beer lovers cite the same beer as their gateway into the craft community: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Similarly, for newcomers to the art world, many point to the street artist Banksy for making art accessible and engaging to those who might not have otherwise stepped into a museum. By bringing high art to low places, and blurring the lines between them, he inspired society to re-examine masterpieces by artists around the world and through the centuries. We all started somewhere, and these are just two examples of where taste can truly begin.
In today’s conversation with art critic-slash-comedian Verity Babbs, we discuss how the elusive English artist and activist first led her down the path towards her degree in art history from Oxford University, and how her studies led her to write her first piece for Good Beer Hunting, titled “Exploring the Hop/Vine Divide — Depictions of Beer and Wine in Northern and Southern European Art,” which was published on April 5, 2023. In the piece, she delineates the cultural differences between different regions of Western Europe through art, and more specifically, how drinks are depicted in those artworks. Weather and religion both play a part, but so do globalism and the rise of the middle class.
We’ll talk about all this and more, hearing from Verity first-hand when (and why) she decided to write on this topic, and how her story almost didn’t get written at all. She’ll reveal what surprised her during the process and what she wants us to take away from both the piece and this discussion. You’ll also hear about the not-so-surprising endorsement that set wine, rather than beer, up as the drink of the gods, or at least the Son of God, and how that influenced art and society for millennia.