PERFORMANCE | FOOD | IDENTITY

in Contemporary Art

By

Haisang Javanalikikorn

Master of Letters

College of Arts

University of Glasgow

Christie’s Education

London

Modern and Contemporary Art

2010-2011

© Haisang Javanalikikorn

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore artworks with performative quality; subjecting food and

reflecting identities. Since the sixties, what was understood to be art has changed;

everyday life and art have become harder to distinguish. Quotidian is crucial to

contemporary artists whose works have performative principle owing to the

immediacy the artworks give. Cooking and eating are everyday activities which have

been explored the most in this concept. Pop artists use images of food products to

celebrate consumerism whereas some artists use food to criticise consumer society

and draws the attention to poverty instead. Feminist artists bring out cooking to

investigate female role and expectation towards women along with some feminist

artists present food to challenge gender stereotype and eating disorder. On top of

that, this thesis analyses artist’s role of making art by making food; making

experiences emphasising; drawing from Happenings, Fluxus, and Relational

Aesthetic.

16,400 words

2

Acknowledgement

Writing this thesis has been a challenge to me. Without support, guidance, and help

from several people this thesis would not be completed. First, I owe my sincerest

gratitude to Mike Ricketts for his patience, advice, and especially his motivation. I

am grateful to Lizzie Perrotte, Catherine James, John Slyce, and Richard Plant for

knowledge they have offered me throughout the year. I would like to thank Victoria

Stanton for her time spending on answering my email and sending me material I

needed about her practice. I would also like to show my appreciation to Natasha

Held for staying later than she had to so many of us can use the resource centre a

little bit longer. Furthermore, it is an honour for me to be part of Christie’s Course C

2010-2011, writing this thesis would be much more exhausting without everyone’s

help. Lastly, I am indebted to my family, without their support and understanding,

this academic year would not be possible.

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Table of Contents

Contents Pages

Abstract 2

Acknowledgement 3

Table of Contents 4-5

Catalogue Essay 5-22

List of Comparative Images (Essay) 22

Catalogue Entries 23-77

Entry 1: James Rosenquist

Sliced Bologna (1986)

23-26

Entry 2: Alison Knowles

Make a Salad (1962)

27-30

Entry 3: Victor Grippo

Traditional Rural Oven for Baking Bread (1972)

31-33

Entry 4: Daniel Spoerri

‘L’ultima cena, (19.11.1970)’ [The Last Supper] (1970)

34-36

Entry 5: Daniel Spoerri

Bananatrap, Dinner (1970)

37-39

Entry 6 : Claes Oldenburg

The Store, Study for Poster (1961)

40-42

Entry 7 : Claes Oldenburg

Pie à la Mode (1962)

43-45

Entry 8: Allen Ruppersberg

Al’s Cafe (1969)

46-48

Entry 9: Matha Rosler

Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975)

49-51

Entry 10: Matha Rosler

Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition (2011)

52-53

Entry11: Sarah Lucas

Eating a Banana (1990)

54-56

4

Contents Pages

Entry12: Sarah Lucas

Got a Salmon On #3 (1997)

57-59

Entry13: Bobby Baker

An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976)

60-62

Entry14: Elke Krystufek

Vomiting (17.1.1992) and Eating (18.1.1992) (1992)

63-65

Entry15: Sophie Calle

Chromatic Diet (1997)

66-69

Entry16: Rirkrit Tiravanija

Untitled (Free) (1992)

70-72

Entry17: Victoria Stanton

ESSEN (2003)

73-76

List of Comparative Images (Entries) 77

Glossary 78-82

Bibliography 83-93

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Essay

Food is of course more than a daily necessity: what, where, and how we eat or

whom we share it with defines our personal lives and culture habits.1

...the body itself is apprehended and represented as an unfinished, indigestible

figure which hesitates between identification and rejection and ultimately, between

pleasure and disgust… Because it constantly takes us to body’s direct confrontation

with material reality gastroaesthetics defeats all attempts at a purely discursive,

analytical elucidation of the subject/object relationship.2

The role of artists and art scene in general has shifted considerably since 1960s.

Artists started to investigate the experimental ways in making art, emphasising on

the method of producing art, and giving audiences direct experiences rather than the

art commodity; performance art is one of the art productions emerged around that

time. Performance art is never a singular artistic medium but it overlaps with others

such as language, music, film, photography, and so on. Nonetheless, one crucial

thing in performance art is the body; not inclusively artist’s body but also social’s

body.3 “Our bodies are our matter, our raw material, and I look forward to the

incredibly profound, creative, and innovative ways that we will intelligently handle

issues of time.”4

Due to its temporal and immediacy, performance art often relates to notion of the

everyday. “Through the temporality of performance, the artwork itself is also

redefined, transformed from an object into an event.”5 Everyday activity has been

used to make art including actions regarding food such as cooking, eating, digesting,

or even vomiting etc. Hegel notes that experiencing art (in this case, traditional form

of art like paintings and sculptures) only uses two senses, hearing and seeing but “for

6

1 Cynthia Morrison-Bell (2009) ‘Foreword’ in Cynthia Morrison-Bell and Anthony Key (eds.) (2009) Pot Luck. London; Art Circuit Touring Exhibitions. She mentions on how the idea of Pot Luck exhibition of food and art was generated from.

2 Michel Delville (2007) Food, Poetry, and Aesthetic of Consumption. ROUTLEDGE; New York. He talks about some artists’ rejection to Kant and Hegal idea of the exclusion of food aesthetic especially when it comes to performance art.

3 Janet Kraynak (2003) ‘Performance’ in Helen Molesworth (ed.) (2003) Work Ethic. Pennsylvania; The Pennsylvania State University Press. (p.122)

4 Linda M. Montano (2000) Performance Artist Talking in the Eighties. London; University of California Press. (p.xiii). This book is a collection of ten years time interviews Montano had with performance artists subjecting food, sex, and money.

5 Janet Kraynak (2003) ‘Performance’ in Helen Molesworth (ed.) (2003) Work Ethic. Pennsylvania; The Pennsylvania State University Press. (p.122). She suggests that by doing so, it can be seen as either ‘dematerialising’ art or developing formal strategies.

smell, taste, and touch have to do with matter as such and its immediately sensible

quality” therefore subject of food correlate with direct experience performative art

gives to audiences.6

Although food has been portrayed in art since the beginning, at first as the religion

symbol. Sixteenth century Dutch still life paintings uses food to show off their

wealth. Then, Modernist artists such as the Impressionism portrays food to

emphasise on modernity of society. Later, Surrealism symbolises food in relation to

psychological aspect. Futurism makes use of food to expand the idea of the avant-

grade in art, then it has been developed continuously and is still a grand subject in

contemporary art as artistic materiel or theme. Contemporary artists increasingly

produce art out of the everyday, especially after the sixties including eating and

cooking; food is a crucial part the quotidian.

Reading and understanding art was never passive and it has become clearer after

theories of French Structuralists like Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida7, the

‘viewers’ have become more or less ‘participators.’ Performance Food Identity is not

exclusive to ‘performance art’ as showing or performing for audiences. Rather, it

includes artworks from 1960s to present; those which have performative quality in

terms of either the idea, the making, as well as the actual performance. Equally, the

selection of artworks have food; cooking and/or eating to make an impression on

identity including society, body, sensory, and nationality.

This essay addresses Performance Food Identity in subjects of banquets; from

Futurism and how it inspires contemporary artists. Then, it points out the way food

reflects society such as how Pop art shows consumerism and how artists from

different backgrounds use food to point out social condition of poverty, obesity, and

eating disorder. On top of that, it explores further on artworks which present kitchen

as women’s arena, then move on to artists who experiment on their art commodities

associated with food and the everyday. Furthermore, this essay will expand cooking

performance as art in relation to Fluxus and Relational Aesthetic as and experiment

in disrupting the nature of everyday life.

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6 Hegel suggested sense of smell, taste, and touch are excluded from the enjoyment of art and “they cannot have to do with aesthetic objects, which are meant to maintain themselves in their real independence and allow of no purity sensuous relationship. What is agreeable for these senses is not the beauty of art.” cited in Carolyn Kormeyer (1999) Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy. Ithaca and London; Cornell UP cited in Michel Delville (2007) Food, Poetry, and Aesthetic of Consumption. ROUTLEDGE; New York.

7 Roland Barth’s Death of the Author and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction suggest that the reception of things is not what the author is trying to convey but how the individual perceives concerning their selfhood.

In Food, Poetry, and Aesthetic of Consumption, Michel Delville claims that “‘living’

aesthetic of food” came from Italian Futurism.8 Futurism started to associate with

food from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Cookbook (1932)9 and the ‘Futurist

banquet.’ Each banquet had each ‘formula’ or ‘recipe’; it was used as a task or theme

on how to experience the banquet. One of their themes was to look into senses such

as touching, hearing, and smelling.10 For some artists, holding a banquet, a feast, or

an event with extraordinary meals or ways of eating has been the way for them to

explore daily life in art. By doing so, it gives ‘participants’ an uncanny experience

inasmuch, eating is a daily ritual but these banquets provide something different.

Audiences get to experience this daily activity in an unusual way and with this sense

of unfamiliar, they are active and more aware of their action than they usually do, in

their ‘automatic’ routine lifestyle.

Danielle Spoerri, founder of Eat Art also played with aspect of tricking senses such

as in his 1970 banquet, Bananatrap Dinner. In this banquet, Spoerri created Menu

Travesti, a four course meal appears to be serve backward, coffee seemed to be

served first but it was not. The meal was served in the usual order starting from soup

but in mocha cup. This was where Spoerri developed this travesty principle from his

collaboration with his friend Tony Morgan, a director of a film called Resurrection.

This film “retraces the different stages of food chain, applying the concept of putting

the cycle in reverse, and which now seems like an Eat Art manifesto.”11 The banquet

is a performance in itself. The illusion dishes give to the eaters also have

performative principle; masking their reality. When food is served, one would expect

to taste the dish in certain way. However, if the taste does not correspond to the

visual; especially expecting something sweet but turned out to be savoury, the

pleasure one would receive is suspended. This aspect is also used in contemporary

8

8 Michel Delville (2007) Food, Poetry, and Aesthetic of Consumption. ROUTLEDGE; New York (pp.99-100). He introduced Dada as the first avant-grade food art and performance but it is not as influential and Futurism.

9 Michel Delville (2007) Food, Poetry, and Aesthetic of Consumption. ROUTLEDGE; New York. (pp.100-101) Futurist Cookbook is a cookbook against Italian tradition, where Filippo Tommaso Marinetti abolishes pasta, which is Italian national dish. In this cookbook he develops the idea on why we should choose other food than pasta including reasons such as nutrition and economy.

10 Michel Delville (2007) Food, Poetry, and Aesthetic of Consumption. ROUTLEDGE; New York. (pp.103-105). For example, Tactile Dinner Party was when participants had to eat raw vegetable from a bowl without using their hand so they could feel the touch of vegetable on their cheeks. Raw Meat Torn by Trumpet Blasts, “sets out to ‘divide’ each mouthful from the next by ‘vehement blasts on the trumpet blown by the eater himself’”. Extremist Banquet were two days long when no “one eats and ‘the only satiety comes from perfumes’, aims at a further dissociation of smell and taste which implicitly conceptualises the way in which” these two senses cooperate.

11 Geraldine Girard-Fassier (2004) ‘Eat Art: Daniel Spoerri’s Gastrosophy’ in Geraldine Girard-Fassier (ed.)(2004) Daniel Spoerri Presents Eat Art. April: Agency Fruits et Legumes Frais. (p.76)

restaurant. For example, Dans Le Noir in London with a slogan “welcome to a truly

sensory culinary experience” is a restaurant that food is served by blind staff and

restaurant goers will dine in darkness therefore the taste of food is independent.

Furthermore, sense of touch and taste has been investigated too. Nyotaimori, “the

practice of serving sushi on the body of a naked female.” 12 Numbers of sushi

restaurants in the big cities aboard have used to draw more participants to the

restaurant. It reflects human’s interest of searching for exotic sensations and

different ways of experiencing food. Boardly, the boundary of art and the everyday

has become even more blurred. Spoerri himself also owned an exotic restaurant

which can be seen as either ‘art’ or just a restaurant therefore I would suggest what

distinguished them would be the intention of the experience maker; that is the

performative, artistic quality to the piece, and the originality. This relates to notions

of Conceptual art of ‘art as an idea.’ 13 To illustrate, Spoerri’s banquets are different

from these restaurants mentioned regarding the artistic level because Spoerri’s

banquets are; first, done in artistic context and second, Spoerri is an artist, hence,

the banquets are art projects14 whereas those restaurants earn as places to eat with

‘special’ concept, not being artistic and their aim to to gain profit.

Victoria Stanton is another artist who gather people and give them an alternative

experience of having a meal. Her ESSEN is different from Spoerri’s banquets

because Stanton’s action takes place in an ordinary restaurant.15 It is like an

adaptation of everyday scene. To illustrate, Stanton takes pairs of participants

wearing white shirt and black trousers to imitate waiter’s uniform to a selected

restaurant depending on location and numbers of participants as well as other

criteria.16 Each partner sits across one another and order food of their preference.

Once the food is served, plate must be put in front of one’s partner because they will

be feeding one another. Be fed and feeding another people makes participants

become more aware of their food intake and others. A partner first needs to decide

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12 Brett Bull (2009) “Nyotaimori: a Japanese tradition?” in The Japan Times Online, Dec 3, 2009. available at <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fs20091203a4.html> [accessed July 19, 2011] This article talks about the authenticity of Nyotaimori and how it may effect the perception of Japanese women to the world.

13 Conceptual art is art in which the idea presented by the artist is considered more important than the finished product, if there is one. New Oxford American Dictionary 2nd edition 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

14 This reflects on authority of the ‘artist’ to commodify what is artwork and what is not.

15 Although sometimes it is a part of an art project but ESSEN always perform individually outside art institution.

16 Interview with the artist via email on August 8, 2011. “… places that would have enough seating for us, or have a particular kind of food that might make it even more interesting or challenging to be feeding/fed.” Or it depends on the host if ESSEN performs in other cities within particular context.

whom to be fed first or at the same time. Once the participants started eating, then,

they got to know one another’s rhythm; this is where the relationship between food

and the eaters as well as food and the partner is developed. Eaters will experience

taste of food differently since they have no control over their food intakes. Stanton

says “the sensation of the fork going into my mouth, with the occasional tine hitting

teeth and the food landing softly on my tongue. Is it clichéd to say that I feel like I’m

tasting salmon fir the first time? Because I think I kind of am. I am so acutely aware

of each step.” 17 Relationship between partners is heightened in this meal. One will

learn about another eating habit; what should go in first, what should follow and so

on. Eating steak for example, one may prefer to eat meat with salad in one bite, one

may prefer to eat them separately and when one is fed differently, will the taste

change? Moreover, ESSEN brings participants back to their pre-linguistic phase;

when the orphan is depended on its nurturer. “It is precisely this ritual aspect of

eating, coupled with a need to pay closer attention, that has become much more

apparent to me through the unfolding of the ESSEN performance.”18

Food is also metaphoric. Image of good gives many meanings as they are associated

with everyday life. From Surrealism, artists have been using food as a metaphor in

their work especially referring to phallus with anything furry or tube shapes or those

associated to myth or representations. Female contemporary artists are keen on

issuing gender stereotype using this aspect because women are portrayed as

objective and the weaker sex. Two portraits of Sarah Lucas from her Self Portrait

series, Eating a Banana and Got a Salmon On #3 show the artist holding food that

have phallic feature; banana and fish. An image of a women ‘eating a banana’ has

been presented in pornographic context but Lucas’ masculine look it gives Lucas’

Eating a Banana to be non-seductive but rather challenging to male viewer.

Similarly to Got a Salmon On #3, Lucas deliberately dresses manly carrying salmon

on her shoulders in front of male toilet. It looks rather provocative. In this

photograph, Lucas shows herself with aggression of masculinity; she seems proud of

herself, of her achievement, the fish and its size. Fish is a phallic symbol. The way

she holds the fish is different from the way fisherman hold the fish. She puts the fish

10

17 Victoria Stanton (2005b) ‘Don’t talk with my mouth full’ in Ascent Magazine, Yoga for an Inspire Life, 28, winter 2005. (p.22). She adds “it’s as if my taste buds have been put on high alert too.”

18 Victoria Stanton (2005b) ‘Don’t talk with my mouth full’ in Ascent Magazine, Yoga for an Inspire Life, 28, winter 2005. (p.23). Stanton later speaks to the participants and one of them share experience of missing the partner’s mouth or dropping a soup on her new t-shirt so one needs to pay closer attention on how to feed partner, the speed etc.

on her shoulder as if it is part of her body, hence, this salmon is a substitute of

female lack of phallus. Lucas holds the fish’s head intentionally representing the

erection. She uses salmon in this performance as it is what makes her masculine

because she is in possession of phallic object. These two photographs imply

castration.

In 1992, Elke Krystufek’s performed Videonanie in

front of the camera where she uses sausage to

masturbate. Once she finishes using that piece of

sausage, she eats it. “An cannibalistic fantasy is

expressed here: the penis symbolised by sausage is

chewed, cut up and figuratively castrated. Krystufek

internalises the phallus transforming it into a source

of physical energy.”19 She uses food, a sausage to

distant herself from male fantasy image; better yet, challenge those stereotypical

images by making seductive act to become rather

frightening. Apart from feminist facet, some other artists

use food as a personal symbol or significance. Felix

Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled (Placebo) (1991) is a coffee

candy installation20 in the same weight as the artist and

his lover, Ross Laycock who died from AIDS combined.

This piece acts like a “double portrait” of him and his

partner. Audiences can take the candies displayed and eat

them. The disappearance of the candies taken by the

viewers implies the temporarily of physical body and

participants taking the candies makes the meaning of this

work completed and the consumption of the candies

embodies the artwork.21

Figure1: Elke Krystufek, Videonanie (20.4.1992) (1992)

Figure2: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Placebo)

(1991) (in the American Pavilion during Venice

Biennale 2008)

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19 Elodie Evers (2010) ‘Elke Krystufek’ in Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (p.288)

20 ‘How’ the candies are presented depends on the artists and/or curator. Some exhibition, candies are hung from the ceiling, laid on the floor in shape of triangle, or put together in one corner.

21 Tanya Zimbardo (2008) ‘Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ in Rudolf Frieling, Boris Groys, Robert Atkins, Lev Manovich (eds.) (2008) The Art of Participation 1950 to Now. San Francisco; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Eating is more than just a nourishment, it is more than health. It is always albeit

usually very unconsciously, also cultural communication.22

Food is used largely metaphorically; despite that, some artists use image of food as it

is. Pop art is one of the major art movements after the second world war. It was an

era when postmodernism, photography, film, and television were widespread and

art had to compete with the mass availability of those visual images. Pop art borrows

characteristic from mass media in terms of look and subject. The visuality of pop art

are exaggerating “colour, size, or texture” of everyday objects and images to make it

more interesting to look at. Take James Rosenquist’s Sliced Bologna (1968) as an

example. It is an image of instant food product from Italy, bologna branded

Mortadella. Sliced Bologna is a huge painting. It was cut like a curtain, hanging on

the wall. Like any other popular images, it represents consumerism. However, this

painting has a performative quality because it is, in some way, an interactive piece.

Audiences can walk pass through this gigantic bologna as entering the food,

consuming it. Big movements the artist make to slice and cut this painting is also a

performance.

Moving away from Pop paintings to sculpture or a project. Claes Oldenburg’s The

Store and objects sold there reflects consumer society and new notion of art

commodities of the sixties. One of the things Pop artists who work around food have

in common is “a desire to isolate the object in a frozen moment of decontextualised

ambivalence.” Pop artists tend to celebrate consumerism rather than criticise it. The

works do not have sense of illusion to them, no sense of smell or taste but that is

about consumerism; things are just to be ingested. James Rosenquist’s Sliced

Bologna is a red painting of a canned sausage. The image of bologna in this painting

is not much different from advertising images but the interactiveness of this painting

gives different sense to the image. The fact that Rosenquist sliced-cuts this painting

and hangs it on the ceiling so the audiences can walk pass it makes the experience of

‘food image’ becomes more intimate.

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22 Nikolai Wojtko (2010) ‘Pot au feu. Of the Meaning and Insanity of Cooking’ in Magdalena Holzhey, Renate Buschmann, Ulrike Groos, Beate Ermacora, Elke Krasny, Nikolai Wojtko, Christiane Boje (2010) Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (p.266) in sub-heading of ‘Eating: A Mirror of Social Condition.’

Fine food is an expression of lifestyle in our culture. While food was always a

means of social distinction, it is increasingly becoming an affirmative act tied to

emotional, economic, and political motivations.23

In another continental like Latin-America, Conceptual artist like Victor Grippo

criticise consumerism instead of celebrate it. In Traditional Rural Oven for Baking

Bread (1972), Grippo exhibited the performance/installation/public action in square

of Buenos Airs. It shows the forgotten ritual emerging from the convenience of the

food accessibility. This performance is to disturb (not necessary in the bad way) daily

routines, making art noticeable and confronted. This is the reason some artists use

performance as their art; to approach the oublic. Fallen Fruit is another organisation

showing public performance using fruit to bring to people together aiming to

“reconfigure the relation between those who have resources and those who do not.

Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration that began with creating maps of public fruit: the

fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles.”24 This project is still

reoccurring.

Performance is... a concrete social practice that continues to redefine the meaning

of visual arts through the ways in which the presence of the body in real events

provides a paradigm for social action. 25

From the quotation above, it is undoubtedly that

performance art is employed majorly by the

Feminist. Feminism focuses on revolutionising

women’s images and role in society. Food wise,

two main themes feminist artists have been

associated with are concerned with stereotypes;

female body and women’s role in the kitchen.

Female bodies portrayed in mass media usually seen as object of desire to male

viewers or ‘ideal’ image among women. When one talks about ‘eating disorder’, first

thing comes to mind is a girl’s attitude towards eating who wants to be skinny like

Figure3: Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972)

13

23 Magdalena Holzhey (2010) ‘Eating the Universe’ in Magdalena Holzhey, Renate Buschmann, Ulrike Groos, Beate Ermacora, Elke Krasny, Nikolai Wojtko, Christiane Boje (2010) Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (p.230).

24 David Burns, Matias Vinegar, and Austin Young (2006-present) Fallen Fruit. available at <http://www.fallenfruit.org> [accessed July 1, 2011].

25 Kristine Stiles (1990) ‘Performance and Its Objects’ in Art Magazine 65, no.3, November 1990 (p.47) cited in Amelia Jones (1998) Body Art: Performing the Subject. University of Minnesota Press; Minneapolis. (p.13) Jones distinguishes between body art and performance art.

models in the magazine etc. That is to say, stereotypical image leads to eating

disorder, “ideals of beauty lead in turn to abnormal relationship to eating.” 26 Eleanor

Antin uses performative mode of body art revisiting traditional Greek sculpture.

Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972); Antin made a record each day that she

‘carves’ herself by limited diet to reach ideal body used by Greek sculptor. This

physical transformation (change of her image and identity) has soon become

psychological transformation (the absence). Limit food intake effects mood change

and obsession to reach that ideal body.27

“In an affluent society characterised by the sheer

abundance of food stuffs, food itself has long since

become a lifestyle phenomenon with the power to

generate identity.” 28 Kelly, a forty-five minutes colour

video by twin sisters known as L.A Raeven has a main

female character called Kelly, who, due to the variety

of food production availability, she cannot choose

what to eat as fearing if she would make the wrong decision and she will feel guilty.

Instead, she goes around luxury supermarket in New York City, takes free samples

home, and eat them. This shows how foodstuffs in mass culture effects people and

how one does not know what is best for them. This eating disorder has become

increasingly a serious issue in society. It effects society as a whole because individual

cannot connect as well as a girl “lose autonomy over her own body.”29 Another

Austrian artist, Elke Krystufek made her video, Vomiting (17.1.1992)’ and ‘Eating

(18.1.1992) (1992) as her autobiography of a girl with a bulimia. “As Rainer’s

student, Krystufek is a direct descendant of actionism, although her pieces are more

to do with her personal emancipation, the body: ritual, living sculpture, performed

Figure4: L.A Raeven, Kelly (2006)

14

26 Magdalena Holzhey (2010) ‘Eating the Universe’ in Magdalena Holzhey, Renate Buschmann, Ulrike Groos, Beate Ermacora, Elke Krasny, Nikolai Wojtko, Christiane Boje (2010) Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. She talks about the emergence of fast food and ‘eating in front of TV’ culture along with food accelerate production that can lead to obesity which again lead to health conscious therefore development of dietary supplement and alternative way of eating.

27 Anne Goldstein (1995) ‘Artists in the Exhibition’ in Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer (eds.) (1995) Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975. London; the MIT Press (p.52)

28 Elodie Evers (2010) ‘L.A. Raeven' in Magdalena Holzhey, Renate Buschmann, Ulrike Groos, Beate Ermacora, Elke Krasny, Nikolai Wojtko, Christiane Boje (2010) Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (p.291). She says this in context of L.A. Raeven's Kelly (2006) that it “shows the obverse of this food culture, which on the one hand, is marked by the absence of any rules, and on the other, possesses countless spoken and unspoken expectations for the consumer and her relationship to her body.”

29 Elodie Evers (2010) ‘L.A. Raeven' in Magdalena Holzhey, Renate Buschmann, Ulrike Groos, Beate Ermacora, Elke Krasny, Nikolai Wojtko, Christiane Boje (2010) Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (p.291). She says this in context of L.A. Raven’s video works.

photography.”30 Vomiting (17.1.1992)’ and ‘Eating (18.1.1992) shows a girl vomiting

for twenty minutes and for the rest of forty minutes, eating. The first part of this

video where the artist was vomiting has a background music of a choir singing

Hansel and Gretel.31 Referencing to a fairytale makes two points on eating habit and

self representation. First, fairy tales is what a kid, mainly a girl instills their ideal life.

And as any fairy tales, pretty girls often get away with anything and live happily ever

after with a prince charming. So overall, fairytale gives a girl’s perspective to beauty

as something one must have to achieve good things in life. Thus, it is a thing a girl, a

woman, no matter what age determines to have. Another point is that in Hansel and

Gretel, it shows the power of villain’s seduction through food. In this fairytale, a

gingerbread house is a tool louring kids to the trap a witch make; because food,

candies, and sweets are irresistible. The eating disorder concerning with nutrition

intakes is psychological, not biological. Krystufek’s contentment of body image

connects with ego development with identity and reflection to society.

Ironically, eating disorder usually concerns beauty

of female images portrayed in the media but what

is behind that is hysteria and abjection which

artists like Krytufek choses to show ‘female

grotesque.’32 Also in the eighties, Cindy Sherman

who represent herself around principle of

masquerade depicting vomit in her work.

Sherman’s earlier works such as her Untitled Film

Stills series, she portrays as a beautiful woman as usually appear in Hollywood film

noir. However, since 1983, Sherman’s work has shifted to be “monstrous

representations of the feminine.”33 By interrupting the representation of fetishised

female images from mass media, it shows what it takes for some women to be that

image and it is not pretty. It makes audiences to look deeper under the surface.

Figure5: Cindy Sherman, Untitled (1987)

15

30 RoseLee Goldberg (2004) Performance: Live Art Since the 60s (Second Edition, First Edition 1998). London; Thames & Hudson Ltd. Caption of Elke Krystufek, Aktion (1990).

31 Elodie Evers (2010) ‘Elke Krystufek’ in Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (p.288)

32 Mary Russia’s notion in Barbara Creed (1986) ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’ in Screen, 27, January - February 1986. (p.48) cited in Simon Taylor (1993) ‘The Phobic Object: Abjection in Contemporary Art’ in Jack Ben-Levi, Craig Houser, Leslie C. Jones, and Simon Taylor (eds.) (1993) Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art. New York; Whitney Museum of American Art.

33 Simon Taylor (1993) ‘The Phobic Object: Abjection in Contemporary Art’ in Jack Ben-Levi, Craig Houser, Leslie C. Jones, and Simon Taylor (eds.) (1993) Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art. New York; Whitney Museum of American Art. He compares subjects of Sherman’s early works and her works after 1983.

The inexpensive, ephemeral, unintimidating character of Conceptual mediums

themselves (videos, performance, photography, narrative, text, actions)

encouraged women to participate, to move through this crack in the art world’s

walls.34

Apart from exploiting women’s bodies in contemporary art and subjecting eating

disorder; starting from sixties Feminist art also concerns inequality of women in

society and at home. Martha Rosler is one of the mainstream feminist artists of the

late sixties to seventies and her works convey political message concerning food and

housewives with relation to their roles and identities. “A lot of my work has been

about food… Food as a system of production, self-recognition, authoring, self-

representation, and class differentiation.”35 In Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975),

Rosler performs herself as a host in a television cooking lesson. This video is set in

an ordinary kitchen with numbers of cooking utensils. Rosler first pulled out a

banner saying ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’ as introducing the show to audiences. She

then “recites the alphabet, holding up an item to the camera to illustrate each letter,

so that A stands for apron” and so on. Despite that, Rosler’s did not illustrate usage

of utensils as it should be. Instead “she swishes and stabs the air with kitchen knife,

or stirs and then suddenly aims a throw at an imaginary victim with the soup ladle.”

By doing so, Rosler criticises the receiver of information in mass-media as it can be

bias. In Semiotics of the Kitchen, the opening of this video appears to be what

normally would happen in TV cooking show but Rosler’s version shows feminist

aspect of repression towards cooking and social expectation of being housewife. This

is how her emotion transfers to cooking untensil. “This is one of the earliest video

works which evidences her commitment to the idea that the purpose of theory (in

this case the prevailing structuralism of the 1970s) is not merely to transform theory

but also to transform the inequality of social and political conditions.” 36

Around the same time, a British artist Bobby Baker also feathers kitchen greatly in

her art. In 1976 Bobby Baker showed her performance installation called An Edible

16

34 Lucy R. Lippard (1997) ‘Escape Attempts’, introduction to revised edition, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. Berkley and Los Angeles; University of California Press in Stephen Johnstone (ed.) (2008) The Everyday. London; Whitechapel and MIT Press (pp.48-51). She debates on the female artists in Conceptual art of the sixties and seventies that notion of Conceptual art favours woman artists but it was complex when it comes to Conceptual art as an art movement.

35 Martha Rolser introducing Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition in Electronic Arts Intermix (2011) available at <http://www.eai.org> [accessed June 29, 2011]

36 Peggy Phelan (2001) ‘Works: Personalizing the Political’ in Helena Reckitt (ed.) (2001) Art and Feminism. New York; Phaidon. (p.87)

Family in a Mobile Home. This installation was held in her house in London. She

exhibited an ‘edible family’ consisted with a mother, father, son, daughter, and a

baby. Baker stereotyped a nuclear family using edible objects. Each family member

were made from different confectionary and had their individual characteristics

made by the artist. Baker shows a mother’s role in family as a provider; providing

what guests needed and welcoming people into the house. To illustrate, Baker used a

mannequin as a mother. This mannequin had head of a teapot and and a hole in her

body displaying food and edible stuff. Baker then performed herself as a mirror of

that mannequin mother; she served tea to exhibition viewer from a mother’s head.

There are numbers of artists positioning themselves as a cook or food-producer and

creating an everyday atmosphere in art context. Around 1960s, two American artists

Allen Ruppersberg and Claes Oldenburg opened their own cafe/store selling their

production of inedible dishes. Their emphasis was not on the objects they sold but

rather, experience viewer would get from entering those spaces. Ruppersberg uses

his surroundings namely “film, literature, advertising, and the experiences of his

life.”37 to generate another ordinary life ambience but different. Al’s Cafe (1969), for

example, was an art project by Ruppersberg where he set up a cafe which serves

drinks and inedible dishes created by himself. in this cafe project, Ruppersberg

transform his role of an artist; making art to a cafe cook, making cafe food. Claes

Oldenburg’s The Store (1962) has a similar concept to Al’s Cafe but in The Store,

objects sold are not inclusive to foodstuffs. In addition, The Store works as a studio

and theatre for Oldenburg’s Happenings.38 “His Ray Gun Spex events were, he said

‘painting in the shape of theatre.’”39

I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top…

I am for an art that is put on and taken off, like pants, which develops holes, like

17

37 Anne Goldstein (1995) ‘Artists in the Exhibition’ in Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer (eds.) (1995) Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975. London; the MIT Press (p.204)

38 “Happenings were theatrical events created by artists, initially in America, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were the forerunners of Performance art and in turn emerged from the theatrical elements of Dada and Surrealism. Happenings typically took place in an environment or installation created within the gallery and involved light, sound, slide projections and an element of spectator participation. Happenings proliferated through the 1960s but gave way to Performance art in which the focus was increasingly on the actions of the artist.” Tate website available at <http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=131

39 RoseLee Goldberg (2004) Performance: Live Art Since the 60s (Second Edition, First Edition 1998). London; Thames & Hudson Ltd. (p.38) She compares Oldenburg’s Happenings to Allen Kaprow that his was “more concerned with engaging the viewer visually.”

socks, which is eaten, like a piece of pie, or abandoned with great contempt, like a

piece of shit.40

The Store and Al’s Cafe are representations of familiar places. They work as sets

because what on sell there are not to be used like real things. When these places

function as a studio or a theatre, viewers entering these spaces have to play their

roles. It is like an adult version of role-playing. Artists pretend they have other

professions; Oldenburg takes on roles of pastry baker and Ruppersberg acts as a

diner cook. Participants who go to The Store and Al’s Cafe do not intend to buy

goods or have meal but they perform as it is their intention to do so. That is to say,

visitors to The Store choose the object from the shelve as they would do in any store;

and restaurant goers to Al’s Cafe get to sit, read the menu and order food. The sense

of dislocation comes from they objects are dishes one got are not functioned as real

things. Moreover, criteria one has to choose commodity form The Store or order a

meal in Al’s Cafe is different from real life. In real store or cafe, one would choose

what food to buy or what meal to order according what they want to taste but in The

Store, buyer would buy what appeals to them and in Al’s Cafe, goer would order out

of curiosity of the menu.

What’s more, some artists put their cookings in artistic context to explore

relationship between ordinary activity and art sphere. Giving Alison Knowles’ Make

a Salad (1962) as an example. The proposition or the instruction is as basic as ‘make

a salad’ therefore it leaves to infinite ways to perform this piece. Hence, although the

score can be repeated several times but the outcome or even the way to perform will

be different every time so the nature of performance art is not abused even though it

is accessible to the mass. Knowles’ Make a Salad is also dependent on participants.

It emphasises on “active participants rather than mute witnesses.” 41Fluxus

performance often shown in music or art sphere. By recreating everyday activity in

art institution:

The everyday becomes both an essential constituent of the authenticity of art (the

possibility of experiencing life as it is) and an instance not easily locatable as either

18

40 Claes Oldenburg and Emmett Williams (eds.) (1967) Store Days; Documents from the Store (1961) and Ray Gun Theatre (1962). New York; Something Else Press. (pp.39-41) cited in Jack Ben-Levi, Craig Houser, Leslie C. Jones, and Simon Taylor (1993) Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art. New York; Whitney Museum of American Art. They discuss on how Antonin Artaud’s concept of the “theatre and cruelty” inspires many artists of that generation such as Oldenburg

41 Janet Kraynak (2003) ‘Performance’ in Helen Molesworth (ed.) (2003) Work Ethic. Pennsylvania; The Pennsylvania State University Press. (p.125). She talks about Happenings and Fluxus artists “creating performance pieces in which audience members functioned as active participants rather than mute witnesses.”

art or everyday life but suspended between the two, that is, between the entrance

into the gallery and the exit onto the street.42

“Sometimes the artists aim simply to capture the roles and ritual of our daily lives; at

other times, they create situations and scenarios that invite us to behave in certain

ways.”43 With his diverse background (son of Diplomat, spent his childhood living

several countries around the world), Rirkrit Tiravanija’s identity is hybridised. His

cooking performances are often site specific as he often associate the menu or setting

according to that institution or location for example German soup for the 1993 Back

Stage opening at Kunstverein in Hamburg or Austrian food in Viennese Stories at

Vienna Secession. Untitled (1271) (1993) provided visitors with instant cup noodles

from Japan referencing to Thai soup noodle called ‘kuay tiew ruer’ (noodle on boat)

inside the stainless steel canoe. This piece has historical connection to Italian,

Chinese, and Thai. In 1271, Marco Polo travelled to China, went back and adapted

noodle into macaroni and spaghetti as well as ‘kuay tiew ruer’ has been influenced by

Chinese noodle44. This also links into Bangkokian (in the past) and Venetian culture

referencing to main transportation in the canal with city on both sides. “Tiravanija’s

art, gastrosophy circumvents the problematic of a conceptual traditionism that

exoticises culture into an unchangeable identities by deliberately emphasising the

factual constructiveness of the culinary cultural identities.”45

However, his menus always include Thai food which identify the artist’s identity;

Thai nationality. “Displacement are site of Tiravanija’s food art: the displacement of

artistic sites of products, of national identities, of the location and consumption of

art.”46 Tiravanija’s works create stories reflecting identities of the artist and the

institution the his artworks are performed. Janet Kraynak comments on Tiravanija’s

use of Thai food that; “identity is produced within a principle if exchangeability.

Beyond the satisfying of individual desires, the exchange and consumption of food

19

42 Cecilia Novero (2010) Antidiets of the Avant-Grade: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art. Minnesota; Minnesota Press. (p.266) This quotation then emphasises on how principle of performance art fit to idea of everyday life.

43 Jens Hoffman and Joan Jonas (2005) Perform. London; Thames and Hudson Ltd. (p.157). They add “In these cases, the spectator becomes not a passive observer but an integral part of the creative process, enacting and completing the work and revealing the artistic potential in all of us.”

44 Thai people eat rice, Thai noodle dishes have been influenced by Chinese one way or another.

45 Harald Lemke (2010) ‘Rirkrit Tiravanija’ in Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (p.301)

46 Cecilia Novero (2010) Antidiets of the Avant-Grade: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art. Minnesota; Minnesota Press. (p.267) It says about the perception of his work according to each visitor’s notion of art; “For him, art is an act of becoming conscious, bringing oneself to a level of consciousness about art’s possibility.

that structures the installations has a collective significance: to realise how one’s

introduction to Thailand, or any culture, as a place and set of social customs and

mores, often comes about through the cooking and exchange of food.”47

In 1998 Nicolas Bourriaud founded the term Relational Aesthetic; art practice which

is “the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion

of an independent and private symbolic space.”48 Relational art emphasises on

audiences experience creating social gathering. Experience one has is not

individualised but will contribute to the artwork and the atmosphere. Tiravanija’s

Untitled (Free) (1992) is the most sampled one when it comes to relational art. For

this performance, Tiravanija relocated everything in the office, store room including

gallery staffs who normally do not work directly to the exhibition goers into the main

exhibition space Then, he sets up his ‘kitchen‘ in a store room and it becomes where

the cooking performance occurs. Tiravanija then performs as a chef cooking Thai

curry to exhibition goers. Gallery staffs and art critics as well as his artist friends play

roles of waiters and so on. Participation is crucial in Tiravanija’s work; “the phase

‘lots of people‘ regularly appears in his lists of materials. Tiravanija’s food work is

not only the artist or the situation is performed but also the visitors because they do

not play the role of themselves that they “contribute to the art-making process by

transferring one of their everyday act - eating, helping to set the table - into the

museum.”49

To conclude, temporarily of food identifies with performance art in term of the

immediacy. Food is everyday essential therefore it is sometimes ignored.

Performance Food Identity hopes to outline aspect of performative artworks using

food to identify the individuality and/or society. It also analyses some particular

artworks or art projects in order to illustrate mutual themes of food portrayed in art

from the sixties to present:

20

47 Janet Kraynak (2010) ‘Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Liability’ in Anna Dezeuze (ed.) (2010) The ‘Do-It-Yourself’ Artwork: Participation from Fluxus to New Media. Manchester; Manchester University Press. (p.177)

48 Nicolas Bourriaud (1998) Relational Aesthetic (English translation, 2002). Paris; Les Presses Du Réel. (p.14) cited in Claire Bishop (2010) ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’ in Anna Dezeuze (ed.) (2010) The ‘Do-It-Yourself’ Artwork: Participation from Fluxus to New Media. Manchester; Manchester University Press. (p.256) She also compares this notion to Greenbergian modernism that instead of “a discrete, portable, autonomous work of art that transcends its context, relational art in entirely beholden to contingencies of its environment and audience. Moreover, this audience is envisaged as a community: rather than a one-to-one relationship between work of art and viewer, relational art sets up situationin which viewers are not just addressed as a collective, social entity, but are actually given the wherewithal to create a community, however temporary or utopian this might be.

49 Cecilia Novero (2010) Antidiets of the Avant-Grade: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art. Minnesota; Minnesota Press. (p.266)

A sense of great irony was implied in these gestures, which were profound and

ridiculous at the same time. To these artists, it was important to relinquish the

heavy mantle of high art, to declare that everyday life was not only material for

art, but was itself art. 50

21

50 RoseLee Goldberg (2004) Performance: Live Art Since the 60s (Second Edition, First Edition 1998). London; Thames & Hudson Ltd. She talks about notion behind the beginning of performance art in the fifties and the sixties. (p.16)

List of Comparative Images (Essay)

Figure1: Elke Krystufek; Videonanie (23.4.1992) (1992); Video, colour, sound, 41

min; Generali Foundation, Vienna.

Figure2: Felix Gonzalez-Torres; Untitled (Placebo) (1991) (picture taken at the

American Pavilion during Venice Biennale 2008).

Figure3: Eleanor Antin; Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972); 148 photographs

and text panel; Ronald Feldman Fine Art, New York.

Figure4: L.A Raven; Kelly (2006); Video, colour, sound, 48 minutes; LMAK

Projects, New York.

Figure5: Cindy Sherman; Untitled #175 (1987); Photograph, edition of six, 119.1 x

181.6cm; Metro Pictures, New York.

22

Entries

1) JAMES ROSENQUIST (b.1933)

‘Sliced Bologna’

Oil on slit Mylar

259.1 x 266.7 cm

Executed in 1968

The Sonnabend Collection

23

EXHIBITED

• James Rosenquist: A Retrospective (May 17 - August 17, 2003) at Guggenheim

Museum, Bilbao

• Ileana Sonnabend: An Italian Portrait (May 29 - October 2, 2011) at Peggy

Guggenheim Collection, Venice

LITERATURE

• Chris Blaster (2004) ‘Rooms with a View: Walk-In Paintings’ in Walter Hopps and

Sarah Bancroft (eds.) (2004) James Rosenquist: A Retrospective. New York;

Guggenheim Foundation. (p.150)

• Antonio Homem and Philip Rylands (2011) Ileana Sonnabend: An Italian

Portrait. Venice; Peggy Guggenheim Collection. (pp.74-75)

• Michael Lobel (2009) James Rosenquist: Pop Art, Politics, and History in 1960s.

Berkeley, Los Angeles, London; University of California Press. (p.191)

James Rosenquist has started to use popular images in his art around at the same

time as other artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein which later has become

to be known as Pop art. Rosenquist began his career as a billboard artist, he took a

studio course which was taught by Cameron Booth, an Abstract Expressionist.51 As

the influence from Booth, Rosenquist’s art is a combination between Pop and

Abstract art; integrating with billboard advertisement. Main characteristic of

billboard or sign poster is that; they can be understood easily and such images are

able to convey messages from a distance or with a quick glance. Rosenquist’s art has

this feature, nonetheless, it has its complication and alternative reading. His work is

fragmented, it can be read and seen differently from different point of view; closer,

further, from different angles.

Although Rosenquist is well-known for his large-scale paintings of fragmented

images from magazine or consumer product labels,52 such as I Love You with My

Ford, (1961), however, there are numbers of works in a different form of painting

24

51 Abstract Expressionism is “a development of abstract art that originated in New York in the 1940s and 1950s and aimed at subjective emotional expression with particular emphasis on the creative spontaneous act (e.g., action painting). Leading figures were Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.” (Source: New Oxford American Dictionary 2nd edition 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.)

52 Michael Lobel (2009) James Rosenquist: Pop Art, Politics, and History in 1960s. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London; University of California Press. (p.9)

which combine quality of painting, sculpture, and performance altogether. To

illustrate, oil on cut Mylar is a form of painting which Rosenquist experimented

himself and be considered as an interactive piece. To

produce this style of painting, Rosenquist paints on a

sheet of Mylar then slices cut it; resulting in curtain-like

artwork which then later to be hung on the ceiling and

viewers can walk pass through it. This kind of painting is

a cross-over between painting and sculpture. Audiences

can experience the work directly and closely as they

walk through the work.

Rosenquist’s subject is different from other Pop artists’. Obviously his topic engages

with commercial subject like others but Rosenquist emphasises on the production of

that object and puts together in his work too.53 Sliced Bologna is an example of it. It

is an image of bologna having been partly sliced by knife, thus it shows the

relationship between ‘slicing bologna’ and cutting the mylar by the artist54 as if he

performs slicing the actual bologna. For that reason, Rosenquist leaves traces of

himself in this piece by painting the ‘sliced bologna’ as well as by cutting the Sliced

Bologna.

Food has been portrayed by Pop artists, subjecting

consumerism, especially fast food or instant food products such

as canned and frozen food. This painting comes from Italian

bologna branded Mortadella which was popular in the States at

that time.55 A year before Sliced Bologna, Rosenquist painted a

similar piece called Sauce (1967); they have the same theme

and colour palette but are different in texture of the image.

Direction of sauce pouring down by the spoon collocating with

sliced stripes highlighting the flowing down sauce. The cutting gives performative

quality to both paintings seeing as they are not fixed to the wall and able to move

along with audience’s participation. It also gives different awareness to audiences

although they have the same subject and visual tone. Cutting in Sliced Bologna

Figure1: I Love You with My Ford (1961)

Figure2: Sauce (1967)

25

53 Ibid (p.13)

54 Ibid (p.191)

55 Antonio Homem and Philip Rylands (2011) Ileana Sonnabend: An Italian Portrait. Venice; Peggy Guggenheim Collection. (pp.74-75)

stresses on cutting while in Sauce, pouring liquid. Both paintings are aesthetically

appealing as well as giving a sense of the actual object being there. Moreover, due to

its size, when the audiences walk through Sliced Bologna which allow audiences to

interact with the piece directly.

26

2)ALISON KNOWLES (b.1933)

‘Make a Salad’

Fluxes performance

Written in 1962

Courtesy of artist

Make a Salad, performed in 1962

Typescript (1962) This is a typescript for a publication of Alison Knowles collected scores, published as ‘By Alison Knowles’, as the first Great Bear Pamphlet in 1965. The typescript has typographical notation by Dig Higgins and other hands, and delectations

by an unknown hand.

27

EXHIBITED

• Work Ethics (2003) at Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore.

• Fluxus Extravaganza (May 24, 2008) at Tate Modern, London.

• Fluxus Score and Instruction: the Transformative Years “Make a Salad (June 6 -

September 21, 2008) at Museum of Modern Art, Roskilde.

LITERATURE

• Jon Hendricks, Marianne Bech, and Media Farina (eds.) (2008) Fluxus Score and

Instruction: the Transformative Years “Make a Salad”. Roskilde; Museum of

Contemporary Art. (p.88)

• Julia Robinson (2004) ‘The Sculpture of Indeterminacy: Alison Knowles’ Beans

and Variations’ in Art Journal, vol.63, No.4 (winter, 2004) (p.97).

• Harry Ruhé (1979) Fluxus: the Most Radical and Experimental Art Movement of

the Sixties. Amsterdam; A.

“Fluxus is not a movement in history, or an art movement. Fluxus is a way of doing

things, a traditional, and a way of life and death.” 56 Fluxus’ purpose in art is bringing

life and art closer together, extending the everyday life.57 Alison Knowles is a notable

member of Fluxus and the only woman in original Fluxus. She works in variety

medias mainly with book objects, loose page sculpture, events and performances,

sounds, and prints.58 The object Knowles uses in her my work comes from real

things. She likes the familiarity of real objects and their ability to be transformed;

from something ordinary into something artistic, she stated “the more real and

ordinary they are, the more interesting they become to me. They filter clues to reality

and have become the stuff of my art. I observe, examine and collect.” 59 Knowles’

28

56 Dick Higgins cited in Letty Lou Eisenhauer (2008) ‘A Version of Traces in 2009: An Interpretation of Scores’ in Jon Hendricks, Marianne Bech, and Media Farina (eds.) (2008) Fluxus Score and Instruction: the Transformative Years “Make a Salad.” Roskilde; Museum of Contemporary Art (p.33)

57 Anna Dezeuze (2008) ‘What is Fluxus Score? (Some Preliminary Thoughts) in Jon Hendricks, Marianne Bech, and Media Farina (eds.) (2008) Fluxus Score and Instruction: the Transformative Years “Make a Salad”. Roskilde; Museum of Contemporary Art. (p.26)

58 Alison Knowles’ Official Website <http://www.aknowles.com/index.html>

59 From the announcement for a performance at De Appel, Amsterdam, May 14-15, 1976

score60 is flexible as any other Fluxus scores. For Fluxus performance, initial idea is

generated but it leaves to infinite interpretation.

Make a Salad was premiered as Fluxus performance in October 21, 1962 at Institute

of Contemporary Art, London. At the beginning of the event, a Mozart duo for violin

and cello has to be played, then salad is made afterwards. “The Piece is concluded as

the salad is eaten by the audience accompanied by the Mozart.”61 In spite of that,

according to her interview with Linda Montano, Make a Salad was first done in

Denmark at a concert funded by music conservatory. This performance was

controversial at that time and especially it was shown in classical music event. Make

a Salad was seen as offensive to the audiences. In this 1962 performance, Knowles

noticed that some audiences stayed for the whole performance but some had left but

by the end; but when the salad was finished, almost everyone came back to eat. 62 The

irresistibility of salad brings out human instinct

of hunger and desire towards food.

This score was Knowles’ first performance as a

Fluxus member. She performed it a number of

times since the 1962. The notable ones are for

Work Ethics (2003) exhibition in Baltimore

Museum of art and Fluxus Extravaganza at Tate

Modern (2008). Work Ethics exhibition aims to

explore the new notion of art around 1960s

onwards. It sees artist’s role as four categories;

“Artist as Manager and Worker (the artist creates

and completes a task), Artist as Manager (the

artist sets a task for others to complete), Artist as

Experience Maker (the audience completes the

work), and Quitting Time (the artist tries not to

Figure3: Make a Salad in Work Ethics (2003)

Figure4: Make a Salad in Fluxus Extravaganza (2008)

29

60 Fluxus scores or “event scores, involve simple actions, ideas, and objects from everyday life recontexualized as performance. Event Scores are texts that can be seen as proposal pieces or instructions for actions. The idea of the score suggests musicality. Like a musical score, Event Scores can be realized by artists other than the original creator and are open to variation and interpretation.” Alison Knowles’ Official Website <http://www.aknowles.com/index.html>

61 Supra note 8

62 Linda Montana’s interview with a question ‘What event was memorable?’ in Linda M. Montano (2000) Performance Artist Talking in the Eighties. London; University of California Press. (p.173)

work).”63 Knowles was categorised as ‘Artist as Experience Maker’ in view that

Knowles started making salad but the piece will not be any different than making

salad at home, if it is not done in the art context and without an audience to

‘perform’ to. Another time was for Fluxus Extravaganza at Tate Modern in 2008.

Knowles acted as a head chef for her biggest salad at Turbine Hall. From these two

different exhibitions, it shows that the performance of the score does not need to be

by the artist and the variations of the performance of a score is infinite. Regardless,

Knowles prefers “it straight, just getting out there and making salad for people.

Participation is guaranteed. That’s what is unique about this even form in

performance art - once it starts, everyone essentially knows what will happen, and it

just follows through until it is done, maybe minimally, maybe not.”64

The only woman in Fluxus group performing a piece about cooking and kitchen, the

initial reception was alternated towards Feminism. However, the musical feature of

this piece disregards the Feminist aspect. Sounds of Mozart contrasting with

domestic sound of chopping and tossing, “dramatises” this score in terms of “rupture

and continuity.”65 It points out the close relationship between what is considered as

high culture; fine art and classical music, and everyday life. “I’ve always used real

things in my work, real objects. For me the real world is the right place to start from,

whether you are making art, a performance, music, or dinner. You put right things in

and pay attention to the cooking. Time and attention.” 66 For Knowles, making a

salad as a Fluxus performance or making a salad alone at home feels the same.

Knowles sees food preparation as a meditation and Make a Salad is a performance

that shows her private self.

… Make a Salad… transvalues the production and consumption of food into art

activities - and, in a typical anti-art reversal, recode art action into everyday

activity.67

30

63 Helen Molesworth (ed.) (2003) Work Ethic. Pennsylvania; The Pennsylvania State University Press. (pp.101-200)

64 Alison Knowles cited in Linda M. Montano (2000) Performance Artist Talking in the Eighties. London; University of California Press. (pp.173-174) She talks about her preference of Make a Salad.

65 Julia Robinson (2004) ‘The Sculpture of Indeterminacy: Alison Knowles’ Beans and Variations’ in Art Journal, vol.63, No.4 (winter, 2004). (p.98)

66 Supra note 14

67 Judith Rodenbeck (2004) ‘Alison Knowles’ in Helen Molesworth (ed.) (2003) Work Ethic. Pennsylvania; The Pennsylvania State University Press. (p.185) She suggests how everyday principle such as food makes a big impact in blurring line between everyday life and art when it comes to performance.

3)VICTOR GRIPPO (1936-2002)

‘Traditional Rural Oven for Baking Bread’

Photographic documentation of an urban action (public spot construction using clay

bricks, mud, and lime; cooking process of bread; urban bread distribution)

Variable dimensions

Executed in 1972

Private Collection

EXHIBITED

• Victor Grippo: A Retrospective (June 24 - September 6, 2004) at Museum of

Latin-American Art of Buenos Aires; Buenos Aires.

31

LITERATURE

• Luis Camnitzer (2007) Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of

Liberation. Texas; Texas University Press. (p.21)

• Marcelo E. Pacheco (2004) ‘Exhibition List’ in Marcelo E. Pacheco (ed.) (2004)

Victor Grippo: A Retrospective. Buenos Airs; Malba, Colección Constantini. (pp.

84-85)

Food gives man energy, nourishment. Victor Grippo, an Argentinian artist, trained

in chemistry has his art practice associated with science.68 His work often combines

organic materials with everyday objects; sometimes features foodstuff and has

relationship with energy sources. Born in Buenos Aires, his work is generally

political. He often uses this connection (nature and industrial) to make a political

statement. He said “I began to articulate symbols: man’s foodstuffs, energy, the rose,

things losing stability and the transformations this causes, so that I began making

my contribution to the fire of renewal which does not necessarily mean change,

unless it is combined with an awareness of what can be preserved.” 69

Grippo is one of the most influential Conceptual artists in Latin America; emerging

around the same time as Conceptualism in the States and Europe. This emergence of

Conceptual art was due to changes of visual culture in society and art reception.

After Pop art in the fifties and sixties; by late sixties, artists started to practice with

new materials and showing art in different ways. Having said that, Latin American

Conceptual artists’ practice was more towards interactive work. That is because the

art world around that region was not as marketable as well as the economy crisis,

plus well-educated populations are in small amount therefore artists needed to

expand their art to the majority; as widespread as possible.

According to Luis Camnitzer, Conceptual art in Latin America conveys a strong

political message “for both agitation and construction.” 70 Traditional Rural Oven

for Baking Bread was a project where Grippo and his partners; Jorge Gamarra, his

fellow artist and A. Rossi, an oven maker; baked breads using clay oven in a square

32

68 Tony Godfrey (1995) ‘Review: Baldessari and Grippo’ in The Burlington Magazine, vol.137, no.1109, August 1995. (p. 567).

69 Victor Grippo translated by Nick Caistor (1988) cited in Guy Brett (1990) Transcontinental: An Investigation of Reality. London; Verso. (p.81).

70 Luis Camnitzer (2007) Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation. Texas; Texas University Press. (p.20).

in Buenos Aires as part of the exhibition ‘Art and Ideology’ organised by CAYC. They

shared baked bread to around 5,000 people who passed by for free. It was shown as

a reminder to community about their tradition of baking and sharing breads. The

objective of this project is to promote the community to think of their lost ritual as

well as citing the message concerning growing of poverty in Argentina. This is how

they described this piece:

There were also leaflets given away with this performance. The handout was an

instruction on how to build an oven like one shown; with a suggestion that this oven

can be used as a shelter, a bunker, or a house. It hinted that community and people

can be attacked anytime. Furthermore, bringing community together, giving away

food and a pamphlet were seen as rebellion. Traditional Rural Oven for Baking

Bread was intervened and destroyed by Peronist police after two days.71 Possibly,

because it was seen as a threat. However, being destroyed by the police can be seen

as a success regarding being a ‘political art’.

Construction of a Traditional Rural Oven Making Bread

Intention: To relocate an object known by specific people from a specific environment to another one frequented by people not akin.

Objective: To revalue an everyday object, what also implies an attitude apart from the constructive sculpture aspect itself.

Course of Action:a) Construction of the Ovenb) Making of Breadc) Breaking the Bread

Pedagogic result: To describe the process of the construction of the Oven and the making of Bread. To distribute a leaflet. Audience participation will be possible through the exchange of information.

Victor Grippo, Jorge Gamarra, A. Rossi, 1972

33

71 Phoebe Adler, Tom Howells, and Nikolaos Kotsopoulos (2010) Contemporary Art in Latin America. London; Black Dog Publishing.

4) DANIEL SPOERRI (b.1930)

‘L’ultima cena, (19.11.1970)’ [The Last Supper]

Lithograph

70 x 100

Executed in 1970, number three in edition of one hundred

Stiftung museum kunst palast, Dusseldorf, on loan from Carlo Schröter

EXHIBITED

• Eating the Universe: Food in Art (November 28, 2009 - February 28, 2010) at

Kunsthalle Düsseldolf, Düsseldolf.

LITERATURE

• Renate Buschmann (2010) ‘Evocations of Pleasure and Disgust’ in Eating the

Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester (p.44).

• Wieland Schmied (2003a) ‘Le Hasard comme maître’ in Thomas Levy (ed.) (2003)

Daniel Spoerri: Coincidence as Master. Bielefeld; Kerber Verlag. (p.21)

34

It cannot be denied that when it comes to combination of food and art; Danielle

Spoerri is a very important figure. Spoerri established Eat Art concept in the late

sixties and early seventies with his ‘Spoerri Restaurant’ (1968) and ‘Eat Art

Gallery’ (1970).72 He makes his art out of foodstuffs or edible objects. Spoerri also

collaborates with other artists in many of his projects regarding their notion of food

in art. Spoerri had his first line of work as a classical dancer.73 Hence, his

background in dancing and music transfers to his later practice as an artist in the

same way. Spoerri’s Eat Art is in some way a performance; “the staging of art as a

total work of art.”74 Spoerri’s art has a very close connection to Fluxus. His work is

not only about the artist or the art work but open to possibility. He uses “chances as

artistic method.”75

Danielle Spoerri writes the choreography, but he remains amazingly open so that

chance happenings are allowed, even welcomed and fully woven into the concept.76

To illustrate, his famous Fallenbilder or Trap Pictures which he started making

since the early sixties are artworks of his ideas but mapped out by other people. Trap

Pictures are captions of leftover by a person. They are made from leftover meals

eaten by restaurant goers or his artist friends that Spoerri glued carefully; from

napkins to plates and everything left inside the dishes, then, they were placed on a

tableaux like a three dimensional photograph. “Spoerri orbits henceforth around two

core themes: food and the place of his being.” 77 Places of his being identifies with

chance and how the remains can represent oneself.

Spoerri’s art has a clear relationship to death and temporality; food and

preservation, eating and decay: “when all the arts do perish, fine cuisine we shall still

cherish.”78 Starting from 1970, Spoerri has started to investigate banquets or staged

35

72 Cecilia Novero (2010) Antidiets of the Avant-Grade: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art. Minnesota; Minnesota Press.

73 Beate Reifenscheid (2009) ‘On the Choreography of Art by Spoerri’ in Daniel Spoerri: Eaten By… Bielefeld; Gesamtherstellung. (p.13)

74 Ibid

75 Renate Buschmann (2010) ‘Evocations of Pleasure and Disgust’ n Magdalena Holzhey, Renate Buschmann, Ulrike Groos, Beate Ermacora, Elke Krasny, Nikolai Wojtko, Christiane Boje (2010) Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (240)

76 Supra note23 (p.14)

77 Ibid

78 Quoted Spoerri’s motto in Beate Reifenscheid (2009) ‘On the Choreography of Art by Spoerri’ in Daniel Spoerri: Eaten By… Bielefeld; Gesamtherstellung. (p.14)

dinner event. L'Ultima Cena [Last Supper] was contributed for the three-day event,

the 10th anniversary of the New Realism called Banchetto funnier del Nauveau

Réalisme, Milan, November 1970. This banquet features dishes by artist regarding as

the New Realists79. New Realism is a movement which Spoerri was one of the

founders. It revisits 19th Century Realism in term of describing “ordinary everyday

reality without any idealisation” but new in the sense of “new reality deriving from

an urban consumer society” and the image “consists in the presentation of the object

chosen by the artist.”80 This event was like farewell dinner as it was marked as end of

the movement.

L'Ultima Cena has a reference to fate in Jesus Christ (as the title

suggests; with fate, Jesus was resurrected. For this banquet, each

member of the group make an edible version of their works; as a

recreation. For example, Yves Kline reconstructed his Ci-gît

l’espace [Here Lies the Space] (1960) out of food and Niki de

Saint Phalle remade one of her Nana81 “in the form of a cake that

one shoots arrows at to burst the integrated liqueur.” 82 Making

edible version of their art but these artist chose food ingredient relating to

themselves and to the original.

This print is a poster-menu, reproducing the presentation of

each dish offered to his artist friends. “An accompanying edition

of prints designed in a style between a menu and a condolence

card showed Spoerri’s preliminary sketches.” 83 It is a lithograph

in edition of a hundred copies. All of them were signed by

members of the movement presented at the dinner; all of them

except Duchamp who joined the military at the time.

Figure5: Yves Kline, Ci-gît l’espace [Here

Lies the Space] (1960)

Figure6: Niki de Saint Phalle, Mini Nana Qui

Court (1970)

36

79 Nouveau Réalisme, New Realism, was founded in October 1960 with a joint declaration whose signatories were Yves Klein, Arman, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Pierre Restany, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques de la Villeglé; in 1961 these were joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, then Niki de Saint Phalle and Gerard Deschamps. Centrepompidou on New Realism. available at <http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-newrea-EN/ENS-newrea-EN.htm> [accessed July 1, 2011].

80 Centrepompidou on New Realism. available at <http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-newrea-EN/ENS-newrea-EN.htm> [accessed July 1, 2011].

81 Niki de Saint Phalle’s Nanas are large, voluptuous and brightly painted female figures were made originally in papier mache and later in polyester. Oneroom.org available at <http://www.oneroom.org/sculptors/desaintphalle.html> [accessed July 1, 2011].

82 Supra note25 (p.241).

83 Ibid

5) DANIEL SPOERRI (b.1930)

‘Bananatrap, Dinner’

Print for Edinburgh

50 x 60 cm

Executed in 1970

Private Collection

EXHIBITED

• Daniel Spoerri Presents Eat Art (June 11 - November 13, 2004) at Galerie Fraîch'

Attitude; Paris

• Eating the Universe: Food in Art (November 28, 2009 - February 28, 2010) at

Kunsthalle Düsseldolf, Düsseldolf.

LITERATURE

• Geraldine Girard-Fassier (ed.)(2004) Daniel Spoerri Presents Eat Art. April:

Agency Fruits et Legumes Frais. (p.105)

• Wieland Schmied (2003b) ‘Il caso come maestro’ in Thomas Levy (ed.) (2003)

Daniel Spoerri: Coincidence as Master. Bielefeld; Kerber Verlag. (p.41)

37

Bananatrap Dinner is another banquets by Spoerri made for Edinburgh Festival,

within the framework of the exhibition Art bad Anti-Art: Strategy: Gets Arts,

August 23rd, 1970. This exhibition was held with a principle of showing art which

was unorthodox, new, “most disturbing and most beautiful.”84 This banquet fitted

perfectly in such idea. For this banquet, Spoerri introduced the travesty concept into

his art; the art of misperception. The idea is to deal with senses of look versus taste

or smell; what happens when taste and smell contradict with its dish appearance.

The initial confusion came from order of the courses; Bananatrap Dinner was

served in a reversal utensils confusing the impression of four-course meal; instead of

appetiser, main, desert, and coffee, what was served appears to be the other way

round but once tasted, food were in classic order. To clarify, coffee seemed to be

what served first but inside that coffee cup, there was a Lady Curzon soup. Then the

next course was, ‘glace-purée de pomme de terre et chocolate-boulettes de

viande’ [mashed potato with ice-cream chocolate];85 what appeared to be vanilla and

chocolate ice-cream was actually made from meat and potatoes. This concept was

continued “throughout the meal as regards the order in which the dishes were served

and their content and taste often compelling the guest to give up their resistance to

eating something seemingly unappetising.” 86

Menu Travesti: Kartoffelbrei-Eis mit Fleschpralinen similarly to what mentioned

above has made its way to popular culture. The recipe appears in youth magazine

called Twen. Spoerri gave an instruction on “how a blend of mashed potatoes,

meatballs, and hunter’s sauce can be turned into a sundae with chocolate sauce.” The

appearance gives the first impression, hence, expectation but Menu Travesti

confuses the expectation, fooling visual and smell perception. A year before

Bananatrap Dinner, Spoerri investigated another kind of deception. In

Intermedia’69, Spoerri served a beef dish but told the participants they were made

from horse meat. He wanted to see if the fiction can misguide the sense of taste.

Spoerri has revisited Menu Travesti several times, for example, Le Diner Travesti in

Graz 1998 and in 2002 at the Jeu de Paume, Paris. The menus were the same, soup

38

84 Richard Demarco (1970) cited in Strategy: Get Arts available at <http://www.eca.ac.uk/palermo/history_strategy_get_arts.htm> [accessed July 1, 2011].

85 Supra note25 (p.241).

86 Ibid

was served first in a coffee cup and so on.87 Bananatrap Dinner is a performance,

interactive art project in itself. On top of that, the meal also has performative

principle. Dishes perform to be something they are not. What appear to be beverage

or ice-cream turn out to be savoury dishes. This is an illusion artist conveys to the

audiences through food. From his Trap Paintings to his banquets, Spoerri likes to

investigate people’s reaction upon food consumption. Bananatrap Dinner can as

well explore a person’s senses of which one affect a person’s perception larger than

another.

39

87 Daniel Spoerri’s official website <http://www.danielspoerri.org>

6)CLAES OLDENBURG (b.1929)

‘The Store, Study for Poster’

Collage, ink, and gouache on theatre poster

70.5 x 55.3 cm

Executed in 1961

Collection of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

40

EXHIBITED

• Claes Oldenburg: Early Work (October 29 - December 23, 2005) at Zwirner &

Wirth; New York

LITERATURE

• Richard H. Axson and David Platzker (1997) Prints, Posters, and Ephemera by

Claes Oldenburg: A Catalogue Raisonné 1958-1996. New York; Hudson Hills

Press. (p.78)

• Julia E. Robinson (2005) ‘Fetish or Foil: The Caprices of Claes Oldenburg’ in

Kristine Bell, Greg Lulay, and Alexandra Whitney (eds.) (2005) Claes Oldenburg:

Early Work. New York; Zwirner & Wirth. (p.41)

Turning everyday objects into art has been Claes Oldenburg’s subject since the

beginning of his practice. Oldenburg works in wide-range medium and crossovers

between them. Since mass media are spread and visual images are more accessible,

seeing things visually become more passive than before i.e. people have become less

aware of images they see everyday. Consequently participation has become one of

Oldenburg’s practice, to make artistic experience become more active.

The Store has made one of the most phenomenon art projects

in the early sixties. In 1962, on East 2nd Street, Manhattan,

Claes Oldenburg was selling his handmade objects modelled

from everyday life objects; food and electronic appliances as

well as clothes and small furniture; some are hard, some are

soft. They are not functioned like the real one; instead,

representation of them in art.

Oldenburg’s Store poster imitates the form of theatre poster.

It suggests his Store project as a performance. The Store, Study for Poster was made

on a theatre poster. The artist painted the background white before writing and

painting his poster in black and red. ‘Ray Gun Mfg. Co,’. ‘Ray Gun’ is a trademark of

Oldenburg’s performance production referring to ‘Ray Gun Theatre’. It is Oldenburg

theatre production, where all his action projects was established. Moreover, the

second line from above, Oldenburg put date in “a rupture in the reign of the English

Figure7: The Store (1961)

41

language that says ‘DECIMETRE I AL 31.’” 88 This, again stresses on principle of the

theatre. ‘The STORE’ in bold capital letter emphasises the theatre-like as if it is a title

of the show especially followed by ‘By Claes Oldenburg’ suggests Oldenburg

performed as the director of the show. Below the location there is a scribble similar

to “automatic writing,” 89 placing where the the description of play would be, hence,

curiosity about this ‘performance’, The Store.

Oldenburg, making his objects in the Store can be seen through the shop window of

his East 2nd Street and that was where the performative principle of this project

took place. Oldenburg said “I have imitated, parodied, certain professions - … the

manufacturer, the pastry cook.” 90 Similar to any ordinary shops, act of making are

shown therefore seeing Oldenburg making cake and burger and give uncanny

feelings to the passers because procedure of his making and the outcome are

unconventional way that object is made. Visitors participating in this project also

had to put up an act of performance. They knew this store sold functionless items,

art/craft commodities made by Oldenburg or his wife. People who bought his

pastries or burger from The Store are not able to eat them. When they were buying

it, they were aware of buying representation of something else.

The Store was a place where Oldenburg sold his handmade

objects. Also, Oldenburg used the place as a theatre in 1962.

Oldenburg used The Store as a theatre where he showed “a

remarkable series of ten ‘Happenings.’”91 Later in the same

year, his friend, Raymond Saroff remade and edited

Oldenburg’s screening as a documentary film.

Figure8: Raymond Saroff, Claes Oldenberg

- ‘Ray Gun Theatre’ (1962)

42

88 Julia E. Robinson (2005) ‘Fetish or Foil: The Caprices of Claes Oldenburg’ in Kristine Bell, Greg Lulay, and Alexandra Whitney (eds.) (2005) Claes Oldenburg: Early Work. New York; Zwirner & Wirth. (p.20)

89 Ibid (p.21)

90 Claes Oldenburg (1967) Store Days: Documents from The Store, 1961, and Ray Gun Theatre, 1962, selected by Claes Oldenburg and Emmett Williams. New York; Something Else Press cited in Julia E. Robinson (2005) ‘Fetish or Foil: The Caprices of Claes Oldenburg’ in Kristine Bell, Greg Lulay, and Alexandra Whitney (eds.) (2005) Claes Oldenburg: Early Work. New York; Zwirner & Wirth. (p.20)

91 McPherson & Company (1996-2007) Claes Oldenburg's "Ray Gun Theater -- 1962" DVD. available at <https://www.mcphersonco.com/cs.php?f[0]=shh&pdID=154> [accessed July 1, 2011].

7) CLAES OLDENBURG (b.1929)

‘Pie à la Mode’

Muslin soaked in plaster in plaster over wire frame, painted with enamel

55.9 x 29.9 cm

Executed in 1962

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Panza Collection

EXHIBITED

• Claes Oldenburg: Early Work (October 29 - December 23, 2005) at Zwirner &

Wirth; New York

LITERATURE

• Julia E. Robinson (2005) ‘Fetish or Foil: The Caprices of Claes Oldenburg’ in

Kristine Bell, Greg Lulay, and Alexandra Whitney (eds.) (2005) Claes Oldenburg:

Early Work. New York; Zwirner & Wirth.

43

Pie à la Mode is one of Claes Oldenburg’s object sold in The Store. The Store can be

seen as an artificial version of daily life; it has its setting like an ordinary grocery

store supplying food, clothes, and other goods but instead of usable objects, stuffs

stock in the Store are sculpture made by Oldenburg and his wife. Objects sold there

were art, they do not need to be utilised. Pie à la Mode and other objects sold in The

Store are performative in themselves. Food or products sold there are ‘hyperealist’92

because the softness and texture of sewed muslin are not what one expected to find

in a typical sculpture. Oldenburg and his wife are ones who made these soft

sculpture; hence, they are performers, performing to be bakers, mechanics, and so

on.

Like any other stores, objects were for sale, visitors got to experience the installation

as well as owning a part of it. Artist performs multiple roles in this project,

Oldenburg played a role of “maker, supplier, and salesman, fashioned numerous

potato chips and candy bars out of muslin, plaster, and enamel, which were given to

customers who entered The Store.” 93 These sculptures mimic image of mass

produced objects but they are unique at The Store. It juxtaposes concept of

multiplicity of consumerism and art which is supposed to be distinctive. By selling

these artistic pieces like any other ordinary mass produced objects makes this

project approachable and appealing.

The use of materials for these sculptures is controversial regarding the traditional

materials making sculpture in artistic content. Materials used in Oldenburg’s The

Store objects; muslin, plaster, and enamel are used greatly in craft production.

Considering hierarchy in art production, its materials are judged as ‘lower art’. On

top of that, way these objects are painted employ Abstract Expressionist; Jackson

Pollock’s drip painting as the paint was applied and left to run until it dries out. It

may be because teachers of Oldenburg’s generation are the generation of Abstract

art. Consequently, putting colours into Pie à la Mode has its performative

movement, the way the artist apply the paints but still leave it to chances. In

addition, exaggerate colour, use of blue and vivid colour in Pie à la Mode points out

the intention of Oldenburg of making an illusion version of pie.

44

92 Donal Kuspit (1976) ‘Pop Art: A Reactionary Realism’ in Art Journal, 36.1 (Fall 1976) cited in Michel Delville (2007) Food, Poetry, and Aesthetic of Consumption. ROUTLEDGE; New York. Devilled quoted Kuspit that “Oldenburg;s food images would thus aim to show ‘that anything consumerable becomes a gross object of appetite which call for a consuming relation with itself.’”

93 Susan May (1996) Claes Oldenburg, the Multiples Store: with Case Histories by Claes Oldenburg (National Touring Exhibition). London; Leycol Printers Limited. (p.7)

The Store is Oldenburg’s early project which he continues

using its element in his later art of big food sculpture such

as Sculpture in Form of Fried Egg (1966). It has the same

treatment of Pop art towards painting and print,

exaggerate in size, texture and colour but Oldenburg’s

work has the conceptual hybrid. The sculpture stands on its own, performing as

something they are not.

Figure9: Sculpture in the Form of Fried Egg (1966)

45

8) ALLEN RUPPERSBERG (b.1944)

‘Al’s Cafe’

Photographic documentation, poster, and dishes of Al’s Cafe

Executed in 1969

Photo of Ruppersberg in front of Al’s Cafe, 1969 Al’s Cafe, Poster, 1969

Untitled, 1969 Untitled, 1969

46

EXHIBITED

• Allen Ruppersberg: One of Many - Origins and Variants (December 11, 2005 -

February 19, 2006) at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf.

LITERATURE

• Ulrike Groos and Allen Ruppersberg (2006) Allen Ruppersberg: One of Many -

Origins and Variants. Kiln; Verlag der Buchhandlung.

• Ulrike Groos (2010) ‘Optimism at Table’1 - Notes on a Selection of Artists’

Restaurants, Eateries, and Bars in Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications;

Manchester. (pp.248-249)

In the same way as Oldenburg’s The Store (1962), Allen Ruppersberg ran a cafe on

his own positioning as a chef in downtown L.A. in 1969. Ruppersberg’s art always

has its sense of dislocation and appears to be personal. His art subjects on the

everyday especially this early work of his, Al’s Cafe. In this cafe, he serves drinks and

inedible dishes made by himself which had price of normal meal. His business was

financially successful even though his artistic inedible burger costed as much as a

real burger next door. The cafe opened once a week, Thursday nights from eight

o’clock to eleven o’clock. Al’s Cafe became a new meeting place in L.A. with mixed

clients, not necessary artists or people in the art world. The association of high art/

Louie, Louie ‘Always a delight’, 1969 Al's burger - Sky, Land, and Water, 1969

Dish of Bubble Gum and Raisins, 1969 Distilled Water and Beach Sand, 1969

47

low culture is clear in this project; when art becomes part of reality, he said “I used

art to transform life.” 94

“Against all Minimalist, Post-Minimalist, and Conceptualist

expectations, this cafe was not an idea as an idea as an idea.”

Al’s Cafe was a ‘representation’ of long-running cafe

(representation because it was staged and set to look old). By

doing so, Ruppersberg decorated his cafe’s wall using

American pop culture ephemeral with all the posters,

calendars, pinup images from magazines, autographed

photos and so on. The furnitures looked homely with plaid

pattern and traditional look and the waitress was pretty. It

presents American cafe in a stereotypical American dream.

Al’s Cafe,was meant to be a familiar place.95

However, the experience of visiting Al’s Cafe was

unique from others as sitting in this familiar

place, handed in the menu and one would realise

that dishes on the menu were peculiar. The menu

based on a Hollywood diner.96 Once order had

been placed, it was brought to the counter where

Ruppersberg positioning himself as a chef make a

dish which was exactly that dish’s name.97 For

example, there was Simulated Burned Pine Needles A La Johnny Cash Served With

a Live Fern (1969). Dishes have visual representation associated with L.A. culture

therefore they perform as part of the society.

Exterior of Al’s Cafe, 1969

Simulated Burned Pine Needles A La Johnny Cash Served With a Live Fern,

1969

48

94 Allen Ruppersberg cited in Ulrike Groos (2010) ‘Optimism at Table’1 - Notes on a Selection of Artists’ Restaurants, Eateries, and Bars in Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (p.249)

95 Allan McCollum (2000) ‘What One Loves about Life’ in Frédéric Paul (ed.) (2000) Allen Ruppersberg: Books Inc. Limoges; GDS Imprimaturs (p.8)

96 96 Anne Goldstein (1995) ‘Artists in the Exhibition’ in Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer (eds.) (1995) Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975. London; the MIT Press (p.204)

97 Supra note44

9) MARTHA ROSLER (b.1943)

‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’

Video 6.09 min, black & white, sound

Executed in 1975

Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

EXHIBITED

• To Eat or Not to Eat (November, 2002 - January, 2003) at Salamanca

• Screening and talk on 19 January at Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

LITERATURE

• Electronic Arts Intermix (2011) available at <http://www.eai.org>

• Peggy Phelan (2001) ‘Works: Personalizing the Political’ in Helena Reckitt (ed.)

(2001) Art and Feminism. New York; Phaidon. (p.87)

Numbers of contemporary artists subjects their works in framework of everyday life,

Feminism is one of the them. Feminist artists subject their art from female

experiences of being treated inequality in society and at home. Women are expected

49

to do certain roles such as doing household chores, playing parts of domestic

housewife as well as nourishing mother. Martha Rosler considers all of these issues

in her art; from globalisation to war as well as commercialisation. However, Rosler

leads all of these topics back to the domestic. 98 Kitchen and food preparation is one

of her focuses. Rosler is also a mother, and when she had her son, she noticed how

important cooking and nutrition are important in the culture. She could see how

women have special relationship with food. As a person who has to prepare food for

the family; nutrition has become important on how to choose on what to cook, and

what is best in food aspect, as well as how to make a familiar taste to please everyone

in the family.

How does one address these banally profound issues of everyday life? It seems to

me appropriate to use the medium of television, which in its most familiar form is

one of the primary conduits of ideology.99

Rosler fancies using medium of video and television in her art. She does not concern

that her art will be ‘too available.’ On the contrary, that is one of the main matters of

art which convey political message, available widely to the public. Rosler comments

that Semiotics of the Kitchen is to do with television representation of the kitchen

and see how and what the image conveys and applies to our everyday life.100

Semiotics of the Kitchen is a non-edited, one shot video piece in black and white

showing a woman in an ordinary kitchen introducing utensil and kitchen stuffs

alphabetically. In this video, she starts her demonstration naturally as any housewife

would do, putting her apron on, then demonstrates letter by letter of what she could

find in the kitchen until the last six letters. For u, v, w, x, y, z, Rosler demonstrates

using her own body as metaphor that Rosler herself is one of the kitchen

instruments. 101 Rosler presents her kitchen tools violently with frustration as if they

were weapons. It suggests irritation and discontent of women’s roles as cooks for the

family. Furthermore, it also concerns with globalisation and war. Rosler stated “the

50

98 Jens Hoffman and Joan Jonas (2005) Perform. London; Thames and Hudson Ltd. (p.44)

99 Martha Rosler (1997) extracts from “to argue for a video of representation. to argue for a video against the mythology of everyday life” in pamphlet for New American Film Makers: Martha Rosler. New York; Whitney Museum of American Art) cited in Stephen Johnstone (ed.) (2008) The Everyday. London; Whitechapel and MIT Press. (p.53). She gives a reason “through both its ostensive subject matter and its overly commercial message.”

100 Martha Rolser introducing Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition in Electronic Arts Intermix (2011) available at <http://www.eai.org> [accessed June 29, 2011]

101 Electronic Arts Intermix (2011) available at <http://www.eai.org>

home itself is a militarised zone”102 because it is a place to coach children to face

reality in the future with “military attitude” and it is a housewife’s role to create “an

army” i.e. son’s roles in the real army or head of an organisation of some sort.

51

102 Supra note49

10) MARTHA ROSLER (b.1943)

‘Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition’

Video 10.26 min, colour, sound

Executed in 2003 - 2011

Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

EXHIBITED

• Screening and talk on 19 January at Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

LITERATURE

• Nicole Caruth (2011) ‘Gastro-Vision: Martha Rosler’s Kitchen Mise-en-Scène’ in

Art21:Blog. available at <http://blog.art21.org/2011/01/21/gastro-vision-martha-

roslers-kitchen-mise-en-scene/> [accessed June 29, 2011]

• Electronic Arts Intermix (2011) available at <http://www.eai.org>

In 2003, Rosler was asked by the Whitechapel Gallery in London to reperform

Semiotics of the Kitchen live in an exhibition called A Short History of Performance,

Part II. Rosler’s initial reaction to this request was annoyance as using medium of

video was crucial for Semiotics of the Kitchen. Therefore at the end, she came up

52

with another possibility to revisit Semiotics of the Kitchen. She appropriated this

video performance by calling for an open audition of twenty-six women; some were

curators, some were art students, and some were actresses. They were given a script

and had to do a rotating performance in Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition. It

was like an audition in television show. The performance was shot in a studio inside

Whitechapel Gallery. It was done with three women each round, each woman

performed several letters or ‘symbolic actions.’103 These women were recorded and

broadcast live on the television screen in the gallery. Rosler took another six years to

“play around”, and edit the footages. 104

For its premier in 2011, Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition was shown after three

of her classic videos theming on political of food. The first one shown was the first

video she made, A Budding Gourmet (1974), then Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975),

and The East is Red, The West is Bending (1977) before Semiotics of the Kitchen: An

Audition. Comparing to Semiotics of the Kitchen, A Budding Gourmet and The East

is Red, The West is Bending are about imperialism of classes, genders, and races in

the States at that time. A Gourmet Experience was based on food and the domestic

household. It consists with images available from magazines and cookbooks; mass

publication exploring the mass of production and consumption of ‘gourmet food’ as

well as how to make fine cuisine different. Focusing on class and sophisticated

cuisine, Rosler also had male voiceover in her video narrating excerpt from the

cookbook.105 Images shown are not only American or European cuisine but also

other exotic dishes. This suggests the sophistication of cooking also not being

appreciated because it is by women. Rosler said about this piece that she made this

video to show her sympathies. First, for the productions from women both food and

art had “little value” at that time and secondly for the women who feel trapped and

felt like nothing they can do to go forward. Similarly, The East is Red, The West is

Bending (1977) criticises American consumerism and racism in 1970s.

53

103 Martha Rolser introducing Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition in Electronic Arts Intermix (2011) available at <http://www.eai.org> [accessed June 29, 2011].

104 Supra note50

105 Ariella Budick (2000) ‘A Pure Artist Is Embraced by the Art World: Playfully Fighting Her Own Kitchen Battles’ in Newsaday, July 21, 2000. available at <http://home.earthlink.net/~navva/reviews/newsday.html> [accessed June 29, 2011].

11) SARAH LUCAS (b.1962)

‘Eating a Banana’ from Self Portrait 1990-1998

Iris print on Somerset Velvet paper

57.5 x 54.8 cm

Executed in 1990

Tate Collection

EXHIBITED

• Sarah Lucas (October 28, 2005 - January 15, 2006) at Tate Liverpool

LITERATURE

• Matthew Collings (2002) Sarah Lucas. London; Tate Publishings (p.20)

• Michele Robecchi (2007) Sarah Lucas. Verona; Mondadori Electa S.p.A. (pp.

18-19)

54

A female YBA Sarah Lucas produces her works in the matter of her surrounding. She

comes from the working-class family in North London, hence, her art reviews

concept of “sexuality and self-esteem.”106 Lucas’ art is opposite to illusionistic art107,

her main medium are sculpture assembled from ready-made object, photographs,

and videos. Lucas’ works seem to be direct and straight forward but they are in many

ways ambiguous. She uses metaphors in her works and she chooses her materials

deliberately according to meaning she wants to portray.

Initially, Lucas did not like her photograph taken because she said “I looked

masculine in a way, I didn’t always find palatable.”108 In spite of that, after her first

self-portrait of the series, Eating a Banana; Lucas changed her perspective about

looking masculine as an advantage and she has been using ‘macho-looking’ as a

representation of herself ever since. This self-portrait was taken by chance but it

summarises her artistic practice.109

Taking this photo made me understand just how important my sexual identity was

as a factor. It is difficult to say why it is a powerful work, but it is. 110

Eating a Banana is a close-up self-portrait of the artist doing exactly what title says,

eating a banana as well as glancing at the camera looking challenging. This self-

portrait investigates one of Lucas’ main themes which is investigating stereotype of

women depicted in Modern art and mass media.111 Her gaze gives a very powerful

sense of dominant, being tough female contrasting to stereotype of woman being an

object. Having said that, her posture is in a way, seductive. Obviously act of eating

banana has a reference to giving a blow job but her appearance as a young tomboy or

even an adolescent boy is a contrast to women in media doing the same thing.

Clothes are crucial in her photographs.112 In her self-portraits, Lucas always appear

in menswear. This shows woman’s ability of ‘looking like a man’ and probably having

the same capability. Her pose and clothes in this photograph as well as her gaze are

55

106 Patricia Ellis (2003) The Work that Changed British Art. London; Saatchi Gallery (p.207)

107 Jan Van Adrichem (1996) ‘Things that have to come about’ in Elbrig de Groot and Karel Schampers (eds.) Sarah Lucas. Rotterdam; Museum Boymans-van Beuningen. (p.5)

108 Matthew Collings (2002) Sarah Lucas. London; Tate Publishings (p.72)

109 Michele Robecchi (2007) Sarah Lucas. Verona; Mondadori Electa S.p.A. (pp.18-19)

110 Ibid

111 Ibid

112 Supra note57 (p.66)

confronted showing macho toughness in woman who is herself. Lucas almost always

use herself in her works, she has close relationship to them. She assembles her

sculpture on her own and be a model for her photographic works; “Lucas’ objects

refer to the ‘constructed character she sees in human identities, behaviour, and

cultural patterns.” 113

Lucas has often used photography to explore the connection between food and

sexual stereotype, but ‘Eating a Banana’ remains one of the most spontaneous and

disquieting of her works. 114

56

113 Supra note56 (p.9)

114 Supra note58

12) SARAH LUCAS (b.1962)

‘Got a Salmon On #3’ from Self Portrait 1990-1998

Iris print on Somerset Velvet paper

127 x 105 cm

Digitally reproduced, edition of 150 (original R-Type print, edition of 3 + a/p)

Executed in 1997

Tate Collection

57

EXHIBITED

• Sarah Lucas (October 28, 2005 - January 15, 2006) at Tate Liverpool

LITERATURE

• Matthew Collings (2002) Sarah Lucas. London; Tate Publishings (p.17 and p.50)

• Amma Malik (2009) Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and

London; The MIT Press (pp.46-47)

• Michele Robecchi (2007) Sarah Lucas. Verona; Mondadori Electa S.p.A. (pp.

56-57)

Using food to evoke sexual identities is one of Sarah Lucas’ recurrent themes both in

sculpture and photograph; commonly represented genital. Like this self-portrait, Got

a Salmon On #3, fish has been used as “classic phallic symbol” as well as a negative

view on femininity. 115 Having said that, when this notion is used by female artist, it

gives different interpretation. Lucas wanders around and poses with a big real

salmon resting on her shoulder while one of her hands is holding the fish’s head, “a

pun on the idea of a female erection.”116 Similarly to Eating a Banana, Got a Salmon

On #3 has an image of male desire in masculine appearance woman. Furthermore,

her facial expression gives the impression of being proud like of her achievement but

Lucas’ pose is unique from pose of male achievement like fisherman. It maybe

because her achievement is not that she is able to catch a big fish but instead, in

possession of a phallus.

Got a Salmon On #3 is in fact a photograph documenting

Lucas’ (probable) interactive work.117 Her self-portraits often

come spontaneously. Although they look as she poses for her

photograph to be taken but in fact, they occur when she means

to do another thing. In this photograph, Lucas was wandering

around mens lavatory (See Got a Salmon On #1, 1997) having

salmon resting on her shoulder. When location of the work is

known, couple things occur in viewers’ mind, first stink smell of Figure10: Got a

Salmon On #1 (1997)

58

115 Supra note57 (p.68)

116 Elizabeth Manchester (2001) Got a Salmon On #3 (1997) (Short text from Tate website). available at <http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=-1&workid=151&searchid=9544&roomid=6001&tabview=text&texttype=10>

117 Supra note58 (pp.56-57)

fish and toilet, and second is fish as phallus in front of mens room. “fish crop up

regularly in my life. I can eat a crab impeccably. I’ve always liked fish. I think it’s

because of the smell, the sexual association.”118

Again concerning stereotypical magazine images, the effect of the photo with the

fish is partly to do with me, partly graininess of the photo, partly the dourness - all

those things. They were accidental, because I just had the idea and I did it as

quickly as possible.119

59

118 Lucas quoted in Matthew Collings (2002) Sarah Lucas. London; Tate Publishings (p.73)

119 Supra note57 (p.73)

13) BOBBY BAKER (b.1928)

‘An Edible Family in a Mobile Home’

Edible installation

Executed in 1976

Courtesy of the artist

EXHIBITED

• An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976) at the artist’s house in Stepney,

London

LITERATURE

• Bobby Baker official website <http://www.bobbybakerdailylife.com>

• Lucy Baldwyn (1996) ‘Blending in: The Immaterial Art of Bobby Baker’s Culinary

Events’ in TDR, vol.40, no.4 (winter, 1996). pp.39-41

Similarly to Martha Rosler, Bobby Baker is an artist who has a children of her own

and explore notion of kitchen and women’s role in the society. Baker (and that is her

real name) occupies role of performance artist since the beginning of her artistic

career. Baker uses her body, her performance “communicates her experiences

60

through language of food.”120 Food is her medium to represent women’s experience

in her position, taking off from work to take care of the babies. Baker started her art

performance career in the seventies but she had to take eight years off to become a

full time mother. She came back to her career again in the late eighties. 121 Between

her gap years, things around Feminism and performance art had been altered quite a

few but she could catch up easily.

The eighties feminism is “the Thatcherite, which promoted in myth of the

Superwoman - the working mother who could ‘successfully’ combine professional

life with family life” 122 However, emerging from her own experience, Baker started

her series Drawing on a Mother’s Experience is a food painting show, using white

sheet of cloth as her canvas and foodstuffs as her paints, commenting on her

experience of motherhood for the past eight years and being a working mother.

Baker’s performance does not completely neglect the traditional form of art i.e.

painting and sculpture but to communicate her experience “through the ‘language’ of

food.”123

Back to 1976, before her motherhood, Baker exhibited edible installation for a week

at 13 Conder Street, Stepney, London a prefab for artists in East London supplied by

Acme Housing Association. An Edible Family in a Mobile Home works as an open

house project with life-size edible family inside. Walls, floors, ceilings, curtains, and

all the interior of the house including the furniture are covered by magazines and

newspaper which has context correlating with each family member occupied each

room. Five family members including a mother, father, teenage daughter, son, and a

baby are made as cakes. Entering this exhibition, everyone were offered a cup of tea

coming from the mother’s head or other soft drinks. That is to say, Baker herself

played a part of this household. At first, Baker cut parts of the a family members and

served cake to audiences but once disintegrated, people got what to do and help

themselves with the cake.124

61

120 Elaine Aston (2009) ‘‘Transforming’ Woman’s Lives: Bobby Baker’s Performances of ‘Daily Life’’ in Cambridge Journal Online, March 9, 2009. (p.18)

121 Elaine Aston (2009) ‘‘Transforming’ Woman’s Lives: Bobby Baker’s Performances of ‘Daily Life’’ in Cambridge Journal Online, March 9, 2009. (p.17)

122 Ibid

123 Ibid. She added “After formally training as a painting, Baker began to work not with the paints of artist’s palette, but with et colours and textures of oral palette - of food.”

124 Bobby Baker official website <http://www.bobbybakerdailylife.com>

Each member of family was casted from different sort of confection. For instance,

the baby was a coconut cake and the daughter was made from combination of white

meringues confection hanging on the bed which walls and floors were covered with

sexual sugar drawings. By tasting different character, audiences get to try different

sweets out of each characters and each kind of sweet may have association to each

characters. To illustrate, it is possible that when Baker create characters out of

different confection, she may have thought about what are the characteristics of each

family member and how their identities associated with how her cakes taste like.

What about the texture? Are they too sweet? Too dry? Or just perfect?

At the time, Baker did not have kids and her role of Baker for this installation is not

quit clear. There was already a mother with a tea-pot-head. Baker herself was too old

to be another kid of this family, maybe she was a maid, or it is possible that she

could play a role of a mother since she served tea out of a mother’s head. Moreover,

that was a role of housewife to do such duty. “Baker’s presence throughout the event

acted as a continual unspoken reminder that the consumption of human

confectionery effected not just a diminution of her art, but by extension a

concealment/erasure of herself as an artist. The possibility of literal consumption for

the spectator allowed a particular intimate inclusion into Baker’s process.”125

Baker’s works are in many ways autobiographical, of herself and of women in her

position. Obviously she creates fictional characters, or this case, family but she

always bring out the authenticity of daily life in her performances. Consequently, her

performances have become stories. Due to An Edible Family in a Mobile Home was

a simple nuclear family, audiences can situate themselves into individual character

and interpret this installation in their own way implying to their families.

...every work of art tells a story, even if it’s only the story of its own making…

present complex and carefully planned storylines, performed by the artists, by

others, by viewers or by a combination of three.126

62

125 Lucy Baldwyn (1996) ‘Blending in: The Immaterial Art of Bobby Baker’s Culinary Events’ in TDR, vol.40, no.4 (winter, 1996). pp.39-41

126 Jens Hoffman and Joan Jonas (2005) Perform. London; Thames and Hudson Ltd.(p.141) They describe artworks with principles of narrate and withhold.

14) ELKE KRYSTUFEK (b.1970)

‘Vomiting (17.1.1992)’ and ‘Eating (18.1.1992)’

Video 60min, colour, sound

Executed in 1992

Generali Foundation, Vienna

Vomiting (17.1.1992)

Eating (18.1.1992)

63

EXHIBITED

• Eating the Universe: Food in Art (November 28, 2009 - February 28, 2010) at

Kunsthalle Düsseldolf, Düsseldolf.

LITERATURE

• Elodie Evers (2010) ‘Elke Krystufek’ in Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse

Publications; Manchester.

Elke Krystufek’s represents herself in forms paintings and drawings, videos and

performances. Her oeuvre is always provocative and intimate in forms of, however,

they tend to spring from stereotype depicted in society. That is to say, she uses

theme of common social behaviour to criticise stereotypical images.

Krystufek’s work includes showing herself into different characters in term of

ethnography (black or white), gender (male, female, homosexual), or social group

(exotic, innocent, feminist) yet, to be presented as her own autobiography. Krystufek

gives reasons that her works can be autobiographical although they are constructed

since “I have no life history as an adult where I was not already a public figure. For

this reason, my work can never be personal to that extent because I have never had

this kind of personal life. It has actually always been a dialogue with the public.”127

Krystufek’s art is complex in term of being ‘self’-portrait. By using image of herself as

herself as well as other people, her work reflects society. As it was mentioned earlier,

her work illustrates many characters regardless their race or gender, consequently,

anyone can apply themselves to her art.128 Elodie Evans calls Krystufek’s works as

‘historiographies’ rather than biographies because they are in many ways

‘constructed’ regarding social manners.129

Vomiting (17.1.1992) and Eating (18.1.1992) is a video of an hour long, divided into

two parts; first part, Vomiting (17.1.1992) is twenty minutes long and Eating

(18.1.1992) is forty minutes long, each of them are shot one day apart considering

the titles. Since Krystufek’s work is, in some extend, autobiographies, therefore what

she goes through in her life and what she shows are overlapped. That is to say, they

64

127 Barbara Steiner and Jun Yang (2004) Autobiography. London, Thames & Hudson Ltd. (p.84)

128 Stéphanie Moisdon-Trembley ‘Ego as Media’ in Gandy Gallery. available at <http://www.gandy-gallery.com/exhib/elke_krystufek/exhib_elke_krystufek.html> [accessed June 29, 2011].

129 Elodie Evers (2010) ‘Elke Krystufek’ in Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester.

can be mixture of her own experience and constructed character. This video was

made when the artist was twenty-two years old, few years post-teen. It is a period

where a girl has grown fully as a woman, health and appearance have to be taken

care of carefully, considering ageing.

Depicting a girl with bulimia is more common than it appears to be. First part of the

video, we see a Krystufek having her finger down her throat in order to help her

throw-up in the toilet while the background plays the ‘most beautiful children’s

songs’ of Hansel and Gretel. A young woman looks exhausted but after she has done

with emptying her stomach, she looks into a camera as it was a mirror and then

applying her make-ups with red lipstick and smoky eyes as if she was ready to go

out. The second part of this video presumably occurs a day after the first part, the

same girl was sitting in the table in the kitchen and feeds herself with fattening food

while reading a newspaper as her focus is not on her food. For forty minutes, she

finishes everything on her table without seeming to enjoy them. This contradicts to

the first part of the video. In the first part of video Krytufek suffers herself from

vomiting as to reduce her calories intake whereas the next day she eats high calories

food without giving them appreciation as she know she will be able to get them out

later. 130

Vomiting (17.1.1992) and Eating (18.1.1992) works like documentation of a person

having an eating disorder. Main reason people have eating disorder such as bulimia

and anorexia is because they are not satisfied with their own look, better yet, their

look compare ideal bodies appear in mass media such as magazine or television. This

work shows oppositional between inside and outside in various way. First

contradiction is about public and private; from the first part of this video it shows

how a girl are willing to suffer in her private life to make a nice appearance in public.

The second contradiction is that the disgust of what is inside and what is outside our

body. Food looks good when it enters our body but when it came out, it became

something abject.

65

130 Ibid

15) SOPHIE CALLE (b.1953)

‘Chromatic Diet’

7 photographs, 7 texts

30 x 30 cm. (x 6 photos) 49 x 73.5 cm (1 photo)

Executed in 1997

Galerie Perrotin, Paris

EXHIBITED

• Sophie Calle, M’as-tu vue (November 19, 2003 - March 15, 2004) at Pompidou

Centre, Paris

LITERATURE

• Sophie Calle (1999) Sophie Calle: Double Game. London; Violette Limited.

• Susanne Küchler (2000) ‘The Art of Ethnography: the Case of Sophie Calle in

Sophie Calle: the Reader. Whitechapel Gallery; London.

• Christine Macel (ed.) (2003) Sophie Calle, M’as-tu vue. Paris; Centre National

d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou.

Chromatic Diet (1997) as shown in Galerie Perrotin, Paris

66

Sophie Calle is also the main actress in her art. She is the main character in her

work as well, using her own self-generated ‘real-life’ stories to create narratives

that blend fact with fiction. 131

Calle is known for using observation and documentation in her works. She

investigates people and their behaviour as well as her own. Her work involves

documents, video, photographs and has its end product usually in form of

photography accompanied by text or sometimes a video and shown as installation,

then later published as a book. She has herself as a subject in her art, de-centre and

investigate herself the same ways she does to others. Calle’s work is psychological.

She includes principle of voyeuristic, narcissistic, or alter-ego. From having stalk

other people (Suite Vénitienne, 1980) to having herself followed (The Shadow, 1981)

or creating her fake autobiography with her fake weddings and such

(Autobiographical Stories, 1988-1992).

Calle’s work always deals with relationship of a person to one’s environment and

how one is formed by particular situations. “Calle’s use of ethnographic present

tense and also her staging and manipulation of self/other relations draws heavily on

the ethnographic model in which fieldwork is used in order to reconcile theory and

practice and to reinforce the basic principles of participant/observer tradition.”132

Recurrent theme in Calle’s work is her own autobiography, Chromatic Diet also falls

into that categories because Maria character was generated from Calle herself.

Having said that, she always combine mixture of what people see in her and her real

self so the “boarder between the authentic real and the imagined are constantly

blurred.” 133

Chromatic Diet is a part of collaborative project of Calle and her English writer

friend, Paul Auster called Double Game. It “is a hall of mirrors.” 134 Calle plays a role

of Maria who is a character from Paul Auster’s 1992 novel Leviathan. Maria is, in

67

131 Susan Hapgood (2008) ‘Slightly Unbalanced’ in Susan Hapgood (2008) Slightly Unbalanced. New York; iCI (Independent Curators International) (pp.23-24)

132 Susanne Küchler (2000) ‘The Art of Ethnography: the Case of Sophie Calle in Sophie Calle: the Reader. London; Whitechapel Gallery. (pp.92-93)

133 Barbara Steiner and Jun Yang (2004) Autobiography. London, Thames & Hudson Ltd. (p.90)

134 Yve-Alain Bois (2000) ‘Character Study’ in Sophie Calle: the Reader. London; Whitechapel Gallery. (p.88)

fact, inspired by Sophie Calle herself so we can

say that Calle’s plays a role of herself represented

by Auster. This project shows how Auster

interprets Calle by seeing her behaviour and how

Calle acts back to his reading of hers.

This idea is extraordinary because there are many

layers to it. In Double Game, Calle could use her

alter-ego represented by another person to

perform. By doing so, it is not certain that who is the author of Maria character or of

the piece. “In order to create the character Maria, Auster borrowed certain actions

performed by Calle for her work, following her descriptive text almost word for

word; he also credited Maria with some rituals imitating, or so he thought, those

invented by Calle in her work” 135

There are three moves of Double Game below;

From a photographic series, Chromatic Diet, it can be seen that Calle “becomes

absent through Auster’s Maria.” 136 Although these menus is created by Auster but

Calle also puts her thought and idea into it. She alters what the menus should be if it

THE RULES OF THE GAMEIn his novel Leviathan, Paul Auster thanks me for having authorised him to mingle fact with fiction. And indeed, on pages 60 to 67 of his book, he uses a number of episodes from my life to create a fictive character named Maria. Intrigued by this double, I decided to turn Paul Auster’s novel into a game and to make my own particular mixture of reality and fiction.

I

The life of Maria and how it influenced the life of Sophie

In Leviathan, Maria puts herself through the same ritual as I did. But Paul Auster has slipped some rules of his own inventing into his portrait of Maria, In order to bring Maria and myself closer together, I decided to go by the book.

II

The life of Sophie and how it influenced the life of Maria

The ritual that Auster “borrowed” from me to shape Maria are: The Wardrobe, The Striptease, To Follow…, Suite vénitienne, The Detective, The Hotel, The Address Book, and The Birthday Ceremony. Leviathan give me the opportunity to present these artistic projects that inspired the author and which Maria and I now share.

III

One of the many ways of mingling fact with fiction, or how to try to become a character out of a novel

Since, in Leviathan, Auster has taken me as a subject, I imagined swapping roles and taking him as the author of my actions. I asked him to invent a fictive character which I would attempt to resemble. Instead, Auster preferred to send me “Personal Instructions for SC on How to Improve Life in New York City (Because she asked…)”. I followed his directives. This project is entitled Gotham Handbook.

68

135 Ibid (pp.117-118)

136 Ibid (p.119)

is up to her. For example, on Wednesday, Maria eats white food; flounder, potatoes,

and Fromage blanc but Called says “I changed this menu because I was not satisfied

with the yellow colour of potatoes and added: Rice, Milk” 137 Therefore, although it is

Auster’s character generated by Calle but it is more of Calle and Auster. Called

restricted her diet to certain rules; she ate by the colour and documented it. Image of

dishes are in someway ‘hyperreal’ having performative quality. Visual image is

aesthetically appealing and one colour per dish gives sense of ‘is it edible?’

There seems to be a rough split in Calle’s career to date: her earlier works are,

broadly speaking, concerned with narrative, and the later ones with image. In

both, principle tool is language, with the visual component filling an illustrative

role… truth. It is the only aspect of any piece of information that can always be

relied upon, and , of course, it is the aspect that diminishes information’s value as a

commodity. It is nearly always inconvenient; it is unproductive and inefficient; it is

often dangerous. And that is why it is so beautiful, as Calle repeatedly

demonstrates in her works.138

69

137 Sophie Calle’s description on Chromatic Diet.

138 Luc Sante (1993) ‘Sophie Calle’s Uncertainty Principle’ in Parquet, no.36 pp.74-78 in Margaret Iversen (ed.) (2010) Chance. London; Whitechapel and MIT Press. (pp.165-167)

16) RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA (b.1961)

‘Untitled’ (Free)

Cooking performance, installation

Executed in 1992

Courtesy of David Zwirner/Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

EXHIBITED

• Gallery 303, New York (1992)

• Werner Center for the Arts, Columbus (1999)

• David Zwirner Gallery, New York (2007)

LITERATURE

• Francesco Grassi and Rirkrit Tiravanija (2007) Rirkrit Tiravanija, A

Retrospective: Tomorrow is Another Day. Zürich; JRP Ringier (pp.10-11)

• Catalogue text from Performance Anxiety, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago,

Illinois ‘Rirkrit Tiravanija’. available at <http://homepage.mac.com/allanmcnyc/

textpdfs/rirkritmca.pdf> [accessed May 18th, 2011].

70

In 1992, Rirkrit Tiravanija showed his first ‘participatory’ cooking performance,

‘Untitled’ (Free) which made him internationally well-known in the art scene over

night. Born in Buenos Aires, a son of an ambassador, Tiravanija spent his childhood

in Bangkok, Utopian, and Canada. His diverse background influences core idea of

his work.

Undoubtedly ‘Untitled’ (Free) is Tiravanija’s most notable piece. However, it is not

his first cooking performance piece. In 1989 for a group show called Outside the

Clock: Beyond Good and ElviS at Scott Hanson Gallery, New York, Tiravanija

established the first cooking performance in art-institutional space, ‘Untitled’ ( ). For

this exhibition, Tiravanija cooked Thai green curry at the exhibition opening but

unlike his later works, curry was not served to the exhibition attendees.139 Notion of

everyday life and hybridity can be seen since this early work. Tiravanija combined

everyday action such as cooking with art surroundings. Although food were not

served then but the smell gave unfamiliar experience to ordinary exhibition opening.

On top of that, for ‘Untitled’ ( ), the artist showed electric hob with clay pot giving

sense of contradiction and mixture to his work which is one of his main themes.

When Tiravanija first showed ‘Untitled’ (Free), he did not only show cooking action

but he also altered gallery space as a whole by not doing anything special to gallery

space. “The overall view is that of the over-packed storage space of gallery.”140 This

gives sense of dislocation due to seeing the unexpected. As for office space,

Tiravanija removed doors, walls, cupboards to expose the ‘behind-the-scene’ area.

“Process is very much the key word here… the process of living in the world of

object.”141 As for the piece, ‘Untitled’ (Free) is more or less a temporary kitchen with

refrigerator, rice cooker, gas cooker, stools, and table. Tiravanija performs as a head

chef, cooking Thai curry and everyone attended the exhibition can help themselves

with rice and curry free of charge.142

Tiravanija’s practice has a strong connection to Relational Aesthetic constituted by

Nicolas Bourriaud (which did not exist until 1998). Relational Art is in someway

71

139 Francesco Grassi and Rirkrit Tiravanija (2007) Rirkrit Tiravanija, A Retrospective: Tomorrow is Another Day. Zürich; JRP Ringier (p.2)

140 Ibid (p.10)

141 Ibid (p.2)

142 Jerry Saltz (2007) ‘Conspicuous Consumption’ in New York Magazine. available at <http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/31511/>

another art form concerning art of the 1990s with traces of 1960s Conceptual art.143

Bourriaud notes the meaning of Relational (art) as “a set of artistic practices which

take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human

relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.”144

‘Untitled’ (Free) has the artist as a creator of the work but the work is completed by

the act of social gathering, hence questions surrounding authenticity and authority

of the artist and the artwork.

Tiravanija’s work is in many way autobiographical. His nationality is Thai although

he spent less than half of his life there but still his Thai cultural background is visible

in most of his works. “This split or contradiction gave rise to confusion in his sense

of identity and his notion of his origin”. Tiravanija may be famous for his cooking

performance but there are large numbers of his work concern other aspects of

everyday life apart from cooking and eating such as music and travel, yet, most of

them interest in socialising, the participation between people, art, and the everyday.

72

143 Nicolas Bourriaud (1998) Relational Aesthetic (English translation, 2002). Paris; Les Presses Du Réel. (p.11)

144 Ibid (p.113)

17)VICTORIA STANTON

‘ESSEN’ from series (Being) One Thing at a Time

Public art action

First performed in 2003

Courtesy of the artist

EXHIBITED

• June 2007: La Plancha Diabolo, as part of Urban Visions, Shorelines: 07, The

MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie, ON

• May 2005: Various locations, as part of the exhibition Off Grid/Hors Circuit,

Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, ON

• August - November 2003: Various locations, the initial series first carried out in

Montreal, QC

ESSEN as performed and documented in Barrie, ON, 2007

ESSEN as performed and documented in Montreal, QC, Vancouver, BC, and Toronto, ON, 2006

ESSEN as performed and documented in Ottawa, ON, 2005

73

LITERATURE

• Beate Ermacora (2010) ‘A Precarious Adventure. Food and Body Image’ in Eating

the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester. (pp.254-255)

• Victoria Stanton (2005) ‘Don’t talk with my mouth full’ in Ascent Magazine, Yoga

for an Inspire Life, 28, winter 2005. (pp.18-23).

• Artist website. Victoria Stanton and the Art of Transaction. available at <http://

www.bankofvictoria.com> [accessed June 29, 2010]

Victoria Stanton is a performance artist based in Montreal, Canada. She is also a

writer and most books she has worked on associated with context around words and

languages as well as time and space of the everyday. Stanton’s recent performance

investigates the ambiguous of the “in-between;” artist and audiences, artist and

object/action/location.145 In her performances, she aims to test “the limits of

vulnerability make up” her “overall practice as an artist working in - and with - space

and time”146

ESSEN is a piece from public performance/participation art project series called

(Being) One Thing at a Time. The (Being) One Thing at a Time series started off in

2003 and ended in 2008. This series includes various performances disrupting

normal activity appeared in society i.e. “messing around with notion of ‘appropriate’

behaviour.” 147 Apart from that, Stanton does not only wish to explore notion of

representation of individual to community but these performances have to be

aesthetically appealing, although it intervenes the normal everyday life scene.

The title ESSEN came from German or Yiddish word means to eat and this project it

literally does what it means. For this project, Stanton finds pairs of participants and

take them to selected restaurant. They are asked to sit opposite one another, once

food is served, one has to feed their partners. There are three acts:

74

145 Interview with the artist via email on August 8, 2011.

146 Interview with the artist via email on August 8, 2011. “grey area - where transitions negotiations and deliberations occur, where one’s sense of certainly and stable self is called into question - that I find the most rich with potential and possibility.”

147 Victoria Stanton (2005) ‘Don’t talk with my mouth full’ in Ascent Magazine, Yoga for an Inspire Life, 28, winter 2005. (p.20)

In 2001, Stanton performed The Cake Feeding Performances. This performance has

the same principle as ESSEN in term of feed and be fed, but this performance most

of the time done with strangers. “The act of feeding, and the fact of it being food that

creates this intimacy necessarily provokes all kinds of responses. It is nurturing but

also potentially invasive. It deals with a very basic need but comes at it from an

angle that makes us stop and examine more closely how we (once again) deal with

issues of (self-) control ad dependence vs. helplessness.”148 ESSEN, like The Cake

Feeding Performances, gives feeling of nostalgia and associates with childhood

experience of being fed. The recognition sense of smell goes back to pre-linguistic

stage of how smell can influence a child’s decision making. This act is challenging

since one has control over another’s food intake, yet, concerning another’s

satisfaction.

ESSEN came from three inspirations associated with Stanton’s practice as a

performance artist and her personal experience. The first one is to create the

unusual scene which will then generate the interactive of the performance and its

surrounding. The first restaurant ESSEN took place was the same one Stanton had

her Naked Walk Performance. In that performance, Stanton had participants

walking passed restaurant window naked. Her idea was to explore the “messiness” of

interior and exterior of pubic space like a restaurant where people indulge

themselves without considering what is going on on the other side of that window.

ESSEN is like an extension of that project in term of rupturing the ordinary space

and time.

The second inspiration came from Stanton’s own experience about food and its

significance apart from being source of energy. Having meal together among family

and friends, food has become a medium for one connecting to the other.

Furthermore, ESSEN is an investigation on consciousness over food intakes: “I am

ESSEN

1. Ordering Food.

2. Placing the Plates on the Table.

3. Feeding Your Dinner Partner.

75

148 Interview with the artist via email on August 8, 2011.

so acutely aware of each step - it’s as if my taste buds have been put in high alert,

too.”149

The last inspiration of this project is to investigate the extraordinary presentation of

ordinary everyday behaviour if it can turn out to be art, the limitation the artist can

push to make art out of the everyday. This project has been performed in different

locations since 2005. Although it has been repeated but outcomes will be different

every time because this project has a fixed concept but open for any possibility

regarding time and space; location and participations.

With each unfolding, the performance never ceases to reveal new insights – and

inadvertently sets the stage for joyous, celebratory, and transformative

encounters.150

76

149 Victoria Stanton (2005) ‘Don’t talk with my mouth full’ in Ascent Magazine, Yoga for an Inspire Life, 28, winter 2005. (p.21) She talks about her experience of ESSEN and how her concentration was fully about food and it develops her intimacy to her friend who feed her “...this is accompanied by a glowing warmth growing slowly in my heart for the provider of this food - no not the Earth mother, but my friend sitting across from me.”

150 Artist website. Victoria Stanton and the Art of Transaction. available at <http://www.bankofvictoria.com> [accessed June 29, 2010]

List of Comparative Images (Entries)

Figure1: James Rosenquist, I Love You with My Ford (1961); Oil on canvas, 15.5 x

21cm; Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Figure2: James Rosenquist, Sauce (1967).

Figure3: Alison Knowles Make a Salad performed for Work Ethics (2003).

Figure4: Alison Knowles Make a Salad performed for Fluxus Extravaganza (2008).

Figure5: Yves Kline, Ci-gît l’espace [Here Lies the Space] (1960); Sponge-painted,

artificial flowers, gold leaf on panel, 125 x 100 x 10cm; Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Figure6: Niki de Saint Phalle, Mini Nana Qui Court (1970); Painted polyester and

metal, 36 x 20 x 17cm; Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Zurich.

Figure7: Claes Oldenburg, The Store (1961); Letterpress, 71.8 x 56.2cm; Mary Ellen

Meehan Fund, New York.

Figure8: Raymond Saroff, Claes Oldenburg - ‘Ray Gun Theatre’ (1962);

Documentary, 2 hours.

Figure9: Claes Oldenburg, Sculpture in the Form of Fried Egg (1966); Canvas, dried

cotton, polystyrene, 309.9cm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Figure10: Sarah Lucas, Got a Salmon On #1 (1997).

77

Glossary

Abstract Expressionism (noun)

a development of abstract art that originated in New York in the 1940s and 1950s

and aimed at subjective emotional expression with particular emphasis on the

creative spontaneous act (e.g., action painting). Leading figures were Jackson

Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Bulimia (noun)

an emotional disorder involving distortion of body image and an obsessive desire to

lose weight, in which bouts of extreme overeating are followed by depression and

self-induced vomiting, purging, or fasting. Also called binge-purge syndrome.

Conceptual Art (noun)

art in which the idea presented by the artist is considered more important than the

finished product, if there is one.

Dada (noun)

an early 20th-century international movement in art, literature, music, and film,

repudiating and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the

illogical and absurd.

Dada was launched in Zurich in 1916 by Tristan Tzara and others, soon merging

with a similar group in New York. It favored montage, collage, and the ready-

made. Leading figures: Jean Arp, André Breton, Max Ernst, Man Ray, and Marcel

Duchamp.

Feminism (noun)

the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic

equality to men.

The issue of rights for women first became prominent during the French and

American revolutions in the late 18th century. In Britain it was not until the

emergence of the suffragette movement in the late 19th century that there was

significant political change. A ‘second wave’ of feminism arose in the 1960s, with

an emphasis on unity and sisterhood.

78

Fluxus (noun)

a name for a group of artists founded by George Maciunus in 1961 devoted to

advanced experimental and intermedia arts, including performance, music, and

poetry as well as objects and images.151

Fluxus objectives are social (not aesthetic). They are connected to the [NOVY] LEF

group of 1929 in Soviet Union (ideologically) and concern itself [sic] with: Gradual

elimination of fine arts (music, theatre, poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, etc. etc.)

This is motivated by desire to stop the waste of material and human resources (like

yourself) and divert it to socially constructive ends.152

Futurism (noun)

an artistic movement begun in Italy in 1909 that violently rejected traditional forms

so as to celebrate and incorporate into art the energy and dynamism of modern

technology. Launched by Filippo Marinetti, it had effectively ended by 1918 but was

widely influential, particularly in Russia on figures such as Malevich and

Mayakovsky.

Gastronomy (noun)

the practice or art of choosing, cooking, and eating good food.

Happenings (noun)

Happenings were theatrical events created by artists, initially in America, in the late

1950s and early 1960s. They were the forerunners of Performance art and in turn

emerged from the theatrical elements of Dada and Surrealism. Happenings typically

took place in an environment or installation created within the gallery and involved

light, sound, slide projections and an element of spectator participation. Happenings

proliferated through the 1960s but gave way to Performance art in which the focus

was increasingly on the actions of the artist.153

79

151 Judith Rodenbeck (2004) ‘Fluxus’ in Helen Molesworth (ed.) (2003) Work Ethic. Pennsylvania; The Pennsylvania State University Press. (p.178)

152 George Maciunas, letter to Thomas Schmit (1964); reprinted in Kristine Stiles mad Peter Selz (eds.) (1996)Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. Berkeley and Los Angeles; University of California Press. (p.726) cited in Judith Rodenbeck (2004) ‘Fluxus’ in Helen Molesworth (ed.) (2003) Work Ethic. Pennsylvania; The Pennsylvania State University Press. (p.178)

153 Tate website available at <http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=131>

Illusionism (noun)

the principle or technique by which artistic representations are made to resemble

real objects or to give an appearance of space by the use of perspective.

Impressionism (noun)

a style or movement in painting originating in France in the 1860s, characterized by

a concern with depicting the visual impression of the moment, esp. in terms of the

shifting effect of light and color.

The Impressionist painters repudiated both the precise academic style and the

emotional concerns of Romanticism, and their interest in objective representation,

especially of landscape, was influenced by early photography. Impressionism met

at first with suspicion and scorn, but soon became deeply influential. Its chief

exponents included Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cézanne, Degas, and Sisley.

Lithography (noun)

the process of printing from a flat surface treated so as to repel the ink except where

it is required for printing.

The earliest forms of lithography used greasy ink to form an image on a piece of

limestone that was then etched with acid and treated with gum arabic. In a modern

press, rollers transfer ink to a thin aluminum plate wrapped around a cylinder. In

offset lithography the image is transferred to an intermediate rubber-covered

cylinder before being printed.

Minimalism (noun)

a trend in sculpture and painting that arose in the 1950s and used simple, typically

massive, forms.

Mylar (noun) (trademark)

a form of polyester resin used to make heat-resistant plastic films and sheets.

New Realism (noun)

The term Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism) was forged by Pierre Restany during an

early group exhibition in May 1960. By returning to ‘realism’ as a category, he was

referring to the 19th-century artistic and literary movement which aimed to describe

ordinary everyday reality without any idealisation. Yet, this realism was ‘new’, in the

sense that there was a Nouveau Roman in fiction and a New Wave in film: in the first

80

place it connects itself to the new reality deriving from an urban consumer society, in

the second place its descriptive mode is also new because it no longer is identified

with a representation through the making of an appropriate image, but consists in

the presentation of the object chosen by the artist.154

Pop Art (noun)

art based on modern popular culture and the mass media, esp. as a critical or ironic

comment on traditional fine art values.

The term is applied specifically to the works, largely from the mid 1950s and 1960s,

of a group of artists including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns,

who used images from comic books, advertisements, consumer products, television,

and the movies.

Ready-made (noun)

a mass-produced article selected by an artist and displayed as a work of art.

Relational Aesthetics (noun)

The French curator Nicholas Bourriaud published a book called Relational

Aesthetics in 1998 in which he described the term as meaning a set of artistic

practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of

human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private

space. He saw artists as facilitators rather than makers and regarded art as

information exchanged between the artist and the viewers. The artist, in this sense,

gives audiences access to power and the means to change the world.155

Surrealism (noun)

a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature that sought to release the

creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational

juxtaposition of images.

Launched in 1924 by a manifesto of André Breton and having a strong political

content, the movement grew out of symbolism and Dada and was strongly

influenced by Sigmund Freud. In the visual arts its most notable exponents were

81

154 Centrepompidou on New Realism. available at <http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-newrea-EN/ENS-newrea-EN.htm>

155 Tate website available at <http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=634>

André Masson, Jean Arp, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst,

Man Ray, and Luis Buñuel.

Thatcherism (noun)

Thatcher, Margaret (Hilda), Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven (1925– ), British

stateswoman; prime minister 1979–90. The country's first woman prime minister

and the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century, her period in

office was marked by an emphasis on monetarist policies, privatization of

nationalized industries, and trade union legislation.

* definitions are from New Oxford American Dictionary 2nd edition

2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.; unless stated otherwise.

82

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Jens Hoffman and Joan Jonas (2005) Perform. London; Thames and Hudson Ltd.

Magdalena Holzhey (2010) ‘Eating the Universe’ in Magdalena Holzhey, Renate

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Boje (2010) Eating the Universe. Cornerhouse Publications; Manchester.

Anthony Howell (1999) The Analysis of Performance Art: A Guide to its Theory and

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Amelia Jones (1998) Body Art: Performing the Subject. University of Minnesota

Press; Minneapolis.

Janet Kraynak (2003) ‘Performance’ in Helen Molesworth (ed.) (2003) Work Ethic.

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Lucy R. Lippard (1997) ‘Escape Attempts’, introduction to revised edition, Six Years:

The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. Berkley and Los

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Everyday. London; Whitechapel and MIT Press.

Gino Di Maggio (2002) ‘Fluxus: art as individual subversion or utopia as a craft’ in

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Cynthia Morrison-Bell (2009) ‘Foreword’ in Cynthia Morrison-Bell and Anthony Key

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Sandro Ricaldone (2002) ‘What we talk about, when we talk about Fluxus’ in Sandra

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Geraldine Harris (1999) ‘The active consumer: Bobby Baker’s How to Shop’ in

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Sophie Calle

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Alison Knowles

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