Cake as Art at Performa 07
Hungry for new art? Then Performa 07, the performance biennial that kicks off this week (see performa-arts.org for details), has a dish for you! Every day at lunchtime from 11 am to 4 pm, Oct. 27-Nov. 20, 2007 Freeman’s restaurant on Freeman Alley in SoHo is serving an experimental culinary work by Turkish conceptual artist Serkan Özkaya’s (b. 1973). Dubbed Bring Me the Head of. . . , the work is a ginger spice cake with bourbon, caramel and cream (created by Freeman’s chef Jean Adamson) that can be yours for the bargain price of $10. Art appreciation here is via the taste buds, as restaurant patrons are “invited to consume and thereby destroy the art.” Özkaya concept requires that the dish take the shape of “a head of an icon of childhood,” and in this manifestation the model is Caravaggio’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (ca. 1609).
October 27th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
I love trying interesting food and this sounds like something I would like. I always found the presentation of food to be artistic in some way. Food as art is very also interactive- it involves your taste buds, your sense of smell, your sense of touch, and appeals to you visually (the only thing missing here is sound). Sounds very interesting.
October 29th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
well, food can involve sounds. sometimes people like to listen to certain music when they eat certain foods. elements of sound is also involve in cooking. sometimes i actually like to hear and smell food more than i like eating itself; i love when i hear the sizzling sounds of things being stir-fried or grilled or soups bubbling, there’s such a sense of anticipation when you finally get to eat it.
October 29th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
You are making me hungry!
Is there something different or special in the idea of food-as-art given that, in order to appreciate the food, it is assumed that the audience will destroy the food (by eating it)?
One more thing I wonder — is food a performing art or a fine art?