ON BECOMING SOMETHING ELSE
—Dinner, 21 September 2009, 8 pm—
What we hold against artworks is their impertinent longevity. Made of sheep fat or pastillage, and as such dressed with the
charm of perishable things, we would love them better, were they imperfect. – Félix Fénéon, La Plastique Culinaire, 1922.
The paragraphs below describe the work of seven different artists. Each of these artists has pursued an art practice that eventually led them out of the art world
and into something else. In some cases it was permanent, in other cases, temporary. Cooking is the act of ingredients becoming something else, something to be
eaten and shared. For the current project, the ingredients become a representation of the artist’s practice and the dinner is an homage to these artists’ decisions
to leave the art world.
The recipe titles attached to each of the paragraphs have been written by Fabien Vallos, a philosopher and friend who is also, perhaps, the best amateur
chef I know. When discussing this project with Fabien, we spoke about the possibilities and impossibilities of recipes and representation as well as the history of
its most flamboyant example, the pièce montée, sweet and savory edible sculptures created by chefs to represent past events and forms of architecture. Although
the pièce montée began in the 17th century and continues to today, it reached its apogee in the 19th century with the recipes of Antonin Carême and Urbain
Dubois. For our collaboration on this project, I asked Fabien to construct a recipe for each paragraph. In this representation he had complete freedom; he just
had to understand that the recipes would be for the purpose of a private dinner in Paris and be prepared in a restaurant kitchen for about twenty-five people.
This is the broadside written for that dinner. Additionally, that evening, I will distribute an essay by Félix Fénéon entitled La Plastique Culinaire. Published by
the Antinomian Press with a translation into English by Rachel Stella, Fénéon’s essay was first published in 1922 and is one of the earliest histories of the pièce
montée and their chefs, whom Fénéon referred to as “Les sculpteurs et architectes à toque blanche”.
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Sometimes it is helpful to understand what is, as what remains, and to understand
what remains, by looking at what has departed. In the art world histories are written
by and about those who have remained. However, some artists have made interesting
decisions that have caused them to leave the art world and these decisions are significant
to art history. I am speaking about artists who have left the value structure of art through
the pursuit of their art practice, as they have become something other than artists. These
paragraphs are examples of such departures and they are written for those of us who
have left, or are near departure, and to remind us that we are not alone.
Paragraph introduction
She had started out in black and white in the mid-1950s, with paintings mostly, and
these later developed into works that could be manipulated by the viewer. Her awareness
of two points, a self and the other, and the space in between, was always there, through
the concept of figure and ground, participant and object. At home she experienced a
painful disconnect between the body-self and the body-politic as the political situation
worsened and she was forced to live abroad. It was then, with her students and
anonymous passersby on the street, that she began to develop her participatory objects
with therapeutic healing powers. These objects were a profound challenge to the art world
because she made clear that their meaning was dependent upon their manipulation and
use, a position that did not sit well with the object-based economy of contemporary art.
Finally, towards the end of her life, when she was able to return to her home-country, she
devoted her energies fulltime to healing others as a psychotherapist.
Poireaux vinaigrette
Beginning in 1968, the artist turned his interest to ecology and its relationship to one’s
personal life. The exhibited work consisted of documentation in the form of photographs
and text and from viewing them, visitors could piece together a sense of the artist’s
process and relation to nature. Some early projects involved the cultivation of foodstuffs
and noting the behavior of animals on his farm; other time was spent in the study of
biodynamic farming and bee-keeping and raising goats for competition. He struggled
with the way in which his artwork was understood in the exhibition space and in 1973
abandoned photographs and began to focus on writing personal diaries. By the late
1970s, the artist started to spend more and more time on his farm raising cows, eventually
becoming a fulltime farmer: “Our being on this farm as we are now was never planned;
it just gradually grew to be so.”
Caillettes aux herbes
For both of them, everything was art and together, their artistic practice was to criticize
institutions and politicians for their support of the Vietnam war. At one point, they tried
to save the life of a revolutionary poet who was accused of murdering a man in Trinidad.
When he was found guilty and given the death sentence, these two artists redirected their
practice to trying to save this man’s life. They called upon other artists and writers to
assist in a letter-writing campaign to have the poet-revolutionary pardoned by the Queen
of England. It didn’t work and on 16 May 1975 he was put to death. When asked about
this story many years later, one of the two artists noted that even though everything is
and can be art, at the very end, this project ceased to be art and simply became an effort
to save someone’s life.
Risotto giallo al caffè e alla liquirizia
In 1969, while involved with an underground art group in New York City, the artist
developed an interest in group dynamics and social and political processes. Some of
his early artistic activity included works he called “influence pieces” where he would
discreetly suggest an idea for a piece to someone who would then execute the work
without being aware of his influence. Becoming concerned with the manipulative aspects
of this practice, the artist moved into politics “where influence and concept come together
compatibly.” In 1975 he was elected mayor of a small village and had the opportunity
to apply his interest in aesthetic structure and form to the political situation at hand.
As mayor it was clear that the village could not fiscally survive under its current tax
base, and that the only solution was its dissolution as a village and incorporation into a
neighboring town. By the end of his two years as mayor, the town had accepted this idea
and the small village ceased to exist.
Barigoule d’artichauts à la poutarque
The artist was a friend and through the intensity of her sincerity, she struggled with the
institutionalization of her practice. She started with placing found garbage in a gallery
and making sure that it wasn’t overly arranged by the gallery owners (impossible).
She would also go to extreme ends to try and help artist-friends (even when that, too,
was impossible). When she left object-making behind, she did so to instead focus upon
the support staff of exhibition spaces and then, in 1991, with the encouragement of a
friend, she actually moved into a museum to live there for a period of time. This act of
institutional absorption had the boomerang effect of focusing her energies on helping a
homeless person outside of the museum. After the project, she got a job doing research
to help children at risk and eventually became a social worker.
Filet de maquerau, cocos-céleri
She was another friend, working as an artist and critic during the 1980s and 90s, and
her approach to art was to see it as a practice involving many different media, including
performance. A number of pieces were subtle, quiet installations that you could pass by
without even noticing. Then with a boy-friend collaborator, she started creating objects
for interaction and connection with others. One project was in a museum where they set
up a communication device made of cardboard tubes found on the street. Connected
together, the tubes ran the length of the museum and allowed two people, one unseen to
the other, to communicate. After the exhibition the piece was dismantled and the tubes
were returned to the dumpsters in which they had been found. Their next project was a
series of furniture pieces designed to be used in Tantric sex. At this point she had been
studying yoga seriously for four years with various teachers in New York City. Then,
sometime later and after studying yoga in India, she left the art world and moved away
to set-up her own yoga center.
Mont-blanc au gratte-cul no 3
It was the temporality of the projects that really made the issue come to a head.
She had begun with an interest in the functionality of certain processes, from ceramics
to printmaking to starting a nonprofit organization as an art project. From there, she
organized undirected discussion groups, or forums, where people could share common
concerns and experiences, the final group being a discussion of healthcare. In these
forum projects she was interested in amateurism and the way in which people create
homemade-solutions to shape and give meaning to their lives. But then, as she sought
to have a lasting impact on the participants, she began to realize that the brevity of her
involvement as well as her role as author, ultimately obstructed her goal to contribute
to the community. Looking back on those projects she told me that “for something to
be lasting it almost always can’t exist in an art world context, but it can be approached
artfully.” Finally, in 2008, she started working as a trainee in a lay health clinic in
Berkeley and is now enrolled in a pre-med program.
Oreillettes
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Chef Fabien Vallos Restaurant Chapeau-Melon 92, rue Rébeval 75019 Paris 01 42 02 68 60 Metro Pyrénées / Belleville
This dinner could not have been realized without the help of Air de Paris, Olivier Camus, Linda Grabe, and Bruno Serralongue. Thanks also to Brigit Barnhart, Susanne Cockrell,
Kirby Gookin, Jon Hendricks, Amanda Herman, Ted Purvis, Rachel Stella, Laura Trippi, and all of those I’ve spoken to along the way.
by Ben Kinmont