The World's First Food Truck Drive-In

The New York City Food Film Festival, DUMBO, 2010.

The New York City Food Film Festival presents documentaries, features and short films about food. All of the films are selected by a panel of industry experts. The 2010 selections ranged from political food puns, and grits in the American South, to a portrait of a Brooklyn knifemaker, and a passionate bread-baker in Austria. The festival, now in its fourth year, continues to grow in popularity not only for its films but also for its niche events like this year's Food Truck Drive-In Movie, the first in the world. The premise was simple: food trucks drove in and viewer-eaters arrived on foot. I was, of course, one of them.

Looking back at everything I ate that day, it's no wonder I woke up the next morning with a major food hangover. (Nayland Blake's early video Gorge comes to mind.) The smorgasbord of offerings included delicious shrimp and lobster rolls from Red Hook Lobster Pound, dumplings from 2009 Vendy winner Rickshaw Truck, cheese sandwiches grilled by Milk Truck NYC, expensive vegan burgers and organic chicken burritos from The Green Truck, a wild choice of desserts from Le Petit Temptation, packaged goodies by Brooklyn confectioners Whimsy and Spice, and Liddabit Sweets, creamy cones from the Van Leeuwen Ice Cream Truck, and much more.

Flourless Coconut Cookie with Nutella filling, Street Sweets.

Lobster Roll with a pickle and chips, Red Hook Lobster Pound. 

Gastro-Vision: Bourgeois the Artist, Bourgeois the Cook

Louise Bourgeois, Avenza Revisited II, 1968-1969. Bronze, silver nitrate patina, 51 1/2 x 41 x 75 1/2 in. Courtesy Cheim & Read and Hauser & Wirth.

"Gastro-Vision" is my monthly food-art column on the Art21 blog. Here's an excerpt from this month's post:

The passing of Louise Bourgeois (Season 1) naturally prompted a host of critics to reflect on her life and artwork. They have written of her famed sculptures and textiles, recurring spider motif, pioneering exhibitions, childhood traumas, and the Sunday salons in her Chelsea home. Now, what about Bourgeois’s cooking?

They say that cooking is, like other art forms, an expression of one’s inner self. As I read Bourgeois’s obituaries, many of them recalling the artist’s charms and spunk, I began to wonder if she cooked? If her approach to food was anything like her approach to art? If her cooking looked like her artwork? Or what her artwork might tell us about her cooking? While these inquiries might seem random, chef Mario Batali has pointed out that “food, even more than art, allows an admirer to relate to [an] artist on common ground,” and there is perhaps no “better way to come to appreciate and understand an artist than through [her] appetite.” Luckily, I found that Bourgeois contributed to at least three cookbooks in her lifetime: The Museum of Modern Art’s Artists’ Cookbook (1977) by Madeleine Conway and Nancy Kirk, Food Sex Art: The Starving Artists’ Cookbook (1991) by Paul Lamarre and Melissa P. Wolf (aka EIDIA), and The Artist’s Palate: Cooking with the World’s Greatest Artists (2003) by Frank Fedele.

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A Mixed Bag (6.2.10)

Leslie Wayne, One Big Love #32, 2009. Oil on wood, 9 3/4 x 12 3/4 in. via Jack Shainman Gallery.com.

One Big Love: This ongoing series of small paintings by Leslie Wayne was inspired by an article in the New Yorker entitled “The Eureka Hunt.” The writer articulated a condition of mental acuity not unlike an artist's moment of inspiration. Wayne's own process of "letting go" or "getting in the zone" by listening to music underlies her latest works in this series. @ Jack Shainman Gallery through July 16.

Summer Jam: Hip hop officials rate Kanye West's (crazy-good and supposedly unfinished) new single "Power" in teddy bears.

Paddington Bear: An exhibition about the famous stuffed character (who frequently indulged in marmalade sandwiches) is on view at the Reading Museum in Berkshire through July 4.

Seditious Sweets: Shut Up, Foodie brings street art to cupcakes with Banksy-inspired toppers, including a panda whose packin' heat.

To Believe: Curated by Jeffrey Walkowiak for Visual AIDS, this exhibition brings together a stellar group of artists and artworks around the subject of metaphysical belief. @ La Mama La Galleria, June 3-27. Companion videos screen every Sunday @ 4pm.

Two-Minute Film Fest: Filmmakers are invited to submit their "finest" and shortest video to Carnegie Museum of Art for a screening at the museum on July 15. Submission deadline June 15.

The Bad Food Awards, created by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, acknowledge mind blowingly unhealthy meals from The Cheesecake Factory and other restaurant chains.

BonBonBonds: The U.K.'s first ever "chocolate bond" offers investors returns in chocolate rather than cash.

Chocolate Malt Cake.

Delightfully Disgusting: Beautiful/Decay has launched a three-part series on artists who play with their food.

Blech!: Sushi made to pop in your mouth like Pez.

She's All Ears: Artist Christina Kelly will plant corn in the Boerum Hill area of Brooklyn as part of her project Maize Field, which examines the borough’s agrarian history.

A Vernacular of Violence: This group exhibition, devoted to artists who use images of violence as a sort of vernacular source material, includes works by Claire Fontaine, Lisa Kirk, Walid Raad, among others. @ Invisible Exports through June 20.

Artists are Insane: BBC reports that creative minds mimic schizophrenia.

Mars Moves East: Rising demand for confectionary in the Middle East has led to a new $40 million chocolate factory in Dubai. The site will produce Mars and Snickers bars.

Tea with Mike Tyson.