Contemporary Confections

Gastro-Vision | Simone Leigh and the Fruits of Her Labor

2012-01-22T16:07:00.003-05:00

David Levinthal, Untitled from the series Blackface, 1996. 20 × 24 Polaroid Polacolor ER Land Film, 40 x 33 ½ in (framed). Image via blog.artspace.com

Watermelon is a leitmotif of Blackface memorabilia that flourished during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Depictions of African Americans ravenously eating the fruit helped perpetuate the myth of our collective fondness for it; and reinforce ideas of an inferior race, stereotyped as being shiftless and “interested only in such mindless pleasures as a slice of sweet watermelon.” [1] Ceramic knickknacks like the one pictured above are typical in that the fruit wedge mimics the grin of the eaters. It also serves to emphasize their exaggerated red lip-color and darkly-painted skin, features that starkly contrast the whites of their bug-eyes. Sadly, these minstrel caricatures are not the worst of them. Depictions of adult men could be far more grotesque; they were often portrayed as having mouths as big as a watermelon itself. While this kind of imagery is seen less frequently today, it’s certainly not a thing of the past. Google search President Obama and you’ll find plenty.

Simone Leigh at work on her cowrie shells, 2011. Image via kenyaworkspace.com

New York-based artist Simone Leigh had the watermelon stereotype in mind when she began casting molds from the fruit five years ago. From them she has created nearly 100 ceramic forms now installed at The Kitchen in her solo exhibition You Don’t Know Where Her Mouth Has Been. “I could have used any gourd to make molds,” said Leigh. But she saw her sculptures as an opportunity to build a new narrative, to “rewrite the watermelon.” To my surprise, Leigh called the stereotype not disgusting or debasing (as I might have) but of all things “ironic.” Then she explained: watermelon happens to evoke the same language that has been used to negatively brand the black body as “too large, overgrown, fat” and generally “lacking control.” Leigh described the fruit itself as being “kind of preternatural.” At the same time, watermelon is sensual, a so-called aphrodisiac that elicits the words juicy, ripe, and refreshing — expressions often used to compliment or objectify black female bodies. It is in fact how black bodies have been discussed and displayed over time that concerns the artist by and large. [2] To tell you the truth, her work isn’t about food at all.

Continue reading >>

Gastro-Vision | It Was a Sweet Year

2011-12-23T10:00:00.000-05:00

Monica Martinez/Don Bugito, Mealworm toffee with vanilla ice cream and amaranth and cactus syrup, 2011. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Michelle Edmunds.

At the end of 2009, I looked back on the year through meat, recognizing a proliferation of protein in contemporary art and popular culture. In 2010, with the help of two food-savvy art writers, we surveyed the world of food art and produced an epic post. And now I bring you a year-end roundup all about sweets. Here’s ten projects that caught my eye in 2011:

Monica Martinez of Don Bugito

Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

When you picture yourself eating a big scoop of ice cream you probably don’t think about worms as a topping. Who does? Bay Area artist Monica Martinez. Her new food venture Don Bugito grew out of earlier works concerning informal food economies like street food carts in her native Mexico City, and her ongoing interest in edible bugs. This year, Martinez partnered with Critter founder Philip Ross, and Mezcal Factoria de Santos to prepare a dinner of Edible Insects & Other Rare Delicacies at Headlands Center for the Arts. Guests were served, among other things, wax moth larvae corn custard, and mealworm toffee over vanilla ice cream with amaranth and cactus syrup. How have people responded to Martinez's “mini livestock” gourmet? “Amazingly," she says. With an incubator kitchen already backing the artist, Don Bugito is poised to become a long-term fixture in the Bay Area food scene.

Acquired Taste: Food and the Art of Consumption

2011-12-02T14:48:00.031-05:00

Front: Jennifer Rubell, Mannequin, 2011. Back right wall: Victoria Reynolds, Cartouche of the Resplendent Bung, 2010-11. Photo courtesy Begovich Gallery/sixpackprojects.

Through December 8, Acquired Taste: Food and the Art of Consumption is on view at California State University Fullerton in the Begovich Gallery. The exhibition features twelve artists whose work "focuses our reciprocal relationship to food: what we consume, how we consume it and how it consumes us." Artists include Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Dustin Wayne Harris, MyersBerg Studios, Tattfoo Tan, and Jennifer Rubell.

Rubell's installation (pictured here) invites visitors to place a nut in the mannequin’s inner thigh, then push down on the upper leg to crack it open. According to Rubell's website, "These interactive sculptures embody the two polar stereotypes of female power: the idealized, sexualized nude female form; and the too-powerful, nut-busting überwoman."

Curators Alyssa Cordova and Heather Richards have produced a full-color catalog -- with essays by me, Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly, and Megan Fizell of Feasting on Art -- available early next year.

Read more about Acquired Taste here >>

Eye Candy: Cornucopia

2011-11-25T09:08:00.003-05:00

Xavier Cha, Cornucopia, 2006. [via]

Gastro-Vision | Performing Cotton Candy in a Land of Cockaigne

2011-11-23T10:27:00.009-05:00

Will Cotton, Consuming Folly, 2009-2010. Oil on linen, 72 x 96 in. Courtesy the artist and Mary Boone Gallery.

Will Cotton’s candy and pastry-filled landscapes have come to life in recent years, taking the form of a posh pop-up bakery in 2009, and a year later, forming the set of Katy Perry’s music video “California Gurls.” Cotton’s saccharine world materialized again last Friday night at New York’s Prince George Ballroom, where cotton candy took center stage in Cockaigne, the artists’s first live production.

Will Cotton, Cockaigne for Performa 11, 2011. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Scott Catto.

Curated by Stacey Engman for Performa 11, on the one hand, the performance received more hype than it deserved and left some things to be desired. On the other hand, the night was strangely satisfying in that every guest was part of Cotton’s show, an immersive sensory experience that began the minute we crossed the threshold. In a sense, just being there was to become one of the artist’s painted subjects, engulfed by cotton candy in a land of pleasure and plenty.

Continue reading >>

On Tap for November

2011-11-03T12:11:00.013-04:00

Potential beer colors [via]

"The act of drinking beer with friends is the highest form of art," saith artist Tom Marioni. This month, friends and art lovers can get their brewski on at these events:

On November 10, Angelenos will drink for a good cause at On Tap: The First Annual Art & Beer Invitational. Proceeds will benefit East of Borneo, "a nonprofit collaborative online magazine of contemporary art and its history as seen from Los Angeles." Curated by Lauri Firstenberg (LAXART), Thomas Lawson (CalArts), Franklin Sirmans (LACMA), Ali Subotnick (Hammer Museum), and Dean Valentine (Bowmont Art Partners), the event includes a craft beer tasting presented by Dale Bros, and a silent auction of original artworks donated by young and emerging artists.

On November 20, New Yorkers Tracy Candido and Eleanor Whitney -- founders of the new "socially-engaged happening" EAT ART -- will host a beer tasting and brewing workshop combined with an artist talk. Attendees will gather at the Brooklyn spot Bitter & Esters, where they'll learn about the world of beer from shop co-owner John LaPolla and Colorado based artist Eric Steen. Steen, who uses beer as a medium, will discuss his Performa 2011 project, Brew Pub. Space is limited. Purchase tickets here >>

Gastro-Vision | On Bottle Poppin

2011-10-31T16:33:00.001-04:00

Tahir Hemphill, "Champagne Always Stains My Silk," 2011.

Artist-designer Tahir Hemphill is gathering quirky facts about popular culture via Hip-Hop Word Count, his searchable directory of over 40,000 hip-hop songs. If you’ve ever wanted to know the education level needed to comprehend Lupe Fiasco’s track “Superstar” or the number of polysyllabic words used by 50 Cent in “I Get Money,” Hemphill has the answers. And those burning questions you’ve had about rappers and bubbly? He can give certain insight into that too. At the recent Talk to Me symposium organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Hemphill presented his latest data set on the subject of champagne.

Created in collaboration with Steve Varga, Champagne Always Stains My Silk consists of three infographics that give us “a visual history” of champagne brand-mentions spanning thirty years of hip-hop music. What do we learn from this survey? For one thing, in the years following Jay-Z’s boycott of Cristal, the brand’s mention by other rappers declined. (One wonders how this tastemaker’s newfound interest in contemporary art will impact others in the industry.) Hemphill has also found that brand names are most commonly heard in East Coast lyrics; Cristal ranks highest followed by Dom Perignon, Moet, Asti, Chandon, and Ace of Spades. At first listen, this data is about as stimulating as rappers’ fascination with bottle poppin. How is any of this meaningful? Hemphill gives us some food for thought: “When you consider champagne as an aspirational product, this infographic tells a nuanced story of rappers’ relationship to the American Dream.”

Studying the food and drinks that cultures consume will often bring us back to a national ethos, in this case, the supposed ability to achieve prosperity through social and economic participation. When we talk about reaching the American Dream, we often think of — or want to hear about — hard work, sacrifice, and one’s steadfast resolve to rise above whatever circumstances. It seems many rappers have such a story, though it can be hard to hear through all the intemperance and foolery portrayed in hip-hop. The genre’s emphasis on material wealth, extreme celebration, and what artist Kehinde Wiley has called the “heroic desire for cash and domination that hip-hop is so defined by,” has garnered criticisms familiar in contemporary art. Take for example “pop-star” artist Jeff Koons, whose work critics have dismissed, calling it garish, empty, and all about “self-merchandising.” If these ideas have not been Koons’ very point, they have helped propel him to mainstream success. You might say the same for artists of hip-hop for whom gross consumption is part of the game.

Continue reading >>

ArtPrize 2011 | GayGayGay

2011-10-02T20:33:00.002-04:00

Jeffrey Augustine Songo, GayGayGay Robe, 2011. Cotton and paper on dress form, 20" x 30" x 80."

Today on the ArtPrize blog, I discuss queer art, gay rights, churches, and the work of San Francisco-based artist Jeffrey Augustine Songco. Here's an excerpt from my post:

Gay rights activists and supporters rejoiced in June when lawmakers voted to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, becoming the sixth and largest state to do so. Here in Michigan, where voters banned same-sex marriage and civil unions in 2004, the movement for gay rights suffered another defeat that same month: Holland City Council* voted against a proposal that would have added sexual orientation and gender identity protection to their anti-discrimination policies. I’m told that gay rights has been a hot-button issue in and around Grand Rapids ever since. What does this have to do with ArtPrize, you ask? Everything. Because art is uniquely capable of bringing together communities through conversation.

*FULL DISCLOSURE: Brian Burch, ArtPrize’s public relations director and editor of the ArtPrize Blog, currently sits on the Holland City Council.

Of the many art education initiatives taking place this year, the queer-oriented panel discussion organized by Reverend Anne Weirich of Westminster Presbyterian Church, struck me as being not only timely, but also brazen. The starting point for the discussion was Jeffery Augustine Songco’s ArtPrize entry GayGayGay Robe, located in Westminster’s lobby.* Songco was joined by Theresa McClelland and Reverend Jim Lucas of Gays in Faith Together (GIFT); Reverend Matthew Cockrum of Fountain Street Church; Pastoral Counselor, Reverend Lorie Schier; Westminster member and practicing attorney Maribeth Jelks, and Westminster’s Christian educator Sherrill Vore, who moderated the discussion.

CC on Raiding the Larder

2011-09-29T09:22:00.006-04:00

The food-art world has a new online publication called Raiding the Larder. I am honored to have been interviewed by co-founder Maria Pithara for the launch of the site. Check it out >>

ArtPrize 2011 | Chris LaPorte

2011-09-24T10:01:00.013-04:00

Chris LaPorte, Cavalry American Officers, 1921. Pencil on paper, 8 x 28 ft. Photo: ArtPrize/Brian Kelly.

ArtPrize 2011 marks my third year of blogging for this radical art festival and competition, where prize winners are determined by public vote. Follow my ongoing blog series, Eyes on the Prize, to learn more about what's happening here. An excerpt from my latest post:

To kick off Eyes on the Prize 2011 — the third and possibly final year of this blog series — I am picking up where ArtPrize 2010 left off: Chris LaPorte and his grand prize-winning drawing Cavalry, American Officers, 1921. Now on view at The Hub, the piece continues to merit “oohs” and “aahs” from viewers yet the grandeur it once possessed is greatly diminished. It could have something to do with its change of location, from the enormity of the Grand Rapids Art Museum to a tech-saavy playroom (complete with a Twitter motion game) and a wall barely long enough to hold it. Yet I can still appreciate that Cavalry is accessible to the public. Its very being here reminds us what the populist vote deemed worthy of $250,000, and the responsibility of voters over the next several days.

LaPorte’s presence at ArtPrize 2011 doesn’t end at The Hub. A short walk away in Cathedral Square hangs his new piece Funeral Drawing, another photo-inspired work on paper, significantly smaller than Cavalry. At the time of this writing, Funeral Drawing is trending in the Top 25 for the neighborhood of Heartside. That the artist has entered the competition just a year after winning the grand prize seems unfair at best. How could ArtPrize officials allow this to happen? Then again, why didn’t LaPorte’s own ethics prohibit him from participating? His decision suggests that he is not the “nice guy” people have repeatedly described to me, but a man driven by insatiable hunger for money and media attention. Then I met LaPorte and now I don’t believe he’s interested in either.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still against previous winners entering the competition in subsequent years.* There are plenty of good artists in the world who deserve a shot at winning. But LaPorte sounds far from being here to make money or just to be seen. “I originally wasn’t going to participate [this year],” said LaPorte. “Ron Pederson, who is the gallery director of the Exhibition Center at Cathedral Square and also head of the art department at Aquinas College where I teach, asked very nicely and was pretty persuasive. One point that he made was that, the last couple of years, the Exhibition Center at Cathedral Square has had some really wonderful shows, and its unfortunate that it hasn’t received the kind of attention it deserves. I think it’s a valid criticism that people tend to gravitate to just a few locations…Why wait two or three hours in line when you have a city filled with art.” As he continued, speaking of altruistic giving, arts education, and respect for his fellow artists, the self-seeking individual I had earlier imagined never showed his face. If LaPorte has another agenda, he is as skilled at masking it as he is with a number 2 pencil.

Gastro-Vision | Picture Perfect

2011-09-19T10:05:00.003-04:00

Cover of 19 Pictures, 22 Recipes by Paolo Ferrario.

Mainstream cookbooks tend to present a particular style of photography: food spreads done up like the models of fashion magazines. Stylized still lifes, cropped, color saturated, and Photoshopped look too perfect to be true, or sometimes even to be edible. Yet glossy pictures are said to make the best cookbooks and in turn make cookbooks best-sellers. With her new publication 19 Pictures, 22 Recipes, Italy-born photographer and former Guggenheim fellow Paola Ferrario is bucking this trend; she has forgone pictures of food altogether in favor of found photographs of people and landscapes.

Recipe for Bruscitt, excerpt: "...If details were rendered we would see the heaviness and roughness of coats, the ages of shoes and hats, and the stains on beards."

Ferrario began writing 19 Pictures, 22 Recipes in 1994, but had until recently been unable to find a publisher. “Many people and agents said that it would be hard to sell because bookstores and sites would not know how to categorize it,” she explained in a recent email. “So finally, in 2010, I decided to self-publish.” Nineteen photographs purchased from flea markets and antique shops around the globe are each paired with a recipe (many of which belong to Ferrario’s family), a short text, an analysis, and a personal memoir and/or hypothetical narrative.

Ferrario’s musings on photography are as delightfully straightforward as her recipes, which include Cime di Rapa (broccoli rabe), Pasta with Tomatoes & Basil, Strange Rice, and Perfect Steak. Cheese with Pears requires little more than an appetite for both ingredients. To this the artist links a photograph of a young man standing in a “horrendous” pose (which she compares to a Giacometti sculpture) and in what she considers to be a dreadful composition. What can this photograph teach us about cooking? “This is not quite a recipe,” Ferrario explains, ”more an exercise in taste.”

Cime di Rapa is paired with an image that could have easily been part of Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives; you get the sense that food was hard to come by for his subjects. With this and other photographs calling to mind the Great Depression, 19 Pictures, 22 Recipes doesn’t always inspire one to cook, yet it’s still incredibly charming.

Recipe for Gravlax, excerpt: "In a perfect world social awareness would prevent politically incorrect seductions, but we are flesh, eyes and keepers of imperfect desires and the world of the beautiful boy can easily plant longing in our hearts...."

Continue reading (and get Ferrario's recipe for One-egg Cake) >>

Looks Good: En Foco/In Focus

2011-09-14T10:25:00.005-04:00

Hank Willis Thomas, Smokin Joe Ain't J'mama, Unbranded: Reflections in Black from Corporate America 1968-2000 series, 1978/2006. © Hank Willis Thomas.

Groana Melendez, Laura Daydreaming, Santo Domingo, R.D. Family Work Series. Archival pigment print, 20 x 24 in. © Groana Melendez.

En Foco/In Focus: Selected Works from the Permanent Collection features over 50 prints from En Foco's notable collection of photographs by artists of primarily African, Asian, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander heritage. Guest curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, the exhibition has three primary areas of focus: the earliest works in the collection, dating back to the 1970s, reflect the documentary style of photographic work made around the height of the Civil Rights era. Later photographs speak to the identity politics and multicultural discourse that marked the 1990s. And young artists newly represented in En Foco's collection, such as Hank Willis Thomas and Groana Melendez, give viewers a taste of current ideas and trends. En Foco/In Focus is on view at Light Work in Syracuse through January 31. Visit En Foco's Facebook page to find out about upcoming events in and around New York City.

Rap Chocolates

2011-09-03T00:30:00.023-04:00

Lil Wayne Chocolate Bar, 2.5 x 2.5 x .5 in.

Not sweet on Lil Wayne's new album, Tha Carter IV? Then you might try these "rap chocolates" stamped with his silhouette. The two-ounce confections are sold via Staple Crops, the online store of multimedia artist Tahir Hemphill. A pack of three retails at $75, plus $9 for shipping. Sound pricey for a few pieces of candy? Consider it a donation toward Hemphill's Hip-Hop Word Count, a searchable ethnographic database built from the lyrics of over 40,000 Hip-Hop songs. Although development of the project is still in progress, samples are currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in the exhibition Talk to Me.

A Mixed Bag | The Hurricane Edition

2011-08-27T20:26:00.015-04:00

Jean-Paul Goude and Antonio Lopez, Grace Jones in a maternity dress, 1979. © Jean-Paul Goude

- Grace Jones' first U.S. album release in 22 years, Hurricane, drops next month. Check out the dub version of her first single, Well, Well, Well.

- The above photograph of Jones, wearing a constructivist maternity dress, is included in the forthcoming exhibition Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

- Hurricane Irene boosts sales at Trader Joe's, while economic uncertainty triggers the revival of "poor art."

- Hurricane mixology.

- The Wall Street Journal reports on artwork evacuation in the Hamptons.

- Artinfo.com warns, "your Richard Serras could become airborne."

- Due to Hurricane Irene, Chuchifritos has postponed the opening of Suspicious Activities until September 7.

- The U.S. Food Safety blog has tips on food storage in the event of a power outage.

- Photographer Stephanie de Rouge takes stock of people's refrigerators and discovers "amazing worlds."

- On the flip side, Maryn McKenna talks droughts and other agricultural issues.

Looks Good | All Cannibals?

2011-08-17T17:53:00.013-04:00

Dana Schutz, Self Eater 3 (detail), 2003. ©Dana Schutz & Florence et Phillipe Segalot, New York.

Currently on view at the Me Collectors Room in Berlin, All Cannibals? explores anthropophagy in art. ArtForum reviewer David McKay had this to say about the show:

"This group exhibition opens with a provocative quotation from Claude Lévi-Strauss: “The simplest way to identify with someone is to eat him.” One hundred works by forty artists are gathered here, and all examine the phenomenon of cannibalism, but without necessarily descending into cruelty or sensationalism. Instead, curator Jeanette Zwingenberger has sought out breadth and nuance, broadening the theme of cannibalism to include ritual and psychological forms. The real question seems to be, Where is our own inner cannibal hiding?"

Contemporary objects (including the painting pictured here by Dana Schutz) are shown alongside historical etchings and books, ethnographic photographs, cult objects, and more.

Suggested reading: Justin E.H. Smith, "The Raw and the Cooked: An Interview with Cătălin Avramescu," Cabinet (Fall 2010). Avramescu authored An Intellectual History of Cannibalism.

Chinatown Cake Club Gets Weekend Wheels

2011-08-08T18:58:00.012-04:00

Victoria Yee Howe of Chinatown Cake Club baked a Hennessy-soaked cake in honor of Biggie. [via]

If you read my article "Not Just Desserts," you already know about the arty cakes of pastry chef Victoria Yee Howe, founder of Chinatown Cake Club. If you're in New York City this weekend, you're in for a few treats courtesy of Howe and curator Sierra Stinson.

Howe and Stinson have teamed up to present Show and Tell, a 48-hour mobile pop-up gallery and reading room offering, among other things, complimentary cake. The Show and Tell truck will park at random locations on Saturday and Sunday, August 13 and August 14, from noon until 7pm. Keep up with their whereabouts via Twitter.

Gastro-Vision | Gone Shrimping!

2011-07-15T11:20:00.002-04:00

Forrest Gump was one of those rare films that changed the way people think about random everyday stuff, from a box of chocolates to a new pair of sneakers to the way one pronounces the name Jenny. For me, the film comes to mind when- or wherever there are shrimp. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Forrest and Lieutenant Dan, following many failed attempts at shrimping and a nearly fatal hurricane, finally get their first big catch. C-shaped crustaceans wriggling on their once barren boat deck are at that point more than just food: they symbolize an entire narrative of loss and perseverance. Just imagine if Forrest and Lieutenant Dan had been artists.

Artists Zach Moser (left) and Eric Leshinsky (right) of Shrimp Boar Projects. Courtesy the artists.

Eric Leshinsky and Zach Moser, artists in residence at the University of Houston's Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, have dedicated three years of their practice to working as shrimpers in Galveston Bay, the second largest seafood-producing bay in the nation (after the Chesapeake). Shrimp Boat Projects was conceived five years ago, following hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “After those hurricanes, shrimp boats were still an iconic symbol of the Gulf Coast, but a lot of them were idle, washed up onto the shore, or out of commission,” says Leshinsky. “Looking for ways of regenerating those boats or activating that symbol was a starting point [for us].” Moser adds that they we’re also “growing tired of the Gulf Coast only being able to define itself within the spectrum of disaster.” In looking for “a productive way” of talking about the area, the artists came to shrimping—a complex regional industry that functions at the intersection of ecology, economy, commerce, and culture.

Continue reading >>

If someone offers you a piece of cake or pie...

2011-07-03T18:07:00.010-04:00

Martin Parr, Untitled (meringue) from the series British Food, 1995 [via]

"What cannot be taken with the fingers should be taken on your plate. If someone offers you a piece of cake or pie, take it on a spoon or plate, or take what is offered on a spoon and, placing the food on your plate, return the spoon. If what is given is rather fluid, take it on a spoon for tasting and return the spoon after wiping it on a napkin. It is equally impolite to lick greasy fingers or to wipe them on one's tunic: you should wipe them with a napkin or cloth. To consume whole pieces of food at a gulp is for storks and buffoons."

- Desiderius Erasmus, "On Good Manners for Boys," 1530
Lapham's Quarterly: Food, Summer 2011

Looks Good | Kitchen Studio, A Recipe for Disaster

2011-06-08T14:19:00.006-04:00

The summer issue of C Magazine hits newsstands today. Inside this food-focused issue you can find my article, Kitchen Studio, A Recipe for Disaster, about cooking and catastrophe in the work of New York-based painter Joy Garnett. Read the digital version of the magazine here.

Gastro-Vision | Out of the Mouths of Babes

2011-05-14T14:31:00.002-04:00

Mariam Simun, The Lady Cheese Shop window display, 2011. Courtesy the artist.

Miriam Simun’s The Lady Cheese Shop, installed at Michael Mut Gallery in New York for four days between April and May, served up three different types of cheese at its opening reception and tasting. All made from local breast milk, Simun’s art des fromages, made in collaboration with Chef Sarah Hymanson, offered plenty food for thought.

Now when it comes to eating, I consider myself to be fairly adventurous. Watching those crazy food challenges on The Amazing Race, I like to believe that, if put to the test, I could stomach fried rodents better than most people. It seems that for some adults the thought of breast milk is just as disgusting. So perhaps part of me was excited by the sort of dare to eat Simun’s “human cheese.” And since I was born with a severe milk allergy (now long gone), I was quite conscious that in this itsy-bitsy gallery on the Lower East Side, I would come close to having an experience I missed, quasi connecting with a bosom as a source of nourishment. “Midtown Smoke,” the only cheese that was left when I arrived, was described as being “made from the milk of a young Chinese mother living in midtown Manhattan, and a goat hailing from Northern Vermont…” As soon as the curd touched my tongue and its smoky sweet flavor hit my taste buds, I nearly puked.

Continue reading >>

Artist Talk | With Food in Mind

2011-05-04T11:25:00.015-04:00

Elaine Tin Nyo, The Three Legged Pig (Le Cochon à Trois Pattes) (detail), 1997-2011. Courtesy the artist.

Artists Elaine Tin Nyo, Heather Hart, Maya Suess, and Tattfoo Tan—whose works are on view in With Food in Mind—will speak at The Center for Book Arts tonight at 6:30pm. The exhibition, curated by yours truly, was recently mentioned in Time Out New York, and featured at DNAinfo.com.

A Mixed Bag (5.2.11)

2011-05-02T14:55:00.014-04:00

"...When food is your medium, color can be powerful enough to influence taste..."

Colors for the Palate: The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act permits use of nine different artificial dyes in food production. [Thanks, Hrag V.]

Licked, Sucked, Stacked, Stuck: Paul Shore and Nicole Root's collaborative candy and photo project (which I wrote about last October) travels to Jim Kempner Fine Art. Opens May 4.

Say it Like You Green It: Zagat's new "green glossary" defines terms like "carbon footprint" and "fair trade."

Intervals: A ten-day "thinkery" by the San Francisco art collective Futurefarmers opens May 4 at the Guggenheim in New York. [via @CarolineHwang]

Name Calling: Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser explains why being a foodie isn't necessarily elitist.

Middle Ground: Artist Rashaad Newsome discusses his interest in the space between high and low. [via @Niche]

Spanish Paradise: Beginning May 22, Sunday tastings at the New York Botanical Garden will offer flavors of almond, citrus, olive or eggplant.

Avocado ice cream.

Eye Candy | With Food in Mind

2011-04-11T21:35:00.005-04:00

Maya Suess, I've Got You Under My Spell II: Bon Appetit Mr. Landlord (video still), 2011. Courtesy the artist.

Please visit my latest exhibition:

With Food in Mind
The Center for Book Arts

New York, New York

April 15 - June 25, 2011

Opening Reception: April 15, 6-8pm (with a performance by eco-artist Atom Cianfarani)

Inspired by the current food climate, With Food in Mind looks at artists' uses of food as subject or medium in book arts, print, digital media, and performance. The exhibition includes over forty works that span the last twenty years.

FEATURING
Nava Atlas
Carissa Carman and Gretchen Hooker
Atom Cianfarani
Conflict Kitchen (Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski, with Brett Yasko)
The Counter Kitchen (Stefani Bardin and Brooke Singer)
Critical Art Ensemble
Mindell Dubansky (with Miriam Schaer and Toby Dubansky)
EIDIA (Paul Lamarre and Melissa P. Wolf)
Joy Garnett
Martí Guixé
Heather Hart
Barbara Henry and John DePol (with Caroll Boltin)
Marisa Jahn and Steve Shada (and with Noa Treister)
Katharine Meynell and Susan Johanknecht
K Yoland
Robin Kahn
Isabelle Lumpkin
Emily Martin
Scott McCarney
Aleksandra Mir
Elaine Tin Nyo
Hugh Pocock
Susan Roma
Leah Rosenberg
John Ross (with Sam Joffee)
Mara Scrupe
Maya Suess
Tattfoo Tan
Robert The
Rirkrit Tiravanija

Artist talk and performance: May 4, 6:30pm

Looks Good | Mona Hatoum

2011-03-26T10:11:00.043-04:00

Mona Hatoum, Grater Divide, 2002. Black finished steel, 302 x 211 x 5 cm. Collection DA2 Salamanca.

Grater Divide is currently on view in The Art of Eating at Fundación Caixa Catalunya, Obra Social.

"A landscape of grids, meshes and cages, structures rigid as iron forming places of segregation and imprisonment, violence and cruelty. The sharp weaves of the textures, the minimal forms of the design and the glittering coldness of steel unequivocally evoke the impenetrability of a prison space, the image of harrowing torture, the grievous memories of summary trials and inquisitorial obscurantist tribunals. Through a simple expansion of scale Mona Hatoum transforms kitchen implements into threatening and terrifying architectures..." ~Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina

Gastro-Vision: On Soup

2011-03-19T13:55:00.005-04:00

Rirkrit Tiravanija, Fear Eats the Soul (Chicken Tortilla Soup), 2011.
Image via Gavin Brown's Enterprise.

Rare is the occasion when people talk about food in art without someone uttering (or at least thinking) the name Rirkrit Tiravanija. Known as “the artist who cooks,” Tiravanija began to eschew objects in favor of ingestion in 1990 with his installation-slash-performance Pad Thai, for which he cooked and served the dish to visitors of Paula Allen Gallery in New York. Two years later, he created Untitled (Free), a makeshift kitchen featuring the artist’s Thai curry, self-served by gallery-goers day after day. Tiravanija’s latest installation Fear Eats the Soul at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise serves up bowls of soup every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday through April 16. Like an open invitation to dine at a world famous restaurant free of charge, you would be a fool not to take advantage of this opportunity if you’re in New York.

On the Friday afternoon that I visited Tiravanija’s soup kitchen, it had the feeling of a friendly neighborhood eatery; I was surprised to be greeted by other visitors upon entering the space. “Would you like a bowl of soup?” asked Tiravanija’s assistant and quickly I accepted. While I selected condiments for my soup, New York magazine’s senior art critic Jerry Saltz introduced himself, recommended a squeeze of lime, and shared his reasons for passing on cilantro. Three or so spoonfuls later, I realized two things: one, Saltz was right about that delightful zing of lime; and two, in my eagerness to try the artist’s cooking, I had failed to ask if the soup was vegetarian! Not only was it made of chicken broth, but my spoon had yet to encounter Peep-sized chunks of meat in this thick brown abyss–also known as Chicken Tortilla Soup. On one hand, I was saddened that my diet would keep me from having the full “Tiravanija experience.” On the other hand, I knew that the soup was just a catalyst for social interaction. I settled for tortilla chips and art world chatter.

Continue reading >>

Gastro-Vision: How Do You Like These Apples?

2011-02-18T19:42:00.000-05:00

The Boston Tree Party Flag. Courtesy the artists.

Any mention of The Boston Tea Party today is likely to evoke thoughts of the current political movement, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin. That might soon change with the urban agriculture and participatory art project The Boston Tree Party, which aims to put a fresh and positive spin on this important moment in United States history. The goal is to plant 100 pairs of heirloom apple trees across Greater Boston, in effect creating a “decentralized public urban orchard.” On April 10, founder and artist Lisa Gross and her team of collaborators will officially launch The Boston Tree Party campaign with a rally, parade, and planting; the events are collectively dubbed “The Inauguration.” In the following interview, Gross shares her motivation for the project, strategies for strengthening community through apple trees, and enlightens me on the Roxbury Russet variety.

Nicole J. Caruth: Who or what inspired The Boston Tree Party?

Lisa Gross: The idea was a result of a number of different interests, experiences, and circumstances. I’ve had a long-time interest in particular aspects of urban agriculture—the ways it can bring diverse groups of people together while simultaneously improving the health of a community. I’ve also had a long-time obsession with fruit trees. Ever since I was a child, picking apples every fall has symbolized for me a deep experience of abundance and pleasure; there is something so visceral and enjoyable about picking an apple directly from a tree and eating it. And lastly, living in Boston, you are always surrounded by Colonial era history and kitsch. That history has become newly relevant with the rise of the contemporary Tea Party. It’s been interesting to watch the recontextualization of that history from the vantage point of the place where the historical Tea Party actually happened. I started to read a lot about the original Tea Party, and I became fascinated with how it was really a performance… In a way, it was a public performance that helped launched the movement for American Independence. I then discovered in my reading that the first apple orchard in the American Colonies was planted on Beacon Hill—the symbol of Boston power and history—and all the ideas of the project started to coalesce. I realized that planting pairs of apple trees in civic space could be a potent symbolic and political act, one that could help further a post-partisan movement in support of community and environmental health.

Continue reading >>

Looks Good: Let Them Make Cake

2011-02-18T07:29:00.004-05:00

ARTnews, February 2011
(Cover image: Clare Grill, Cake, 2008. Oil on panel, 14 x 16 in.)

"For some artists, cake is a subject. For others, it's a medium."

Check out my article in the February issue of ARTnews (available here) featuring works by Clare Grill, Dustin Wayne Harris, Victoria Howe, and Marina Abramović, among others.

Gastro-Vision: Martha Rosler’s Kitchen Mise-en-Scène

2011-01-29T17:46:00.001-05:00

Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition (video still), 2011.
Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI).

In 2003, the Whitechapel Gallery in London invited Martha Rosler to recreate her classic video Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) as a live performance. She accepted the invitation by holding a casting call for women to reenact the piece; the “audition” would be the public event. Rosler’s documentary video, Semiotics of the Kitchen: An Audition (2011), premiered earlier this week at Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) in New York.

After the screening, Rosler confessed that she was at first “annoyed and outraged” when asked to restage Semiotics of the Kitchen. Wasn’t it obvious that the piece was meant for video, not a live audience? “My work is about mediation,” Rosler stressed, and the television monitor was one of her tools. Among other misgivings, Rosler worried that the restaging might take on “a nasty, stage-managed quality” opposite the rough-and-readiness of the original. By “withholding” the glitz and glam of Hollywood in Semiotics of the Kitchen, she called attention to popular television depictions of the kitchen. “Boring is a tactic,” Rosler explained. “Everyone hated that piece for a long time.” But the artist, speaking to a packed room at EAI, seemed pleased with An Audition and even a bit charmed by the outcome: a small community of twenty-six women, rotating through a makeshift kitchen, giving their own quirky renditions of Rosler’s 1970s cooking show parody. And then there’s the irony and metaness of it all: the live performance of the video performance became another video.

An Audition was but a small part of EAI’s two-hour food-centric program. The original Semiotics also screened with Rosler’s other “kitchen videos,” A budding gourmet (1974) and The East Is Red, The West Is Bending (1977). Watching these, wherein Rosler performs the culture of American cuisine, I was reminded of Michael Pollan’s 2009 piece Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, where he wrote of the theatricality of cooking shows today. In a nutshell, he argued that Americans no longer learn to cook from television but instead how to fetishize food and enact cooking. (Rosler touched on this very topic in a post for ArtFagCity that same year.) “Cooking is a spectator sport today,” the artist decried at EAI. “We’re back to the Benihana model.”

Continue reading >>>

2010-12-28T18:41:00.004-05:00

"Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction." -John Cage

Gastro-Vision: The Best in Food-Art 2010

2010-12-17T15:00:00.001-05:00

Taryn Simon, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Contraband Room, John F. Kennedy International Airport, Queens, New York, 2007. Chromogenic color print. 37 1/4 x 44 1/2 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles © Taryn Simon.

From cotton candy rooms to painterly cakes, meaty dresses to pork rind sculpture, pickle portraiture to animated toast, this year was chock-full of good “food-art” — food inspired by art and art inspired by or involving food. So much so, that it would have been gluttonous to write this year-in-review by myself. For this post I enlisted the help of two art writers who share my passion for all things food: Andrew Russeth of the blog 16 Miles of String, and Megan Fizell of the blog Feasting on Art. Together, we’ve come up with a list of the year’s best. You might want to grab a bib in case you start to drool.

Best Food-Art Exhibition (Non-Edible): In Focus: Tasteful Pictures, Getty Center

From 19th-century daguerreotypes to contemporary still life photography, In Focus: Tasteful Pictures contextualized the mechanical image within the genre. Paired with the recent Getty publication, Still Life in Photography, the exhibition provided a historic focus to the way art depicts our increasingly complicated relationship to food within a globalized world. With photographs by Henri-Victor Regnault, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Martin Parr, William Eggleston, Bill Owens, and Taryn Simon, few museums could draw such a feast from their collection. (MF, NC)

Best Food-Art Exhibition (Edible): Licked Sucked Stacked Stuck, Brattelboro Museum & Art Center

Art historian Nicole Root and artist Paul Shore create sweets that are modeled on iconic contemporary artworks. They baked a brownie to reconstruct, at a miniature scale, Walter De Maria’s New York Earth Room, and broke Necco wafers to form a Richard Long stone floor sculpture. Other times they opt for assisted readymades, as when they built Robert Morris’s classic mid-1960s block sculptures from sugar wafers and gum. The meticulous care that Root and Shore bring to their work suggest that they are loving tribute artists, but there is also a hint of subversion in many of the more than 70 works they have completed, which are often the “opposite of [the] serious, large-scale, large-budget works,” as Root once put it, describing a plan she and Shore hatched for a Richard Serra made of taffy. Grand and grandiose hallmarks of postwar art are shrunken down and rendered out of everyday materials, and the mystery and majesty of their source works is at least somewhat diminished. Of course, the pair’s work is no more open to the touch (or ready for the eating) than the art they transfigure. (AR)

Continue reading >>

Gastro-Vision: Food and Technology in an Art Lab

2010-11-26T13:53:00.004-05:00

Stefani Bardin, M2A™: The Fantastic Voyage. Still image of a human digestive system taken by the M2A™. Courtesy the artist and Dr. Braden Kuo.

Last month, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York turned their main exhibition space into X-Lab, a “living” work space where the public can interact with Eyebeam’s fellows and artists-in-residence, learn about their processes, and follow the development of their projects. Among this group of artist-technophiles are resident Stefani Bardin and fellow Jon Cohrs, who are cooking up two innovative, albeit unappetizing, food projects, and making some interesting discoveries along the way.

Continue reading >>

Gastro-Vision: Contemporary Sculpture, How Sweet It Is

2010-10-15T13:03:00.001-04:00


Paul Shore and Nicole Root, "Broken Feet (After Walter de Maria)," 2010. Twizzlers. Courtesy of the artists.

Has Walter de Maria’s New York Earth Room ever made you crave brownies? Have you ever noticed how much Andy Goldsworthy’s Storm King Wall looks like a meandering Payday candy bar? Probably not. But trust me, your take on contemporary sculpture is about to get a whole lot sweeter.

Three years ago, New York-based artist Paul Shore and art historian Nicole Root began collaborating on a series of contemporary candy sculptures that was sparked by a conversation about Richard Serra’s retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. “As I remember it," said Root, "Paul and I were having a summer afternoon beer and I mentioned that I would like to make a Serra sculpture out of meat. There was something about the texture of his large ellipses that appealed to me. Paul said it would work better with a piece of taffy. Imagining a small-scale Serra you can stick in your mouth was just too funny—the opposite of his serious, large-scale, large-budget works.” Trips to Duane Reade, Economy Candy, and Dylan’s Candy Store quickly ensued and what started as a joke between the artists became a full-blown project of more than 70 miniature parodies.

Continue reading>>

Eyes on the Prize 2010

2010-09-30T09:35:00.002-04:00

ArtPrize 2009, Grand Rapids, MI. Photo courtesy of Brian Kelly.

You may have gathered from my Twitter feed that I've returned to Grand Rapids, Michigan to cover this year’s ArtPrize event. (Click here to read my posts and interviews from ArtPrize 2009, and here to read my interview with the grand prize winner of last year's competition.) Over the next several days, I will visit venues and attend events, talk to voters and artists, interview guest speakers, tweet, and of course blog about my observations. Follow my series "Eyes on the Prize 2010."

Gastro-Vision: Back in the Kitchen

2010-09-21T11:49:00.005-04:00

Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975. 6:09 min, b&w, sound.

Julia Child photographed in 1970 on the set of her television show.

The Museum of Modern Art could not have picked a better moment to mount Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen, an exhibition about the changing aesthetics and politics of this domestic space. The kitchen, once considered woman’s domain and the bane of her existence, is still, after all these waves of feminism, a hotbed for contention. This year, the blogosphere has been abuzz with talk of sexism in the culinary arts; a rising “feminist food revolution” in the United States; and heated debate about whether second-wave American feminism ruined the family meal by “denigrating foodwork” and encouraging women to leave the kitchen. Counter Space has clear feminist leanings, but rather than regurgitate the usual rhetoric or play up the trope of the kitchen as domestic prison, the curators have elegantly balanced metaphorical apron strings with objects of unbridled creativity.

Counter Space is drawn entirely from the museum’s collection, and organized in conjunction with their newest publication Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art. The show recognizes women’s contributions to the kitchen as domestic workers, as well as disciplined artists, architects and designers. The icing on the cake, so to speak, is the diverse selection of works by women and men, contemporary and historical. In Martha Rosler’s iconic video Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), an “anti-Julia Child” names and demonstrates the tools of her oppression.

Continue reading >>

In Irons: Trish Tillman at Civilian Art Projects

2010-09-18T17:32:00.008-04:00

Trish Tillman, Birthday Ghost, 2010. Cut paper, acrylic, oil pastel, pencil, 29 x 43 in. Courtesy the artist.

New works by Brooklyn-based artist Trish Tillman are on view at Civilian Art Projects in Washington, D.C. through October 16. Tillman, who was a recipient of last year's Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, has titled her show In Irons. She says, "When a boat is in irons it is pointing directly into the wind or is too close to the wind to make headway. It struggles or is completely stopped dead in the water. Elements of my work possess this ambition of wanting to move forward, but with constant barriers or reminders of loss."

Trish Tillman, Pajama Party with Murder Holes, 2010. Mixed media. Courtesy the artist.

You can read a short essay about Tillman's latest body of work (written by moi) on the gallery's website. Here's an excerpt:

Trish Tillman's precariously hung doorway sculpture, Pajama Party with Murder Holes, suggests that gallery-goers enter with trepidation. This mock castle gate, bearing sharp wooden fence posts (or stakes) and a guillotine-esque awning, recalls medieval methods of defense and execution. It should be taken as a warning: what's above could fall at any time. While the piece threatens to do harm it also invites people in: the pineapple speared to the top indicates, according to old lore, that guests are welcome. You will cross this threshold at your own risk, unsure if you are friend or foe.

Looks Good: Will Cotton and Cupcakes

2010-09-14T19:19:00.028-04:00

Will Cotton, Cotton Candy Katy, 2010. Oil on linen, 72 x 84 in.

Artist Will Cotton is no stranger to this blog. His confection-filled and pin-up inspired paintings were discussed in a recent piece on art and gluttony, and pictures of his pop-up bakery at Partners & Spade were posted here last year.

Cotton has garnered attention these past few months for his work as artistic director of Katy Perry's uber sweet music video California Gurls (featuring Snoop Dogg); and for his appearance as a guest judge on the reality television series Work of Art. Wondering what Cotton will whip up next?

On Tuesday, September 21, the artist will lecture and then participate in a question-and-answer session at Christie's New York. This program is organized by the American Federation of Arts and sponsored by Brooklyn's Kumquat Cupcakery. Yes, cupcakes will be served. Seating is limited and reservations are required. So go on and click to get your sweet on.

Gastro-Vision: Eating Your Vegetables Is a Luxury

2010-08-30T23:49:00.014-04:00

Sharon Core, Early American, Still Life with Vegetables, 2008. C-print, 16-1/2 x 22-1/4 in.

Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery ©Sharon Core.

Gastro-Vision launched last August with a two-part post about the trend in urban farming. Interest in sustainable and local food practices continues to spread among creative types and appears to be gaining momentum. More and more, artists are learning hands-on farming techniques and cultivating their own crops, while artspaces are starting to play host to farmers markets, composting workshops, gardening roundtables, and food residencies. The latest development: an auction of heirloom vegetables to be held at Sotheby’s New York in September.

The Art of Farming is advertised as the first event of its kind “to celebrate edible heirlooms and the art involved in their creation.” An afternoon program of gallery talks on art and food will precede an evening sale of rarities like Turkish Orange Eggplant, Pink Banana Pumpkin, and Lady Godiva Squash, all grown by farmers from the Tri-State area. This all sounds like a good idea, but the asking price of $1,000 per crate? Not so much.

The art world is known for being inaccessible and, in this field, outrageous prices are par for the course. (It was Sotheby’s that recently sold the world’s most expensive Warhol portrait at $32.6 million.) Food, however, is a basic human necessity that every living person should have access to. When 49 million people in the United States alone are food insecure, meaning they are unable to afford all the food they need for an active and healthy life, it seems awfully dangerous to associate high art price tags with vegetables, no matter how uncommon they are.

Continue reading >>

Community Cooking (8.26.10)

2010-08-26T23:12:00.017-04:00

Blueberry-Peach Salsa.

For my recent cooking demo at Weeksville Heritage Center, I prepared two kinds of peach salsa. Both versions go well with blue corn chips, grilled tofu or fish. The recipes can be easily adapted to different budgets, ingredients and tastes. Nectarines or other stone fruits can be substituted for peaches. And if you want to spice things up, just add more jalapeno.

Peach, Tomato and Basil Salsa (adapted from Brooklyn's Rose Water Cafe via Mindful Eats)
2-3 ripe or overripe peaches
1 large ripe tomato
1 bunch of basil
1/4 red onion
1 seeded and minced jalapeno pepper (or to taste)
1/2 lemon
salt and pepper

Dice the peaches, tomato and onion. Shred or slice the basil into small pieces. Discard the stems. Seed and mince the jalapeno. Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Squeeze lemon over salsa. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. Serves 3.

Blueberry-Peach Salsa
1 1/4 cups fresh blueberries
1 peach
1 seeded and minced jalapeno pepper (or to taste)
1/4 cup diced red bell pepper
1/4 cup chopped red onion
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt

Go to FatFree Vegan Kitchen for instructions.

Eye Candy: Amanda Lepore

2010-08-12T08:07:00.031-04:00

David LaChapelle, Amanda Lepore: Melon, 1998. Color, 20 x 24 in, ed of 30.

More Lepore by LaChapelle >>

Looks Good: Flan Pâtissier

2010-08-11T15:33:00.005-04:00

Courtesy Zen Can Cook.

Ingredients

Pate Brisee:

2 1/4 cups flour

3/4 cup butter, softened

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

1 egg yolk

3 tablespoons milk

Flan Pâtissier:

3 cup milk
1/2 cup water
4 eggs
1 3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1/2 vanilla bean (seeds only)
apricot jam for glazing (optional)

Got to Zen Can Cook for instructions.

Gastro-Vision: Feeding Suburbia

2010-07-16T18:17:00.018-04:00

Fritz Haeg, Edible Estates Regional Prototype Garden #6 (installation view), 2008. Commissioned by Contemporary Museum Baltimore. Courtesy the artist and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Leslie Furlong.

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

In the early 1970s, Bill Owens began to document the suburban boom in the California Bay Area. Every Saturday for a year, he photographed middle-class Americans in and around their homes, posed in modern kitchens, barbequing in the backyard, seated around the dinner table, and hosting Tupperware parties. Food figures prominently into the artist’s portraits of suburban life. In Untitled (Joy of Cooking) (1971), currently on view in the Getty Center exhibition In Focus: Tasteful Pictures, Owens has captured a kitchen pantry stocked with canned and packaged foodstuffs. Such an abundance of imitation foods was, at that time, a sign of prosperity. The tables have certainly turned. That same pantry today would suggest poverty, obesity, and poor health.

The hidden costs of living the American Dream — embodied in part by the “convenience” foods pictured in Untitled (Joy of Cooking) — has led to a rethinking of the suburbs and the current push to return to food ways of earlier generations. Enter the work of Los Angeles-based artist Fritz Haeg.

Eye Candy: New Blood

2010-07-13T08:44:00.046-04:00

Jordan Eagles, URTS (detail), 2008.
Blood, copper preserved on plexiglass, UV resin, 36 x 36 x 3 in.

In Jordan Eagles's New Blood series he suspends, encases, and permanently preserves animal blood (salvaged from slaughterhouses) in plexiglass and UV resin. This technique retains the blood’s natural colors and textures. Gallery lighting reveals the medium's many layers and is almost as important as the piece itself. "The materials and luminosity," says the artist, "relate to themes of corporeality, mortality, spirituality, and science—regenerating the blood as sublime."

The group exhibition Coincidental Opposites at Causey Contemporary in Brooklyn will include work from the New Blood series. Runs July 16 - August 23.

The World's First Food Truck Drive-In

2010-06-28T05:37:00.074-04:00

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.

All Day Breakfast Sandwich (made with aged Wisconsin Gruyere, farm fresh fried egg & caramelized onions on Rye), Milk Truck NYC.

All Day Breakfast Sandwich (detail).

Gluten-free Chocolate Cookie loaded with walnuts, Street Sweets.

Taiwanese style fried pork chop over rice with pork sauce, NYC Cravings.
(This was eaten by artist Elaine Tin Nyo, but it looked so good that I had to take a picture.)

Strawberry Rhubarb People's Pop from The Cooking Chanel Ice Cream Truck.

Lemon Tart seen in the film In De Keuken (In the Kitchen) - La Paix,
prepared by the French Culinary Institute.

Twenty-five different food vendors was plenty to choose from. But still there was more. Foods that appeared in some films (projected in a central tent) were served to guests as they watched. Two films on the afternoon menu -- In De Keuken: La Paix, and Flowers, Fruit, Sugar, and Spices -- were especially tasty.

Directed by Erwin Bruyninckx, In De Keuken ("in the kitchen") follows one professional chef and two amateur chefs in Belgium as they make identical recipes. The film is rather poetic, showing that good flavor comes from passion, not from training. It is also a hilarious juxtaposition of professional kitchen practices and home improvisation. For example, the chef in the professional kitchen uses a pastry bag to create perfectly shaped meringues for a lemon tart dessert (picture above). The amateur, on the other hand, uses a kitchen garbage bag with a hole poked in the bottom.

Flowers, Fruit, Sugar, and Spices, directed by Valeria Cavagnetto and Teresa Rocco, seemed a crowd favorite, and certainly had resonance with me. The documentary profiles the oldest operating confectioner in Europe, Pietro Romanengo Company. The Romanengo family has been making candied fruits and stone-ground chocolates for over 200 years. Their operation is beautifully described in the film as "confectionary art on the port near the sea." The film (watch it here) as well as the candies were real treats.

Gastro-Vision: Bourgeois the Artist, Bourgeois the Cook

2010-06-18T21:05:00.010-04:00

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.

A Mixed Bag (6.2.10)

2010-06-02T09:53:00.044-04:00

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.

Eye Candy: Jeff Vespa's Burgers

2010-05-25T09:10:00.013-04:00

Jeff Vespa, Burgers series. Polaroid, 8 x 10 or 20 x 24 in. All images courtesy the artist.

Artist and celebrity photographer Jeff Vespa has been photographing burgers around Los Angeles for the past few years. These large-format Polaroids were published in New York Times Magazine in 2006; and exhibited at Rush Arts Gallery in New York that same year. Currently, a selection of Vespa's Burgers are on view at Scion Space in Culver City, California. They are included in the exhibition Palate, which explores artists' use of food as muse and medium.

Vespa says of Burgers:

I have driven cross country several times and I am always was fascinated by the diners you encounter along the way...These diners always have laminated menus with photos of food. The photos are like clip art stock photos from the 1950's -- not photographs of food that the restaurant is actually serving. I had the idea that I wanted to be the photographer that shot those photographs that ended up on laminated menus. Back in L.A., it came to me that I could do that...as an art piece. I decided I would shoot photos of all the fast food hamburgers in L.A. ...It is kind of a play on pop art because the image is instantly recognizable and when you see so many in repetition it reminds you of Warhol. However, each burger is only shot once on Polaroid which makes each piece one of a kind, just like the actual burger. [These images] make you look at what you are eating, because when you eat a burger you don’t actually ever look at it. You just stuff it in your face.

Vespa's photos appear regularly in major publications, including Vanity Fair, Vogue, Time, Newsweek, People, and GQ. He is co-founder of the global photo agency WireImage, as well as Life.com editor-at-large.

Palate continues through June 12. Watch a trailer for the exhibition on Vimeo.

Gastro-Vision: Whack! Contemporary Artists and Piñatas

2010-05-21T15:23:00.010-04:00

Aaron Krach, "Indestructible Object," 2009. Pinata, copper leaf, chocolate, Plexi. 30 x 18 x 8 inches. Edition: 1/3. Courtesy the artist and DCKT.

"Gastr0-Vision" is my monthly column on the Art21 blog. It is dedicated to all things food in contemporary art and visual culture. Here's an excerpt from this month's post:

The much-talked-about Andy Warhol piñata, created by Jennifer Rubell for last month’s Brooklyn Ball, offered a witty art spin on an old party tradition. Instead of the usual candy contents, this piñata spilled Hostess brand snack cakes, icons of American junk food culture, redolent of Warhol’s work in pop art. Given the amount of art world enthusiasm about the piece, it seems a good moment to look at piñatas as an art form. Rubell is not the first to make clever use of this sweet-filled object. What follows is by no means an exhaustive history of artist’s piñatas, but a look at some recent ones that, similar to Rubell’s, were stuffed with small treats and big concepts.

A Mixed Bag (5.14.10)

2010-05-14T09:40:00.039-04:00

Narcissister, Tony Stamolis from "Hot Lunch," 2009. Courtesy the artist.

Narcissister performs at The Kitchen this weekend with her cast of masked companions. She will debut This Masquerade, a series of performances that critique pop culture’s "spurious" ideas about black femininity. Show times and wait list info here.

Fat vs. Phat: Blogger Tasha Fierce on the under representation of black plus size models in mainstream fashion.

Speaking From the Diaphragm: Berlin-based performance artist Vaginal Davis will present live and Skype guests from the worlds of literature, dance, theatre, film and art (including Kembra Pfahler and Derrick Adams). May 15-27 @ PS122.

Heaven's Lemons: Braided lemon bread, candied lemon slices, and a nicely photographed lemon twist.

Field of Gold: In 1982, artist Agnes Denes planted and harvested two acres of wheat in lower Manhattan. See documentation of this Public Art Fund project in the current issue of Red Flag.

Get SmArt: This summer, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council will offer a professional development workshop for artists. Registration is now open. Participants will be selected by lottery.

Get a Job: MoMA/PS1 seeks a curatorial assistant in Performance and Contemporary Practice.

Retire Ronald: A call for the hamburger clown to hang up his big red shoes.

Food Party: IFC has launched the second season of this crazy cooking and puppetry show by Brooklyn-based artist Thu Tran. Tuesday nights at 10pm.

Munchies in Motion: Eat your way through New York City's Greenwich Village on a food scavenger hunt. May 30 @ 1pm.

NYC Food Film Festival: This year's festival includes the world’s first food truck drive-in movie.

Abalicious: Peek behind the scenes of Annie Leibovitz's photo shoot with several six-packed World Cup players.

World Cup Cupcakes.

On Games: The Post Family/Bad at Sports sheds some light on childhood games like Kickball, and (ick) Smear the Queer.

Mile High: Nine cultural institutions are open to the public free of charge for New York's annual Museum Mile Festival. June 8, 6-9pm.

White Flight, Part II: America's suburbs are now more likely to be home to minorities.

Oaxacan Cinnamon Chocolate Macaroons.

The Largest Potluck on Earth

2010-04-25T17:30:00.049-04:00

Slideluck Potshow, Ottawa. Photo via Slideluck Potshow Network.

Slideluck Potshow is a non-profit organization that exhibits works by both novice and established artists by way of slideshows. These public events, which are held all over the world, are each preceded by a two-hour potluck style dinner. Home-cooked dishes and drinks are provided by attendees.

The next Slideluck Potshow in New York City will be held under the Manhattan Bridge Archway on May 15. This particular event is competing to break The Guinness Book of World Records for the Largest Potluck on Earth. The current record holding potluck was sponsored by the makers of Promise margarine and offered 602 individual dishes. Slideluck Potshow will, in contrast, emphasize local and seasonal ingredients. To be part of this potentially historical event, go here to purchase tickets ($10-$20).

Also, check out the (soon to be updated) Slideluck Potshow recipe collection, where you'll find treats like Butterfinger Rum Cheesecake, Peach Custard Pie, and Coconut Date Rolls.

Brooklyn Ball 2010: The Remains (Updated)

2010-04-23T08:41:00.000-04:00

Jennifer Rubell, Icons (detail), 2010. Animal and dimensions unknown. Photo: N.J. Caruth/Contemporary Confections.

Last night, the Brooklyn Museum held their annual fundraising gala, the Brooklyn Ball. In previous years, stars such as Kanye West, Marc Jacobs, Kristen Davis, and Linda Evangelista have been the talk of the evening. But this year was all about food celebrities. Chefs Mario Batali and Marcus Samuelsson were just two of the personalities on hand for the main attraction: an edible installation and interactive dinner created by rising food artist Jennifer Rubell.

Jennifer Rubell, Icons (detail), 2010. Rabbits, dimensions unknown. Photo: N.J. Caruth/Contemporary Confections.

Rubell's installation, Icons, was described as "an interactive food journey through the Museum." Cocktail hour included, among other things, drinking paintings, and suspended melting cheese heads. Mounds of beans, potatoes, salad greens, asparagus, and various proteins set atop large plywood boxes comprised the serve-yourself dinner feast. Though I couldn't participate in this (expensive) eating experience, I did get a peak at the remains during the after party. While others were in the lobby sipping cocktails, and breaking open a colossal Warhol piñata filled with Sno Balls, Twinkies, Ding Dongs, other Hostess treats, I was looking at piles of cooked rabbits and mangled pig carcasses in the third-floor Beaux-Arts Court. I heard from a few meat lovers on staff that even they found this scene disturbing (see slideshow), but maybe that was the point.

In a recent panel discussion on gluttony in art, Rubell addressed her use of food as a medium, saying that her work “looks a lot like gluttony" -- a term with “an extreme moral component” -- yet morals around food are not what interest her as an artist. She is drawn to the aesthetic and psychological properties of food. This is what I find most intriguing about Rubell's work and the above images. The remains of dinner were hard to look at, yes, but also oddly hypnotizing. Visit Rubell's website to see more images from Icons.

More on Brooklyn Ball 2010:
Bloomberg
Eater
Eat Me Daily - Part I and II
Hyperallergic
Wall Street Journal
Women's Wear Daily

Review: Adam Schreiber at Sasha Wolf Gallery

2010-04-23T07:13:00.013-04:00

Adam Schreiber, Whitehouse Switchboard, 1969 - 2001, 2010. Inkjet print on archival paper. Courtesy the artist and Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York.

Today's issue of …might be good, a contemporary art e-journal based in Austin, Texas, includes my review of Anachronic, a solo exhibition of works by Austin-based photographer Adam Schreiber. An excerpt:

Adam Schreiber’s small solo exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery [in New York] is largely inspired by his research at three archival facilities: the Lyndon B. Johnson Library & Museum, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, and J. J. Pickle Research Center. The connection between these annals is, to an Austin outsider, as much a mystery as the artist’s photographs. Schreiber’s mixed bag of images—an old switchboard, a model moon, a set of toothbrushes with a presidential seal, a nigh-lit stadium and a forest landscape, for instance—look entirely unrelated rather than, as the exhibition title Anachronic implies, out of chronological order. This might compel one, just as archives do, to dig.
However, the history behind Schreiber’s subjects is only slightly more engaging than the photos themselves. [1] Upon consultation of this history, Schreiber’s photographs, like the scrambled pieces of a boxed puzzle, start to make sense in view of the bigger picture. His rejection of linear and written narrative affirms the obvious: how we view objects is largely a result of how they’re framed.

Continue reading here.

What Happened to the Winner of ArtPrize 2009?

2010-04-21T21:12:00.021-04:00

Ran Ortner and his assistant at work. Courtesy the artist.

You might recall reading about my trip to ArtPrize -- a new experimental art competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan -- in the fall.* This international contest is decided solely by public vote. Ten finalists (individual artists or collectives) are awarded a total of $449,000, with $250,000 of that pot going to the first place winner. I recently caught up with the winner of last year's grand prize, the Brooklyn-based painter Ran Ortner. Go to the ArtPrize blog to read my interview with the artist, in which he discusses the impact of ArtPrize on his life and work.

*Artist registration for ArtPrize 2010 closes May 27. Get more information about sign up here.

Gastro-Vision: On Cake

2010-04-16T16:57:00.026-04:00

Clare Grill, When You Get That Old, 2009. Oil on linen over panel, 20 x 16 in. Courtesy the artist.

Gastr0-Vision is the title of my monthly column on the Art21 blog. The series is dedicated to all things food in contemporary art and visual culture.

This month, I've written about three artists who take vastly different approaches to my most loved confection: cake. Here's an excerpt:

My love of cake straddles the line between innocent obsession and utter perversion. I tend to think of cakes like my favorite celebrity bodies. Be it big and firm like Hugh Jackman, petite and voluptuous like Salma Hayek, or thick and stacked à la Serena Williams, I have never laid eyes on a cake I didn’t fancy the same way. In my most delicious and twisted fantasy, I die face-down in red velvet with pound cake in my left hand and German chocolate in my right—an orgy so sweet that it literally takes me all the way to heaven. You see, I am absolutely crazy about cake, and so the (self-indulgent) focus of this Gastro-Vision post...

Continue reading here.

Eye Candy: Jennifer Poon

2010-04-11T07:55:00.014-04:00

Jennifer Poon, Sleep. Watercolor, gouache, on cut paper. Courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery.

In A Temporary Space, Jenifer Poon's upcoming exhibition at Claire Oliver Gallery, she reflects on her recent experience with familial death and on our expectations of the people closest to us. The artist says, “We remember those who have passed on with a different stream of consciousness, we find our own meaning in what was reality; death sanitizes everything.”

For this installation, Poon has created her fragmented watercolored bodies in both two and three dimensions. Central to the exhibition are a life sized human form, created from bits of fabric that have been sewn, tied and quilted; and an altar piece holding clay amulets, each adorned with a small portrait and line of text. Both pieces speak to Poon's interest in the role of ritual in contemporary culture.

A Temporary Space is on view April 17 - May 15.

Looks Good: Cinnamon Sugar-Crusted Popovers

2010-03-30T09:47:00.019-04:00

Courtesy Vanilla Basil.

Ingredients
1 cup 2% milk
2 Tbsp melted unsalted butter
2 jumbo or 3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour

2 Tbsp melted butter
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp Saigon cinnamon

Go to Vanilla Basil for instructions.

A Mixed Bag: The SoCal Edition

2010-03-26T07:07:00.214-04:00

Christopher Lowell, The Dreamers – Studies, 2008. Dimensions unknown.
Courtesy Stephen Cohen Gallery.

The Dreamers: Christopher Lowell began this year-long project by asking artist-friends from around the world to create artworks about their dreams and aspirations and mail them to a post office box in Southern California. At the end of the year, all of the artists gathered to view the work they had created, and to share stories of dreams fulfilled or lost. Photographed by Lowell, their portraits are on view at Stephen Cohen Gallery through April 24.

Youth Speak: Teenage journalist and L.A. resident Ernesto Pineda reflects on the difficulties of healthy eating.

MunchMad: Grub Street L.A. has the dish on this new Facebook group for foodies.

Smack Down: New York’s street food competition, The Vendys, is moving west.

"Compton Cookout" was the name given a (despicable) UC San Diego fraternity event that promised a taste of "life in the ghetto." University officials respond.

An Idea Called Tomorrow: Co-organized by the California African American Museum and the Skirball Cultural Center, the two-venue exhibition considers the active role we must all play to bring about a more just, equitable, and peaceful future. On view through May 2. (See feature in Whitewall online.)

Cultural Genocide: Sign the petition to save Watts Towers Art Center, a space of art education and cultural programming for youth and under-served communities.

41st & Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers: The original surviving members of the L.A. Black Panthers speak out in this new documentary film. Opens March 26 at Culver Plaza Theatres for a limited time engagement.

Govenator (radically?) suggests moving money from the big house to the school house.

The Raza's Edge, a public program at the LA County Museum of Art on April 3, will focus on the Chicano presence in the history of art. (See Walter Robinson's recent piece for Artnet, The Chicano Avant-Garde.)

Tecate Cake: The SoCal beer craze is seeping into area sweets.

It's Cool, I'm Good: Three new videos by artist Stanya Kahn are on view at Susanne Vielmetter Projects through April 24. They "smack of YouTube vernacular," says critic Micol Hebron in Artforum.

Edible Sunset: The hipster neighborhood of Silver Lake sounds tasty.

Life's Flavor: The little round ladies painted by Brazilian artist Nina Pandolfo are on view at Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art in Culver City through April 18.

Avocado Pound Cake: Courtesy of L.A. food blogger Joy the Baker.

So You Think You Can Cook?

Gristle: The DJ and former vegan, Moby, was in L.A. this week signing copies of his new book on the food industry.

Jonesin: SoCal artist Alika Cooper renders Grace Jones's infamous performance at Paradise Garage (a collaboration with Keith Haring) in gouache.

Hot Pink: Hotcakes Bakes, said to offer some of the tastiest baked goods in L.A., gets reviewed by a city newbie.

Need a Date? This list of wild and foraged foods includes date trees, which are found in desert areas of SoCal and Arizona.

It Makes Sense: Ann Landi of Artnews on Jeffrey Deitch's shift from dealer to director.

Obscenely Smart: Art21 columnist Catherine Wagley on the work of Mel Bochner, now on view in L.A.

How Many Billboards? This two-month public art project, organized by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, wraps up April 15 with a panel discussion on the visual ecology of advertising and architecture.

Follow SoCal Art: @artwhirled, @KnightLAT, and @artbystander.

Follow SoCal Food: @joythebaker, @eatingLA, and @carolineoncrack.

Gastro-Vision: In the Land of Plenty

2010-03-19T13:54:00.017-04:00

Mr. Creosote in "Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life" (film still), 1983.

Gastr0-Vision is the title of my monthly column on the Art21 blog. The series is dedicated to all things food in contemporary art and visual culture.

This month's post focuses on gluttony in art. Here's an excerpt:

Mr. Creosote, the morbidly obese character of the 1983 comedy Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, is a picture of gluttony never to be forgotten. Upon taking his seat in a fancy French restaurant, he begins to vomit, showing no concern for the people around him and the dreadfulness of his action. Throughout the skit he continues to project ridiculously large streams of matter onto the floor, into buckets, on the maître d’, cleaning woman, and himself. Between upchucks, he heedlessly orders and consumes copious amounts of food. In a darkly humorous ending, the character explodes, showering the restaurant and its patrons with human viscera. The camera pans back to Mr. Creosote, who is now a hollow carcass with a still-beating heart. The maître d’ presents him with the check.

The same year that audiences were introduced to Mr. Creosote, the art world was entering a period of phenomenal excess. The wealth enjoyed by upper and middle class Americans in the early 1980s brought about rapid growth in the art market. The resulting bubble would, like Mr. Creosote, eventually burst. At the present moment, we are acutely aware of this bulimic pattern: after the buying binge of recent years, the market (along with the larger economy) again purged, and given the latest art fair reports, is back on the rise. Might Mr. Creosote be the perfect metaphor for the contemporary art world that is always hungry for more?

Continue reading here.

Looks Good: German Chocolate Cupcakes

2010-03-12T07:30:00.010-05:00

Photo: David Lebovitz.com

Ingredients
Cupcakes:
2 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup boiling water or coffee
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature, separated
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon cake flour (not self-rising)
1 tablespoon unsweetened natural cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk (see note @ link below), room temperature

Frosting:
3/4 cup evaporated milk (whole milk)
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large egg yolks
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons butter, salted or unsalted, at room temperature
2 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups sweetened or unsweetened coconut flakes, lightly toasted
1 cup chopped, toasted pecans
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Additional toasted coconut for garnish (optional)

Go to David Lebovitz.com for instructions.

Eye Candy: Phillip-Lorca diCorcia

2010-03-05T20:03:00.008-05:00

Phillip-Lorca diCorcia, Marilyn, date unknown. C-Print, 30 x 40 in. via David Zwirner.com

One hundred never-before-seen Polaroid photographs by Philip-Lorca diCorcia are on view at this year's Armory Show in the David Zwirner booth. The images were culled from diCorcia's archive/collection, spanning the past 25 years.

The artist will sign copies of his books Thousand and Philip-Lorca diCorcia at the booth tomorrow from 3 to 4pm. The Armory Show continues through March 7.

Community Cooking (3.2.10)

2010-03-02T10:14:00.060-05:00

Moroccan Carrot and Orange Salad (at home).

Sustainable Flatbush -- an organization that advocates, educates, and mobilizes for sustainable living in Brooklyn -- hosted a fantastic event last week called "Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are." This two-hour series of presentations and hands-on workshops by local growers, foodies, and food professionals included a cooking demo by yours truly. All of my ingredients for Moroccan Carrot and Orange Salad were generously donated by the Flatbush Food Co-op.

Greening Flatbush 2010. Photo: Maria Bergenhem.

Greening Flatbush 2010, "Emily Goodman's 'Gardening for Children.'" Photo: Flatbush Gardener.

Greening Flatbush 2010, "Just Food Community Chef" (me). Photo: Rodney Bedsole.

Moroccan Carrot and Orange Salad was a hit with attendees. Its bright citrus colors on a cold winter day certainly contributed to the enthusiasm. This refreshing mix can be served as a stand alone, a starter with light breads, or as a side to grilled/roasted dishes. Notice that the recipe below (adapted from ecurry.com) calls for Orange Blossom Water, a common ingredient in Moroccan dishes and desserts. Locals can find this at Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn and Kalustyan's in Manhattan. Though, orange flavor (sold in most grocery stores near vanilla extract) or extra orange juice are fine substitutes.

Ingredients
5 large carrots, grated
3 Navel oranges or Clementines, peeled and segments halved
1 Blood orange
3/4 cup golden raisins
1/3 cup almonds or pine nuts, lightly toasted
Fresh mint leaves
Pine nuts, toasted
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp orange juice
1-2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp honey or agave nectar
1 Tbsp Orange Blossom Water or 1 Tbsp orange flavor
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
Pinch of sea salt

Soak raisins in hot water for 30 minutes, then drain. Peel the carrots and grate/shred them. Mix the carrots, oranges, nuts, raisins and mint leaves in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine Orange Blossom Water, lemon juice, orange juice, agave nectar, olive oil, salt, paprika and cumin and whisk well. Pour the dressing evenly over the other ingredients, and toss. Cover and refrigerate for half hour or more to allow the salad to macerate.

Eye Candy: Tim Etchells

2010-02-27T18:59:00.016-05:00

Tim Etchells, Art Flavours (2008), video still. Photo: Tim Etchells.

Art Flavours, a video project by artist Tim Etchells, involves the creation of new gelato flavors inspired by concepts and terms from contemporary art. Produced for Manifesta 7, the piece documents a meeting that Etchells organized between the Italian critic and curator Roberto Pinto and the ice-cream maker Osvaldo Castellari. Pinto was entrusted with summarizing art historical practice through four main categories: The Body, Memory, Spectacle and The Archive. Castellari's role was to translate the concepts into four flavors. In the conversation between the two men "the critic/curator attempts to convey the art historical themes to the ice-cream master, who for his own part grows more and more skeptical, anxious and daunted by the task ahead of him."

On view at Gasworks in a London through March 28.

Gastro-Vision: Stomachache

2010-02-25T14:52:00.016-05:00

Christina Mazzalupo, Countdown: Week 1, 2009. Ink and watercolor on paper, 22 1/2 x 30 in.
Courtesy Mixed Greens.

Gastro-Vision is my monthly Art21 column dedicated to all things food. This month I've written about a suite of drawings that are currently on view at Mixed Greens Gallery in New York. An excerpt:

Food diaries — daily records of everything one eats and drinks — are strange and fascinating objects. For nutritionists and dietitians, they are useful tools in determining a person’s eating habits and caloric intake. Taken out of a medical context, however, a blow-by-blow report of one’s ingestion seems trivial and neurotic. I’ll admit that I’ve kept my own food diary off and on over the years, repeatedly tucking it away once it became too tedious a task. When I stumbled upon one of my old journals a few years ago, I made a startling discovery: in logging teaspoons, cups, ounces and calories I had sketched a picture of my subconscious self. Bits and pieces of my life that were before unclear were laid out in my diet and notes. I was reminded of this epiphanic moment when I saw a new body of work by artist Christina Mazzalupo that takes her food diary as its starting point.

Jump over to the Art21 blog to continue reading.

Looks Good: Cookies & Cream Cheesecake Cupcakes

2010-02-17T08:39:00.006-05:00

Courtesy Handle the Heat.

Ingredients
42 cream-filled sandwich cookies, such as Oreos, 30 left whole, and 12 coarsely chopped*
2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
Pinch of salt

Go to Handle the Heat for instructions.

*You might try using homemade oreos instead. Adjust baking time and temp accordingly.

Strange, I've Seen That Face Before

2010-02-14T15:35:00.068-05:00

Rihanna, "Rude Boy" video still, 2010.

Rihanna's new music video for "Rude Boy" is chock full of references to art history and popular culture. Flavorpill, examining the video scene-by-scene, pointed out traces of Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and MIA. Vulture also took notice, saying, "It's like Haring, Warhol, and M.C. Hammer visited the Caribbean in the seventies and made a music video about it in the nineties." I'm somewhat surprised that both publications failed to cite an obvious influence: Grace Jones.

Jones was one of the most important black performers of the 1980s. At the height of her career -- 1978 to 1986 -- her modeling, acting and singing pursuits merged into a distinct androgynous persona. Joining forces with the French image-maker, Jean Paul-Goude, Jones crossed over from disco diva to prominent avant-garde performance artist. Her success coincided with an important period of production for artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, Francesco Clemente, and the fashion designer Patrick Kelly. Jones was repeatedly the subject of their work. Examples include Warhol’s screen print, Grace Jones (1986); Clemente’s painting, Skin (1986); and Kelly’s Eiffel Tower headdress made especially for Jones to wear on the catwalk. She has made an indelible mark on visual culture.

Keith Haring and Grace Jones, circa 1985.

Rihanna (probably with the help of creative advisers) began to adopt the "Jones aesthetic" with the release of her current album Rated R. The soft and sweet girl who came on the scene with "Pon de Replay" now appears as an edgy, or "hard," vixen wrapped in barbed-wire. Jones is of course known for her bad-ass attitude and matching sense of style. With each new music video, fashion shoot, television and off-stage appearance, Rihanna's affinity to Jones grows more apparent. It is of note that both singers hail from the Caribbean.

Jones painted in a Masai-inspired pattern and outfitted by Keith Haring, Paradise Garage, 1985.

By now you can see that the scene from "Rude Boy" pictured atop is not just any nod to Haring, but specifically refers to his collaboration with Jones at the legendary New York City nightclub, Paradise Garage. In addition to painting her body, Haring dressed Jones in a costume made of chains, topped her head with a 3-foot handmade headpiece, and sculpted wire coils to emphasized her breasts. Scholars believe the latter was a direct reference to Alexander Calder's wire sculpture of Josephine Baker. It is no coincidence that, 2 minutes and 57 seconds into "Rude Boy," the camera zooms in on Rihanna's chest, which is adorned with black painted spirals.

Grace Jones, Vamp, 1986

Finally, the layering of patterns in Rihanna's music video calls to mind an unforgettable scene from Jones's 1986 b-movie, Vamp. In her role as a vampire exotic dancer, Jones, again painted by Haring, performs using a similarly decorated stage prop as her...well...pole. Trust me, you want to press play.

__________________

*The title of this post was inspired by Jones's 1988 song "Strange" on the Frantic soundtrack. **I wrote a portion of the above text for an exhibition about Jones that I am curating (dates TBD).

A Mixed Bag: The Bay Area Edition

2010-02-09T05:43:00.050-05:00

Christina Seely, Metropolis 40° 25'N 3° 41'W. Courtesy San Francisco Art Commission Gallery.

Lux: Bay Area artist Christina Seely has documented the artificial glow produced by the three brightest regions on NASA’s map of the Earth at night -- the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. This series, presented on large-scale photographic banners, is on view at San Francisco City Hall through June 18.

Loma Prieta: 7.1 magnitude. Death toll 63. / Haiti: 7.0 magnitude. Death toll 212,000 and rising.

Marina/Cow Hollow yogis seek used yoga mats for Haiti. Eyebrows rise and skepticism ensues.

Claims to Fame: The Martini was invented in the Bay Area in 1860. Irish Coffee was developed at San Francisco's Buena Vista Cafe in 1952. Oakland's Frank Epperson invented the Popsicle in 1905.

Cha, Cha, Changes: The Berkeley Art Museum is relocating. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is expanding.

No. 1: SFMoMA tops Juxtapoz Magazine's list of 100 museums and galleries.

San Francisco in pictures and print. (via @hragv and @cmonstah)

The Art of Richard Mayhew: A retrospective exhibition of work by the Aptos-based painter who co-founded Spiral, the legendary group of Black artists -- including Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff -- organized in 1963 to address issues of civil rights and racial equality through their art. On view at the Museum of the African Diaspora through March 7.

Has San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom been kidnapped by one-eyed aliens from Pluto?

How to be a hella cool tourist in the sucka free Yay Area.

Wayne Thiebaud: Seventy Years of Painting: The 89-year old dessert man gets another solo show, this time at the San Jose Museum of Art.

Waste of Ink: Geek graffiti in Berkeley.

Artisan Sweets: Kara's Cupcakes introduces gluten-free cupcakes in vanilla, coconut, and chocolate velvet at their Marina store. (via @cupcakeblog)

Produce to the People: A panel discussion about local produce distribution. Tues., March 2 at the San Francisco Ferry Building.

Feed Them Right: Talking food reform in Oakland schools.

Keepin' It Reed: Oak Town's Ishmael Reed on the film Precious. (via @joygarnett)

We Love to Watch: Oakland-based artist April Banks and writer, lyricist and former NFL player DeQawn Mobley have teamed up on this photo-installation and collection of essays inspired by Melvin Van Peebles's 1970s political comedy Watermelon Man.

20 Seasons, 208 Touchdowns: 49ers receiver Jerry Rice will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The Lineup: Rachel Cole of the San Francisco cultural space 18 Reasons shares her favorite cookbooks.

2 x 2 Solos: A series of solo exhibitions at Pro Arts Gallery that showcase artists living and working in the Oakland/Bay Area. Works by Nadim Sabella and Imin Yeh are on view through February 26.

The Definitive Guide to Oakland/East Bay arts (PDF).

Passion in a Pot: 23-year old Karen Rogers arrived in Berkeley with the food movement in tow.

Food Rules: A new book from UC Berkeley professor Michael Pollan.

Wine is high art in the Bay Area.

Cali wine might be too expensive for the times.

Jews on Vinyl: Contemporary Jewish Museum guest curators Roger Bennett and Josh Kun have collected thousands of vinyl LPs to piece together a story of Jews in America through music. Closes Spring 2010.

Hateful Hallelujahs: Westboro Baptist Church rolls through the Bay Area. San Francisco humorously responds. (via @naylandblake)

On the Tube: The Prop 8 trial re-enacted.

Icons of Attention: Bay Area-based video and performance artist Kamau Patton presents a multi-media installation modeled after 1930s science fiction broadcasts and underground 1980s music shows. On view at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through March 7.

1975: The Incredible San Francisco Artists' Soapbox Derby.

Follow the Bay: Art @alexiskmanheim. Food @bayareabites.

Looks Good: Peanut Butter Pie with Cookie Crust

2010-02-05T06:43:00.002-05:00

Courtesy Bake or Break.

Ingredients
Crust:
30 chocolate wafer cookies (about 6 ounces)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Filling:
1/2 cup (3 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon light corn syrup
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 & 1/2 cups heavy cream

Hot Fudge Sauce:
6 ounces milk chocolate, finely chopped
6 ounces dark chocolate (64% cacao), finely chopped
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup light corn syrup

Go to Bake or Break for instructions.

Eye Candy: iona rozeal brown

2010-02-04T07:51:00.004-05:00

iona rozeal brown, king kata #4: resist (after Yoshitosh's, 2007. Mixed media on framed panel, 51 x 62 in. Courtesy Sandorni Rey, Los Angeles. (via MoCA Cleveland)

iona rozeal brown: all falls down, on view at at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, features fifteen new paintings by Brown that examine the pressures and obstacles facing young women today. This series continues the artist's signature fusion of African American hip hop culture and Japanese art history.

iona rozeal brown: all falls down received the 2009 Joyce Award in Visual Art that supports new commissions for artists of color. As part of the award, MoCA Clevland commissioned Brown to create new paintings based in part on Japanese Ukiyo-e prints from the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, as well as to complete a residency with Cleveland-area high school students. This is the first museum presentation of her new work.

Continues through May 9.

A Decision Tree

2010-01-30T21:24:00.007-05:00

By Audrey Fukuman and Andy Wright. [via Naturelle-Chic via SF Foodie]

Orange Hills Roll in Berkeley

2010-01-29T12:54:00.013-05:00

Thom Faulders, BAMscape, 2010. Photo: Mary Kate Murphy.

Many people who work in the arts grew up going to museums either with their parents or on grade school outings. I, however, was already attending community college before stepping foot inside of one: the Berkeley Art Museum. That one visit honestly changed my life and led me to my work today.

I went to the museum earlier this week, not to see anything in particular, but just to be in the space. A funny thing happened while I was there. After walking through a few so-so exhibitions, I sauntered down to the central atrium to get a closer look at BAMscape by Thom Faulders. I was soon told by a gentleman (who I later discovered was the artist) that I wasn't supposed to be in the area unless I was part of the photo shoot that was, unbeknownst to me, in progress. As I turned to leave, a woman said, "You can stay if you want to be part of it. We need attractive people." I'm a sucker for compliments, so there I am posing in the foreground of the picture above.

Thom Faulders, BAMscape, 2010. Photo: N.J. Caruth.

BAMscape is constructed from curved, painted wood over a core of foam. Museum visitors are invited to lounge (sans shoes) on the orange rolling hills and take advantage of free wifi; electrical outlets have been built into this comfy structure. Faulders, founder of the Bay Area design firm Faulders Studio, conceives of the commissioned installation as "a new social nerve center to the museum experience.” BAMscape opens to the public today.

Gastro-Vision: The Fruit of Experience

2010-01-29T08:34:00.000-05:00

Fallen Fruit Collective, American Family, 2008. Giclee print, 40 x 60 in. Courtesy the artists.

Check out the Art:21 blog, where I've written about EATLACMA, a year-long project at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art by Fallen Fruit Collective. An excerpt:

Fallen Fruit Collective formed six years ago through a project by artists David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young for the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. The trio created a street-by-street diagram of fruit trees growing on or over public property in their Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. While the city boasts bananas, peaches, avocados, lemons, oranges, kumquats, plums, pomegranates, and other fruits growing year-round, this bounty is not always shared. Mapping “public fruit” was a way to approach food resource and accessibility concerns in urban space. From the beginning, Fallen Fruit urged city officials, urban planning groups, and property owners to plant with the goal of yielding edible goods for the local populace. You might call Burns, Viegener, and Young the locavores of contemporary art.

Read the rest here.

Looks Good: White Chocolate Orange Cheesecake

2010-01-24T10:39:00.012-05:00

Uploaded to Flickr by Pei-Lin of Dodol & Mochi on January 18, 2010.

Ingredients

Filling:
1 1/2 lbs cream cheese
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups sour cream
5 eggs
1 whole orange (peeled, pitted, and chopped)

Graham Cracker Crust:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp butter

Granola Crust:
2 cups granola
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp butter
1 cup melted white chocolate

Go to Notecook.com for instructions.

For lower fat content, consider the substitutions listed here.

Food for Thought

2010-01-21T08:02:00.023-05:00

ArtTable's recent panel discussion, Blog This!: Blogging the Contemporary Arts, at X Initiative was not the rich conversation about art criticism in the blogosphere that I had hoped for. Rather, the discussion seemed geared toward novices for whom art blogs are something of mystery. That said, the work and achievements of the five panelists are an inspiration to many (including me) and it was nice to see the event so well attended. Art bloggers need support.

Shifting gears here, I couldn’t help but notice the lack of diversity among panelists. This is something I've recognized at events of this sort in the past. The moderator claimed to have cast a wide net in selecting speakers. She was clearly referring to their various roles in the art world (educator, artist, dealer, etc). It probably goes without saying that different voices, social experiences and perspectives can significantly shift the course of any dialog. I left the event wondering: Why are people of color frequently absent from public forums about art blogging, or online art criticism? Are we deliberately left out? Or are we not present because we don’t blog about art at the same rate as our white counterparts? Do art blogs by people of color attract different audiences or less attention on the whole?

I suppose most speakers and attendees of art blog meet-ups mirror the predominantly white art world. But the prospect of art bloggers as a racially homogeneous community of people and authorities is, in my mind, at odds with the spirit of social media -- platforms that have ostensibly diversified authorship by decentralizing power. Aren't non-whites and minorities contributing to art discourse more than ever? Not necessarily. When I brought this up to a friend of mine, she said, "Becoming a writer -- knowing how to write -- is a hurdle that can exclude people who don't have the same access to education." Hence, just because self-publishing tools such as blogs are readily available does not mean that everyone can wield them effectively. And, for sure, race and class continue to play a role in who has access to education, art, and the web.

The discourse on art blogging -- the future of art criticism -- is quite young and there are still many conversations to be had. But down the road I hope no one has to ask, à la Linda Nochlin, why there have been no great art bloggers of color, only to realize, as Nochlin said of women artists in 1971, that there have been many interesting and very good ones who were insufficiently investigated or appreciated. I’m just sayin', it’s something to think about.

A Mixed Bag: The Me Edition (1.15.10)

2010-01-15T21:19:00.021-05:00

Promo image for Marisa Olson's performance Whew! Age, 2010. (via PS122.org)

Contemporary Confections is back. Over the last couple of months, I've spent a lot of time writing for other outlets. Below are links to my recent articles in case you missed them:

Ten Tips for Aspiring Curators: Don't believe the hype - curating is not all it's cracked up to be.

Gastro-Vision: The Year in Meat: A look back at 2009 in burger, bacon and slaughter art.

Inhale. Exhale. Whew.: Brooklyn artist Marisa Olson talks about climate change issues in her upcoming performance Whew! Age at PS122 (Feb 12-14).

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T09:21:00.007-05:00

via Smashing Magazine

Contemporary Confections will be back with more sweets and art in 2010.

Happy Holidays

2009-12-23T09:25:00.004-05:00

Christmas jingles don't get better than this.

Looks Good: Brown Butter Brown Sugar Shorties

2009-12-11T10:04:00.003-05:00

Courtesy Smitten Kitchen.

One of my new favorites, these cookies are easy to make and the process of browning butter creates a wonderful aroma.

Ingredients
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar (preferably dark)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt (flaky salt would be great in these)
Demerara sugar (Sugar in the Raw) or sanding sugar for rolling (optional)

Go to Smitten Kitchen for instructions.

Eye Candy: Martin Wong

2009-12-10T12:04:00.009-05:00

Martin Wong, Stanton Near Forsyth, 1984. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 64 in. Courtesy P.P.O.W. Gallery.

Martin Wong: Everything Must Go is on view at P.P.O.W. Gallery through January 30. A panel discussion (tentatively) based upon the themes of secret language in Wong's work will be hosted by the NYU Steinhardt School of Art and Arts Professions on January 26.

Becoming a Community Chef: Pumpkin Walnut Bread

2009-12-09T09:53:00.006-05:00

Photo: N. Caruth.

My first season as a Community Chef ended with a holiday potluck at the Just Food office. For this, I baked Pumpkin Walnut Bread. Because I substituted one cup of all-purpose flour for whole wheat flour (which is more dense), baking time for two small loaves was 40-45 minutes as opposed to the recommended 25-30. If you want to kick this bread up a notch, I recommend slices warmed or toasted and topped with Honey Butter.

The end of this year's outdoor cooking season marks a shift in the title of this series: going forward it will be called Community Cooking. The series will continue to focus on recipes and food adventures related to my work as a Community Chef, as well as current issues in food politics.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cup (1 15 oz. can) pureed pumpkin
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1 egg
1/2 cup egg whites
2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup chopped walnuts

Recipe adapted from The Fresh Loaf; go to their website for instructions.

A Mixed Bag: The Wishlist Edition

2009-12-07T09:33:00.017-05:00

Denyse Thomasos, Lollipop Nation, 2009. 40 x 54 in. Courtesy Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.

In case you were wondering, here's a few things things I'd like to have or receive this holiday season:

Lollipop Nation by Denyse Thomasos (one of many paintings in the artist's solo exhibition now on view at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc).

Cornucopia, a 3-D Printer that can store and cook food.

An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage.

Cool book jackets.

Prospect Park #2 by Joseph O. Holmes (on view at Jen Bekman Gallery through January 9).

Nayland Blake in a room...alone...where I can take advantage of his mind.

Gingerbread Pancakes with candied ginger.

A set of Busts by Eli Alba (on view at Black and White Gallery beginning December 10).

Pink Himalayan Salt.

Dutch Apple and other holiday pies from Housing Works Bookstore Cafe (as proceeds go toward the fight against AIDS and homelessness).

Anonymous photographs and custom cookies.

Gastro-Vision: Antidiets of the Avant-Garde

2009-12-03T12:11:00.005-05:00

Daniel Spoerri, Eaten partly by: Visitors of the Biennale of Sydney 1979, 1978-79. Dinner debris: knives, forks, plates, bread, bottle, glasses, glued to a screenprinted tablecloth mounted on wood, overall 100 x 220 cm. Gift of the artist, 1979 NGA 1979.2341.A-B © Daniel Spoerri. Licensed by Pro Litteris, Zurich & VISCOPY, Australia.

Antidiets of the Avant-Garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art -- a fascinating new text in food-art history -- is due out in January. Learn more about the book in my interview with author Cecilia Novero:

Nicole J. Caruth: How do you define “antidiet”? Is it synonymous with the rejection of “taste” in art (i.e. anti-taste) or related to the French idea of dégoût/disgust?

Cecilia Novero: Antidiet is not always dégoût–that would work with Dada but not with Futurism. Antidiet is meant in the sense of anti-art, without being a synonym of it. If diet is a set of regulations that orders ways of eating, table manners, etc., the anti-diet counters these “bourgeois” and “Western” rules. For example, the ways in which we take pleasure, appreciate what is considered/constructed as the beautiful, and especially the ways we “taste” art and thus stop thinking about inherited concepts of beauty. In the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde, anti-diet also refers to acquired notions of “progress,” hence traditional historicist approaches to art and civilization.

Read the entire piece on the Art21 blog.

World Aids Day 2009

2009-12-01T09:57:00.026-05:00

Hunter Reynolds, I'm in Love (Lipstick Drawing series), 2009. Courtesy Visual Aids.

Thirty-three million people are HIV positive; 22 million of them are in Africa. Worldwide, HIV/AIDS is the No. 1 killer of women.

Today is World Aids Day/Day With(out) Art:

Day Without Art began on December 1, 1989 as the national day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis. To make the public aware that AIDS can touch everyone, and inspire positive action, some 800 U.S. art and AIDS groups participated in the first Day Without Art, shutting down museums, sending staff to volunteer at AIDS services, or sponsoring special exhibitions of work about AIDS. Since then, Day With(out) Art has grown into a collaborative project in which an estimated 8,000 national and international museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS Service Organizations, libraries, high schools and colleges take part.

A number of art programs are taking place across New York City in conjunction with World Aids Day; visit the Visual Aids blog for more information.

Every year, the non-profit organization Visual Aids commissions contemporary artists to design broadsides; the works are used to raise awareness about AIDS and HIV prevention. This year's designs are a limited-edition tote bag by J. Morrison; a set of 10 business cards by Wu Ingrid Tsang; and the postcard pictured here by Hunter Reynolds. An AIDS activist and early member of ACT UP, Reynolds co-founded Art Positive--a group to fight homophobia and censorship in the arts--in 1989.

Cranberry & Pomegranate Chutney: Swati Khurana

2009-11-26T13:46:00.045-05:00

Swati Khurana, Sometime, Sometime (Bollywood Mash-up series), 2008. RT 4:00. Courtesy the artist.

About a week ago, I posted a note on Facebook and Twitter asking artists about their Thanksgiving menus. Swati Khurana responded with excitement about her homemade chutney of cranberries, pomegranate and raspberries, and has generously shared her recipe.

Born in Indian, raised in the Hudson Valley, and today based in Brooklyn, Khurana's work has been shown locally at Bronx Museum, Queens Museum, Bose Pacia Modern, Center for Book Arts, Exit Art, Momenta Art, Jersey City Museum, Art-in-General, WhiteBox and Rush Arts; and internationally in Costa Rica, The Gambia (West Africa), Italy, India and Nepal. Her many accolades include the Jerome Foundation Travel & Study Grant, Artist-in-Marketplace at the Bronx Museum, Aljira’s Emerge program, and residencies at Henry Street Settlement, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Pace University, BCAT/Rotunda Gallery, and Kartong Village Development Committee. She will present her newest work in a solo exhibition at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai in January 2010.

Ingredients

1 large pomegranate, seeded

1-2 packages of raspberries, small

1 bag of fresh cranberries

sugar or agave nectar, to taste

chopped fresh mint, to taste

fresh squeezed lime juice, to taste

Instructions
Boil cranberries in a saucepan; as they begin to open up and split in half, add sugar or agave. When cranberries are tender, remove saucepan from stove and drain. Place cranberries in a large bowl. Add raspberries and use a masher to mix the fruits. Add more sugar or agave as needed. Add fresh squeezed lime juice and mash again. Toss in the seeds of a large pomegranate and stir with a spoon (do not mash the seeds). Stir in chopped mint. Taste and add more lime juice, sugar or agave as desired. Chill and serve. "This chutney is excellent over ice-cream or yogurt, on toast or sandwiches, as a side to poultry or meat, and on its own," says Khurana.

Wedding Trousseau (detail), 2009. Ink and embroidery on cloth. Courtesy the artist.

A founding member of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC), Khurana's work is currently on view in Domestic Policy -- SAWCC's 12th annual visual arts exhibition -- at The Guild, New York. Curator Rocio Aranda-Alvarado writes of the artist's new suite of embroideries titled Wedding Trousseau:

Domestic policies (often inﬂuenced by religious ideas) guide the laws of marriage. Within the traditions and history of marriage, additional ceremonies, rituals, and beliefs accompany the entire rite of passage. Swati Khurana’s "Wedding Trousseau" relates to these rituals and their inﬂuence on gender and the social roles of women. She notes: “To me, the seductive promises of rituals comprise a huge part of domestic policy.” The marriage rituals and their power to inspire particular beliefs or to manipulate behaviors are explored throughout these images, in which the artist presents drawings of her own wedding and its anticipated events. She had given the drawings on fabric to her grandmothers and asked them, without additional instructions, to simply embroider on them. With this gesture, the entire trousseau of shawls, blankets, and saris that are hand-sewn, knit, crocheted, or embroidered is reconsidered, an additional layer to the already complex formalities of a symbolic act.

Khurana acknowledges her grandmothers, Pushpa Khurana and Sharda Sethi, for their collaborative and creative spirit in making Wedding Trousseau, as well as Seema Khurana, Kanika Jaiswal and Firelei Baez without whom this body of work would not have been possible. Domestic Policy continues through December 12. Look out for a Contemporary Confections interview with the artist in the spring.

Looks Good: Ginger Pumpkin Bread with Sugar Glaze

2009-11-25T22:39:00.008-05:00

Courtesy Recipe Mashups.

Ingredients
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted, plus room-temperature butter for pan
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pan
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree (1 3/4 cups)
3 large eggs

Sugar Glaze (optional):
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
2 to 3 tablespoons water

Go to Recipe Mashups for baking tips; and Martha Stewart.com for instructions.

Eye Candy: Saya Woolfalk

2009-11-24T18:39:00.045-05:00

Saya Woolfalk, A Ritual of the Empathic, 2009. Studio Museum in Harlem/Performa 09.

Courtesy the artist. Photo: Ray Llanos.

Artist Saya Woolfalk and choreographer Melanie Aceto recently presented A Ritual of the Empathic, a project for Performa 09, at the Studio Museum in Harlem. A Ritual is the first dance piece in Woolfalk's ongoing body of work called "No Place," and a fantastic addition.

A Ritual expands the fictional narrative of No Place -- a future where people are part-plant, part human -- to include a group of women called the Empathics. They believe that No Place is a future worth inhabiting and, through their gestures, try to conjure this utopian land in the present day.

Five women dressed in a Teletubbie array of Lycra suits performed this modern dance piece against a minimal white backdrop flecked with green stars. Underscoring Woolfalk's child's play aesthetics, the padded flooring beneath the dancers resembled a giant puzzle mat. Intermittent projections of plant shadows and costuming that appeared to sprout leaves evoked the central storyline. Aceto's choreographic adaptation of yoga and Pilates postures was unmistakable, but in this setting the poses seemed other worldly.

More pictures:

All images courtesy the artist; photographed by Ray Llanos.

Review: laberintos

2009-11-20T06:06:00.027-05:00

William Cordova, this one's 4U (p'a nosotros), 2007-8. Plywood, 2 x 4s, drywall, TV monitor, speakers, dimensions variable. Photo: N. Caruth.

In today's issue of ...might be good I review William Cordova's show, laberintos, at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.:

Cordova’s latest exhibition takes me back to the early days of Kanye West—not the egotistical, cheeky personality who steals the spotlight from little girls, but the gentle genius who recorded The College Dropout. West was highly regarded for his talented sampling and mixing, through which he bridged earlier generations of sound and cultural history with today’s music. Cordova’s first solo show at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. calls attention to his best West-like tendencies. Even so, with laberintos Cordova only sporadically finds his way out of a maze of mediocrity.

Continue reading here.

Looks Good: Honey Beer Bread

2009-11-19T09:43:00.007-05:00

Courtesy Gimme Some Oven.

Ingredients (recipe adapted from Ezra Pound Cake)
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. honey or agave nectar
1 bottle (12 ounces) beer
4 Tbsp. (half stick) butter, melted (double this if you like)

Go to Gimme Some Oven for instructions.

Looks Good: Eccles Cakes

2009-11-15T19:54:00.010-05:00

Courtesy Just Cook It.

Ingredients
Half a block of ready-made puff pastry
250g currants (convert grams here)
60g unsalted butter
120g golden caster sugar
Nutmeg
Allspice
One egg white
Extra caster sugar for dusting

Go to Just Cook It for instructions.