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Art and Eating, or Eat ArtBy Thorsten SadowskyDirector of Aarhus KunstbygningWith one of his current projects, the Danish-Chilean artist Marco Evaristti has again succeeded in achieving international media attention. After subjecting himself to liposuction in 2006, he used the fat obtained by this procedure to make meatballs. Both the liposuction as well as the preparation of the meal and Evaristti's subsequent consumption of his own body fat was documented in a video, with musical accompaniment provided by the well-known Danish Fluxus artist Henning Christiansen. The meal, not so very tasty according to conventional standards, was then canned as Polpette al grasso di Marco and outfitted with labels where all product information is precisely declared. All possible doubts about the genuineness of the product are dispensed with by the obligatory bar code, the "best before" date, the listing of ingredients, as well as detailed serving suggestions and cooking instructions. The interested consumer not only learns the amount of the artists' fat contained in the canned product ("No less than 10 percent grasso di Marco"), but also that the producer is not a supplier to the Danish crown something usually considered a seal of quality and proof of better taste. To certify the contents, the artist poses for the label in a cover-boy style, displaying his fresh operation scar. Other pictures on the label show the artist preparing the meatballs, a detailed enlargement of the operation scar, as well as the artist eating the meal. Evaristti, who is considered the "enfant terrible" and "bad boy" of the Danish art scene due to his shockingly hyper-realistic installations and frequent use of bodily fluids like blood and sperm, here seems to want to finally explore the limits of good taste, for the notion of eating human fat alone represents the violation of a taboo or an absolute disruption of a worldview that is otherwise taken for granted. Eating human beings, either in the ritual form of endocannibalism / exocannibalism or cannibalism in situations of dire need, always triggers shock, disgust, and fear, while at the same this monstrosity evokes a certain fascination for the absolutely forbidden. Although very few of us have ever met a cannibal in "real life," the devouring of fellow humans has been an omnipresent theme in legends, geographic treatises, and travelogues since ancient times, just as in literature, theater, film, and the fine arts. Classical Hollywood cinema alone has produced around 200 films on the subject, showing a special preference for necrophiliac serial murders. The American serial murderer Ed Gein became an icon of popular culture and films like Tope Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and not least Jonathan Demme's film Silence of the Lambs, the winner of five Oscars, were quite successful at the box office. The lines dividing marketing and ethics seem increasingly to dissolve in post-modernity, and things once considered trash have in the meantime become mainstream. The existential feelings of horror and a fear of death are in the Hollywood dramaturgy with its obligatory "moral ending" reduced to the level of a pleasure of aesthetic kitsch, where anything goes as long as it ends with the punishment of the bad guy.In light of the disappearance of taboos and the kitschification of evil and cannibalism by the culture industry, the feelings of disgust that Marco Evaristti's Polpette al grasso di Marco can evoke can particularly be explained by the fact that it plays with the taboo of cannibalism in a Dadaistic manner. Here it is important that Evaristti wants his auto-cannibalistic happening to be understood as critical-ironic commentary on Western consumer society and the culture of eating, while at the same time placing it in the context of a gluttonous art world with its constant demand for something new; with this work, the art market is offered the ultimate possibility to directly incorporate an art work: "Eat me, I am art, and the art devouring public will finally be satisfied." By canning what was once part of his body as consumable and the declaration of unique traces of his own body as commodity, aesthetic art consumption is transformed into an anthropophagic devouring of art in the sense of devouring, annihilating, destroying. In so doing, cannibalism, which in Western thought is traditionally attributed to the primitive and other, is revealed as a cultural cannibalism in our own culture and in ourselves.In terms of their iconography, Evaristti's cans recall Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Jasper John's beer cans in Painted Bronze (1960). But in Evaristti's case, the very title makes clear that the industrially manufactured exterior corresponds to the handmade "contents." Marco Evaristti shares this emphasis on art's commodity character with the simultaneous inclusion of the artistic body and the radical gesture of provocation with the Italian neo-avantgarde artist Piero Manzoni. The provocation of Manzoni's Merda d'artista (1961) is unbroken still today artist's shit, 30 grams, offered for purchase in handy cans. Provocatively radical is not the banal reality of feces elevated to the status of art, but the artistic-physical process of transformation that makes the biological body of the artist into the producer of artworks that are located at the intersection of the body and aesthetics, banality and concept. In May 1961, 90 cans of Merda d'artista appeared, all with identical labels: in English, French, Italian, and German, the labels indicate the content, net weight, method of preservation, and month of manufacture. Its price is not fixed, but varies according to the current gold price: they are worth their equivalent in gold. No longer is Dadaist provocation or scaring the bourgeoisie in the style of the wild young men of futurism and surrealism at the foreground, but the simple realization that feces can be sold as art, that is, as a luxury good, if only the corresponding context and the required aesthetic context is provided. It is really about the power of the art system that readily incorporates everything and even can instantly transform shit into art. The hunger of the art market is also exhibited in the case of Evaristti's cans of Polpette al grasso di Marco, where the fat content is supposed to be less than that of standard supermarket products: two of these cans, according to newspaper reports, have already been purchase by collectors for $23,200.Evaristti goes a step further by treating the evoked linkage between physical, social, and aesthetic consumption in various exhibitions. At both the group exhibition ZERSTÖRTE WELTEN und die Idee der Rekonstruktion at the Danish art space Århus Kunstbygning (2006) as well as in his solo exhibition at Galeria Animal in Santiago de Chile (2007), he stages a dinner party with his meatball cans. In Denmark, he sent dinner invitations to outstanding figures of the Danish art world as hardly could otherwise have been expected, he received only cancellations. Notably, the table was set for 13: undoubtedly an overly conspicuous allusion to the Last Supper. All the same, Evaristti is referring less to the topos of Christological self-stylization, which stretches from Albrecht Dürer to Paul Gauguin and beyond, but seems to want to allude to the notion of transubstantiation itself, that is, bread and wine turning into the body and blood of Christ at the highpoint of the Catholic mass, and its subsequent ritual consumption by the congregation. By claiming his body as a work of art, Evaristti declares himself a readymade in Marcel Duchamp's sense. His wondrous aesthetic transubstantiation, where he transforms himself as it were into edible art, must at the same time be seen as a continuation and radicalization of Piero Manzoni's performance CONSUMAZIONE DELLARTE DINAMICA DEL PUBBLICO DIVORARE LARTE. In this action on June 21, 1960, before an audience that was otherwise not specified the artist devoured 150 eggs over a period of 70 minutes, eggs that the artist has previously cooked and signed with a black thumbprint. While Manzoni in the role of the avant-garde art priest distributes the eggs that have been transformed by his hand into short-lived art for iconoclastic devouring, Evaristti offers himself entirely to the audience for devour; a closer fusion of art and life is hardly imaginable. Thorsten SadowskySee Michaela Krützen, »'Im Having an Old friend for Dinner': Ein Menschenfresser im Klassischen Hollywoodkino«, in: Walter Pape / Daniel Fulda (eds.), Das Andere Essen: Kannibalismus als Motiv und Metapher in der Literatur. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag 2001, pp. 483531. Cf. Martin Engler, Piero Manzoni. Metonymien des Körpers. Diss. Freiburg 2000, pp. 111 ff.
Art and Eating, or Eat Art
By Thorsten Sadowsky
Director of Aarhus Kunstbygning
With one of his current projects, the Danish-Chilean artist Marco Evaristti has again succeeded in achieving international media attention. After subjecting himself to liposuction in 2006, he used the fat obtained by this procedure to make meatballs. Both the liposuction as well as the preparation of the meal and Evaristti's subsequent consumption of his own body fat was documented in a video, with musical accompaniment provided by the well-known Danish Fluxus artist Henning Christiansen. The meal, not so very tasty according to conventional standards, was then canned as Polpette al grasso di Marco and outfitted with labels where all product information is precisely declared. All possible doubts about the genuineness of the product are dispensed with by the obligatory bar code, the "best before" date, the listing of ingredients, as well as detailed serving suggestions and cooking instructions. The interested consumer not only learns the amount of the artists' fat contained in the canned product ("No less than 10 percent grasso di Marco"), but also that the producer is not a supplier to the Danish crown something usually considered a seal of quality and proof of better taste. To certify the contents, the artist poses for the label in a cover-boy style, displaying his fresh operation scar. Other pictures on the label show the artist preparing the meatballs, a detailed enlargement of the operation scar, as well as the artist eating the meal.
Evaristti, who is considered the "enfant terrible" and "bad boy" of the Danish art scene due to his shockingly hyper-realistic installations and frequent use of bodily fluids like blood and sperm, here seems to want to finally explore the limits of good taste, for the notion of eating human fat alone represents the violation of a taboo or an absolute disruption of a worldview that is otherwise taken for granted. Eating human beings, either in the ritual form of endocannibalism / exocannibalism or cannibalism in situations of dire need, always triggers shock, disgust, and fear, while at the same this monstrosity evokes a certain fascination for the absolutely forbidden. Although very few of us have ever met a cannibal in "real life," the devouring of fellow humans has been an omnipresent theme in legends, geographic treatises, and travelogues since ancient times, just as in literature, theater, film, and the fine arts.
Classical Hollywood cinema alone has produced around 200 films on the subject, showing a special preference for necrophiliac serial murders. The American serial murderer Ed Gein became an icon of popular culture and films like Tope Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and not least Jonathan Demme's film Silence of the Lambs, the winner of five Oscars, were quite successful at the box office. The lines dividing marketing and ethics seem increasingly to dissolve in post-modernity, and things once considered trash have in the meantime become mainstream. The existential feelings of horror and a fear of death are in the Hollywood dramaturgy with its obligatory "moral ending" reduced to the level of a pleasure of aesthetic kitsch, where anything goes as long as it ends with the punishment of the bad guy.
In light of the disappearance of taboos and the kitschification of evil and cannibalism by the culture industry, the feelings of disgust that Marco Evaristti's Polpette al grasso di Marco can evoke can particularly be explained by the fact that it plays with the taboo of cannibalism in a Dadaistic manner. Here it is important that Evaristti wants his auto-cannibalistic happening to be understood as critical-ironic commentary on Western consumer society and the culture of eating, while at the same time placing it in the context of a gluttonous art world with its constant demand for something new; with this work, the art market is offered the ultimate possibility to directly incorporate an art work: "Eat me, I am art, and the art devouring public will finally be satisfied." By canning what was once part of his body as consumable and the declaration of unique traces of his own body as commodity, aesthetic art consumption is transformed into an anthropophagic devouring of art in the sense of devouring, annihilating, destroying. In so doing, cannibalism, which in Western thought is traditionally attributed to the primitive and other, is revealed as a cultural cannibalism in our own culture and in ourselves.
In terms of their iconography, Evaristti's cans recall Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Jasper John's beer cans in Painted Bronze (1960). But in Evaristti's case, the very title makes clear that the industrially manufactured exterior corresponds to the handmade "contents." Marco Evaristti shares this emphasis on art's commodity character with the simultaneous inclusion of the artistic body and the radical gesture of provocation with the Italian neo-avantgarde artist Piero Manzoni. The provocation of Manzoni's Merda d'artista (1961) is unbroken still today artist's shit, 30 grams, offered for purchase in handy cans. Provocatively radical is not the banal reality of feces elevated to the status of art, but the artistic-physical process of transformation that makes the biological body of the artist into the producer of artworks that are located at the intersection of the body and aesthetics, banality and concept. In May 1961, 90 cans of Merda d'artista appeared, all with identical labels: in English, French, Italian, and German, the labels indicate the content, net weight, method of preservation, and month of manufacture.
Its price is not fixed, but varies according to the current gold price: they are worth their equivalent in gold. No longer is Dadaist provocation or scaring the bourgeoisie in the style of the wild young men of futurism and surrealism at the foreground, but the simple realization that feces can be sold as art, that is, as a luxury good, if only the corresponding context and the required aesthetic context is provided. It is really about the power of the art system that readily incorporates everything and even can instantly transform shit into art. The hunger of the art market is also exhibited in the case of Evaristti's cans of Polpette al grasso di Marco, where the fat content is supposed to be less than that of standard supermarket products: two of these cans, according to newspaper reports, have already been purchase by collectors for $23,200.
Evaristti goes a step further by treating the evoked linkage between physical, social, and aesthetic consumption in various exhibitions. At both the group exhibition ZERSTÖRTE WELTEN und die Idee der Rekonstruktion at the Danish art space Århus Kunstbygning (2006) as well as in his solo exhibition at Galeria Animal in Santiago de Chile (2007), he stages a dinner party with his meatball cans. In Denmark, he sent dinner invitations to outstanding figures of the Danish art world as hardly could otherwise have been expected, he received only cancellations. Notably, the table was set for 13: undoubtedly an overly conspicuous allusion to the Last Supper. All the same, Evaristti is referring less to the topos of Christological self-stylization, which stretches from Albrecht Dürer to Paul Gauguin and beyond, but seems to want to allude to the notion of transubstantiation itself, that is, bread and wine turning into the body and blood of Christ at the highpoint of the Catholic mass, and its subsequent ritual consumption by the congregation.
By claiming his body as a work of art, Evaristti declares himself a readymade in Marcel Duchamp's sense.
His wondrous aesthetic transubstantiation, where he transforms himself as it were into edible art, must at the same time be seen as a continuation and radicalization of Piero Manzoni's performance CONSUMAZIONE DELLARTE DINAMICA DEL PUBBLICO DIVORARE LARTE. In this action on June 21, 1960, before an audience that was otherwise not specified the artist devoured 150 eggs over a period of 70 minutes, eggs that the artist has previously cooked and signed with a black thumbprint. While Manzoni in the role of the avant-garde art priest distributes the eggs that have been transformed by his hand into short-lived art for iconoclastic devouring, Evaristti offers himself entirely to the audience for devour; a closer fusion of art and life is hardly imaginable.
Thorsten Sadowsky
See Michaela Krützen, »'Im Having an Old friend for Dinner': Ein Menschenfresser im Klassischen Hollywoodkino«, in: Walter Pape / Daniel Fulda (eds.), Das Andere Essen: Kannibalismus als Motiv und Metapher in der Literatur. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag 2001, pp. 483531.
Cf. Martin Engler, Piero Manzoni. Metonymien des Körpers. Diss. Freiburg 2000, pp. 111 ff.
© Copy Right Evaristti 2009
