Food as social ritual, personal liberation and spiritual alchemy: from Alison Knowles and Adrian Piper to Agnes Denes and Andy Warhol
In More Than the Eyes, writer Ellen Mara De Wachter considers the ways in which food, when used as a material in contemporary art, confronts, subverts and ultimately brings us to our senses. Focusing on artists working between 1960 and 2000, the book shows how we have become restricted by a hierarchy that values sight and reason above other senses, and how encounters with food in art can help us break this bind. By putting food at the center of the highly visual art world, the artists in this book quicken a range of sensations beyond visual perception, helping us access and liberate aspects of our experience that have been ignored or suppressed. Topics include Carolee Schneemann’s performance pieces using meat; the way in which Hannah Wilke rejects the imperative for women to be “sweet”; Zoe Leonard’s exploration of decomposition as process; Adrian Piper’s conceptual work incorporating hamburgers; the SoHo artists’ restaurant FOOD; Agnes Denes’ wheat field near Wall Street; and how other artists, such as Sarah Lucas and Andy Warhol, introduce the iconography, foods and desires of the working class into the rarefied environment of the gallery and museum. London-based writer Ellen Mara De Wachter is the author of Co-Art: Artists on Creative Collaboration and the coauthor of Great Women Artists (both published by Phaidon). Her writing has featured in publications including Frieze, Art Quarterly, Art Monthly, the World of Interiors and the White Review.
Featured image is reproduced from 'More Than the Eyes.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Print magazine
Steve Heller
[A] savory volume.
The Slowdown
Spencer Bailey
In her beautiful, highly stimulating new book, De Wachter explores artistic food interventions in works by artists such as Agnes Denes, Sarah Lucas, Carolee Schneemann, and Andy Warhol, delving into their oeuvres through the angle of food. Ultimately, De Wachter makes the case that, in a world where sight is prioritized above our other senses, it’s innately expansive, enlivening, and mind-expanding to work with mediums that can also be smelled, tasted, and touched.
ArtReview
Chris Fite-Wassilak
Ellen Mara De Wachter’s book 'More Than the Eyes: Art, Food and the Senses,' released last December, positions food’s use in art as part of a shift away from the primacy of sight.
World of Interiors
Annabel Bai Jackson
[De Wachter’s] style is impeccably clean and consummate – a text written more with the crispness of a palette cleanser than the sensory messiness of a feast.
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Thursday, December 12, from 6:30–8:30 PM, please join us to celebrate the publication of More Than the Eyes: Art, Food and the Senses by Ellen Mara De Wachter, co-published by Atelier Éditions and D.A.P, at Donlon Books in Hackney, London. continue to blog
“Food is a radical tool. If you want to bring up difficult issues, involve food. If you want to know what’s going on in a culture, look at what is happening with food. Food is an arena in which the dialogues between the individual and community play out with intensity.” So begins More Than the Eyes: Art, Food and the Senses, London-based writer Ellen Mara De Wachter’s highly engaging and beautifully designed new study of food as social ritual, personal liberation and spiritual alchemy, as witnessed in contemporary art. “In this period, artists handled and sculpted food, they put it on and in their bodies, they cultivated it and served it and stitched it—all in the name of art. It was a time when working with food was unheard of in many circles, which gave the material a potent experimental charge. These experiments confronted and seduced audiences, producing a range of reactions and behaviors. They nourished the culture of their time, and subsequent generations of artists have fed from them…” Pictured here, a 1995 view of Zoe Leonard’s NYC studio, during which she was working on Strange Fruit, a group of almost 300 fruit skins that Leonard repaired, after peeling, with materials ranging from thread and buttons, to sinew, zippers and more. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 6.75 x 9.25 in. / 240 pgs / 50 color / 10 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $54.95 GBP £32.99 ISBN: 9781954957046 PUBLISHER: Atelier Éditions/D.A.P. AVAILABLE: 1/7/2025 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Atelier Éditions/D.A.P.. By Ellen Mara De Wachter. Edited by Lucy Kingett.
Food as social ritual, personal liberation and spiritual alchemy: from Alison Knowles and Adrian Piper to Agnes Denes and Andy Warhol
In More Than the Eyes, writer Ellen Mara De Wachter considers the ways in which food, when used as a material in contemporary art, confronts, subverts and ultimately brings us to our senses. Focusing on artists working between 1960 and 2000, the book shows how we have become restricted by a hierarchy that values sight and reason above other senses, and how encounters with food in art can help us break this bind. By putting food at the center of the highly visual art world, the artists in this book quicken a range of sensations beyond visual perception, helping us access and liberate aspects of our experience that have been ignored or suppressed. Topics include Carolee Schneemann’s performance pieces using meat; the way in which Hannah Wilke rejects the imperative for women to be “sweet”; Zoe Leonard’s exploration of decomposition as process; Adrian Piper’s conceptual work incorporating hamburgers; the SoHo artists’ restaurant FOOD; Agnes Denes’ wheat field near Wall Street; and how other artists, such as Sarah Lucas and Andy Warhol, introduce the iconography, foods and desires of the working class into the rarefied environment of the gallery and museum.
London-based writer Ellen Mara De Wachter is the author of Co-Art: Artists on Creative Collaboration and the coauthor of Great Women Artists (both published by Phaidon). Her writing has featured in publications including Frieze, Art Quarterly, Art Monthly, the World of Interiors and the White Review.
