Are artists especially creative when it comes to cooking? A glance behind the scenes of art-world kitchens. With the focus this time on festive meals of a different kind – with no turkey at all.
Anyone who is not a German traditionalist and does not serve boiled sausages and potato salad for dinner on Christmas Eve will probably braise a piece of meat or a vegetarian or vegan equivalent, possibly dishing it up with red cabbage and dumplings. On New Year’s Eve, the preferred choice tends to be cheese in more or less molten form, and if it’s someone’s birthday, then there’ll be cake on the table. Cooking for a festive occasion rarely really involves creativity – but is that also true of artists? After all, the nature of the profession involves breaking with convention. So, let’s give our imagination free reign and ask: What would be dished up if we were to drop by for a festive meal at the home of … Marina Abramović, Sophie Calle or Gilbert & George? What would Tracey Emin prepare for us, and what menu would Carsten Höller probably serve?
So please take your seats, the table is set, and the meal prepared!
Marina Abramović
We start out on our festive-culinary stage race with a strong sense of hunger, because our host made it abundantly clear in her invitation that we had to fast for five days in the run-up to the dinner. When we arrive in her loft in Manhattan, there’s a heap of uncooked rice and lentils on the long table in the dining room. We are now meant to carefully separate these ingredients and count them before we get anything to eat. On several occasions we grow impatient and are about to give up, but yet again who wants to make a fool of themselves in the presence of the High Priestess of Performance Art? Once we’ve at long last got through the counting, Abramović blindfolds us all and then places a bowl of boiled white rice before each of us. After our long abstinence from food, the first bite tastes incredibly delicious, we fall into a kind of trance, and immediately forget the ordeal we’ve been through. For dessert, there’s the only dish that even Abramović’s iron will cannot resist: white chocolate. While we let the sweet pieces melt on our tongues, the artist gazes deeply into our eyes – so long that we’re moved to tears. Or maybe they’re the product of the raw onion served as the side order?
Tracey Emin
On we travel, to the coast of England East of London, to Margate, hometown of Tracey Emin. Hardly have we shed our coats than she leads us to her bedroom. Today we will of course be eating our meal in bed. While we try and find a comfy way to sit between all the crumpled sheets and used paper hankies, our host wanders in with a tray bearing caviar and oysters. This triggers a festive mood, even if the empty vodka bottles on the bedroom carpet somewhat undermine the sense of idyll. A relic of bygone days, the artist assures us, as she no longer drinks or smokes. She demonstratively (and much to our disappointment) serves not champagne to go with the crustaceans, but Japanese green tea. Acceptable, we think, at any rate better than half a liter of strawberry-flavored Nesquik, her previous beverage of choice after a long night’s partying. Emin disappears briefly, and emerges again with the main course, homemade chicken soup, flavored with herbs from the vegetable patch in her villa in the south of France. We have soon drunk all the soup, sink back into the pillows and our tummies pleasantly full, immediately fall into a soft and blissful sleep.
Gilbert & George
It’s a little than two hours’ drive up to London and from there to Fournier Street, where Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore await us. After a brief tour of their apartment, it soon becomes clear to us that the duo has no intention of impressing us with their culinary prowess: There’s no kitchen in the place. It’s a well-known fact that they both hate the smell of warm meals, but surely, they could at least have prepared a platter of cold-cuts? Our stomachs rumble automatically, and when the two gents offer us a gin-&-tonic we sense that the going is going to get tough. There’s no way we’re going to get blasted as elegantly as Gilbert & George, so better to turn the offer down. While we’re wondering whether not to head for the toilet in order to furtively extricate the cream crackers out of our jacket pockets, George stands up and announces that it is high time to head off and take our seats punctually at 8 p.m. at their permanent table in “Mangal 1”. Relieved, we dutifully obey and make for the Turkish restaurant where the duo will order a starter and half a main course each, the way they do every evening. Even if at first sight the routine doesn’t seem overly festive, the two of them evidently really celebrate the occasion.
Sophie Calle
Across the English Channel to Malakoff, a suburb of Paris. Clad completely in black, wearing dark sunglasses and with a champagne flute in her hand, Sophie Calle opens the door to welcome us into her studio-loft. Jazz music is playing in the background, and the dining table is festively decked out. We give her the gift we have brought, a voucher for an hour with a famous fortune teller, and duly take our places. This time, we’re not alone as Calle has also invited her friends and family. Dominique, Florence, Rafael, Monique – they’re all hanging from the walls in the form of stuffed animals and prove to be poor conversationalists. When Calle starts serving dinner, we see red. Not because we find the food repulsive, but because she has created a completely monochrome meal: There are filleted tomatoes, beef tartar, pomegranate seeds, grilled red capsicums, and several bottles of red wine. Ketchup would have fitted the scheme, but we don’t dare ask whether she has some hidden away somewhere. As the evening draws to a close, Calle repairs to a chaise-longue and asks us to read her a good-night story before we leave. While hunting for the right book on one of the bookshelves, we notice a small lens unobtrusively placed behind the volumes. We definitely don’t mention it; after all, we’re no spoilsports. Why should we have anything against this becoming an unforgettable evening?
Carsten Höller
The first thing we notice when stepping into his apartment in Stockholm is the loud sound of birds twittering coming from one of the rooms. Carsten Höller sees our questioning looks and mentions that a couple of dozen songbirds which he keeps as pets live there. We drift past his spotlessly clean stainless-steel kitchen (has he ever cooked in it?) and suddenly find ourselves zipping down a spiraling tunnel-slide, landing slightly confused two stories down in a spacious living room fitted out in a Minimalist Nordic vein. Somewhat surprised we see before us a dining table on which a mass of take-away boxes is stacked. He simply didn’t have time to cook today, the artist apologizes, but luckily his favorite restaurant, “The Brutalists”, has delivered a complete festive meal. Each box contains a single ingredient, caringly prepared: here a grey giant prawn, there a Mexican ant. In fact, Höller even dispatched one of his pets to the restaurant kitchen on our behalf, and now it’s returned as song-bird confit. He assures us that one of his pet birds is only ever served on special occasions. It is the dessert that crowns the evening, however, and Höller himself prepared it: caramelized toadstool, served on a bed of moss. Sadly, we can’t for all the world remember what happened next.
