Edible Art

Lefteris Pitarakis of the Associates Press showed photographs of art pieces seen at an edible art exhibition entitled 'Art you can Eat ... Cake Britain' in a central London gallery, Friday Aug. 27, 2010. (Fig.1) The exhibition, according to the organizers is the world's first ever entirely edible art exhibition and teamed the UK's most creative bakers with artists who want to create art using sugar, cake and other sweet stuff. All exhibits will be devoured over the three days by visitors to the exhibition.

Artistic expression could be achieved with many edible objects.  The field of edible art could includes a wide range and under various names; culinary art, plating, cutlery, art of garnishing, edible creation, food styling, cookie design, cake decoration, bakery, and so on.  The food artist, Prudence Staite, used varieties of apples to make scenes from the film, Snow White. (Fig. 2)  Way of food presentation is as much important as preparation.  It would unquestionably affect appetite and artistic feeling about it.  Artistic view points for food presentation may vary among different cultures.  For example, among three Asian countries, China, Korea, and Japan, to my observations, Chinese dishes are generally presented in grandeur plates, trying to include all the important basic materials [bird, meat, fish, and vegetable], Korean dishes are presented with many small side dishes of various materials in five different colors in balance [the 5-phase colors - green, red, yellow, white, black], while Japanese dishes are in relatively petit, but more simple artistic arrangements.  I may somehow be prejudiced to prefer most Japanese food presentations which are in simplistic art forms. (Fig. 3 and 4)

Edible art is a 3-D visual art, but it is different and special because it does communicate the notion of edibility to viewers. In that sense, I would think that edible art should be inclusive of the ambiance around the work presented and the taste. Our appetite really depends on the surrounding atmosphere.  Edible art becomes popular to  children as well as grown-ups because it is fun to learn and to perform.  There are many schools to teach edible art and stores to sell edible art products and services.

My Favorite Artist - Paul Klee

Last April at my first drawing class, one of the classmates showed me some of Paul Klee’s work. I Immediately find myself attracted to his work. I do not have exact wordings why I like Klee.  Perhaps it could be that his works are in enchanting colors and forms, filled with childlikeness, friendliness, and some kind of allusions to dreams.

Paul Klee was born in Switzerland in 1879 and spent most of his adult life in Germany until he was expelled by the Nazis in 1933. He grew up in a musical family and was himself a violinist. But later he began to study art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich 1900 with the popular symbolist and society painter Franz von Stuck. In 1920 Klee was invited to teach at the Bauhaus school after World War I, where Kandinsky was also a faculty member. Klee was also a member of the Die Blau Vier, a group contributed much to the development of abstract art. In 1931 he began teaching at Dusseldorf Academy, but he was dismissed by the Nazis. In 1933, Klee went to Switzerland. There he came down with the crippling collagen disease scleroderma, which forced him to develop a simpler style and eventually killed him in 1940.

Klee created about 9000 works of art. He was an introverted artist and his work is difficult to clarify, except that it is hardly ever wholly abstract, but equally, never truly realistic. He had a natural sensitivity to music, the least material of the arts, and it runs through all his work, clarifying his spellbinding color and dematerializing his images. Primitive art, surrealism, cubism, and children's art all seem blended into his small-scale, delicate paintings, watercolors, and drawings. Klee's early works are mostly etchings and pen-and-ink drawings. These combine satirical, grotesque, and surreal elements and reveal the influence of Francisco de Goya and James Ensor. Klee often incorporated letters and numerals into his paintings. These, part of Klee's complex language of symbols and signs, are drawn from the unconscious and used to obtain a poetic amalgam of abstraction and reality. The late works, characterized by heavy black lines, are often reflections on death and war, and his life's concerns as a creator.

Klee influenced the work of other noted artists of the early 20^th century. Klee married the art forms of music and visual art. The psychedelic nature of Klee’s pieces was revived musically. The National Gallery released the album Performing Musical Interpretations of the Paintings of Paul Klee in 1968.

[References]

1.     Will Grohmann, “Paul Klee,” Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publisher, New York (1985) ISBN 081091208-2.

2.     Susanna Partsch, “Paul Klee 1879-1940,” Taschen Basic Art, Koeln (1993) ISBN 3822802999.

3.     Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://www.wikipedia.org/

A Visit to the Exhibition, "Back to the Nest"



  Memorial of Turmoil by Mieszczanska                                           Corporeal Conundrum by Tufano

  Digital Print                                                                                    Oil On Canvas



An alumni art exhibition by Izabela Mieszczanska  and Gabrielle Tufano is being held at the Krasa Building of the Benedictine  University in Lisle, from September 12 through October 12, 2010.  I had a chance to visit the exhibition and attend the opening reception on Sunday September 12.

Izabela Mieszczanska presented a series of thirteen digital print photographs.   After WWII, the survived post traumatic Varshavians returned to a city and began to rebuild their homes from the ashes, leaving some ruins untouched to remind them of what had happened during WWII and the Warsaw Uprising, in spite of the communist government and the Stalinism smothered their attempt to memorialize.  Today, in post communism, it is difficult to find an avenue or plaza not dedicated to the heroes of WWII.  The monuments are integrated in modern architectures. The memory of turmoil always remains with Varshavians, whether they lived through it or heard about it on a stroll through the Old Town with their grandparents. The series of photographs were taken during the artist’s visit home in the years 2007-2009.

Gabrielle Tufano presented nine drawings of pen on paper, pen and acrylic on paper, and oil on paper. Tufano wishes to communicate that the subjects in her still-lives are contrived and theatrical. The dramatic light turns each pice into a performance that explores the construction of identity. As subjects, we create ourselves through the repeated putting on, removing and manipulation of the trappings that communicate selfhood to the world we live in. These effects include everything from clothing and accessories to our very own skin. We are what we present. The effort to uncover the essence of self is often endeavored by attempt to shed those effects. Dissection is perhaps the most extreme expression of this obsession, where one tries to see beyond even the skin, to the very truths of the body itself. 

The exhibitions threw me down to a melancholily philosophical state of mind. At the end, however, I very much enjoyed the wine and cheese at the reception.  Two glasses of merlot and several slices of Swiss cheese gave me a peace and easiness to my mind.  The exhibitions are good art works, relatively easy to comprehend, and worthy of visit.