Food for thought?

Once I was asked to write an article about the Icelandic cuisine in an Irish literary magazine. I answered that I had hardly any idea about the Icelandic cuisine, but I could write a thing or two about cannibalism. And so I did and since the Irish probably assume that the Icelanders are cannibals. This article comes to mind when I look at the sensuous works of Thorri Hringsson, because according to my opinion the most decorative and appetizing feasts are the ones that are prepared from human ingredients and therefore always strange feeling about a decorative table.

However feasible the feast is, it's underlying human current makes it a bit disgusting and evokes a feeling of queasiness and overabundance (too much flesh in one body) like the glittering multicolour food, that seems to be bursting out of the paintings of Hringsson. As well as causing physical reactions these paintings seem to go beyond the physical world and become a symbol of food, an image that doesn't have a specific relations to anything and is nothing but it's own image, a flat surface, a food without thought. This feeling is supported with shadows that eerily slope towards the viewer and with a certainty that the paintings are composed from some other viewpoint, from the other side (almost like a mirror) and it is from there, that it is watching the spectator with all its colourful fly-eyes, arranged in a pattern like petites-fours, ready to inundate him in all its abundance. Because the affluence does not disappear although it transforms, for a second, into an image. It is still there in these plump, sugar-coated petites-fours, this shivering strawberry-jelly and the sad suckling pig with the lemon in its snout and this abundance makes you want to push our fingernails into the canvas, scrape the paint of or even tear a bit out to taste.

These contradictions make the works of Hringsson interesting and make them uncomfortably memorable and aggressive. Hringsson takes clichés of art and appetite and gastronomy and turns them upside-down in these unappetizing appetizers. The prototypes are cookery books, manipulated images that are already a copy of the food itself, the impossible materiality beyond the reality of the image. This double image of the painting rises itself to a new form, the exact replica fills the prototype and bursts out of it, shatters its frame with its innocent imitation. It's unthinkable that this recipe has survived this journey unharmed, What is the real substance of the strawberry-jelly? Aspic? Strawberry juice? Nail polish? Or the cold noodles? (I do not dare to utter it.) The image supplants the matter and clearly the colour of the food is mixed with oil and the dark blue, pink, emerald and yellow petits-fours have never been edible. By that the disguise is admired, this is the independent world of images.

It is often stated that we live in the world of images, copies and imitations. The modern man is an alienated thing, possibly related to its computer. Fast food has replaced the meal and microwaved snack replaced the appetite. The taste of modern man is spoiled and he can not appreciate the tradition. In a society where the superficial is more valued than the natural and the whole. The paintings of Hringsson take us back to the time when cooking was art and food was valued, was central and not junk. The meal belonged to the family and eating together was-and is- a ritual or a ceremony that brought people together and evoked a sense of solidarity, to give and to share. As such, the meal has a Biblical connotations and bears the notion of human society and unity. At the same time it conceals a hidden meaning of betrayal and breaking of confidence. The unity of Christianity is contaminated with blood and gold and the family unit shattered with power struggle and tension.

This treason taints the paintings with their imitation and superficiality. The surface glitters too much because it belongs another time and you have to look at it through the lens of nostalgia. Because one of the contradictions is that these images belong to the bygone world of the cold war. Of the time when bug-eyed monsters invaded the cinemas; the time of Pleasentville. By that these images do not belong to our imagery, they are not a part of our reality but exist only as images of that time and as such, our own images, since we can only gain knowledge of the world through images.

For the image-seeking modern man the past is recognised through the kitsch that materialises in the form of a statue among summer-plates, where stands a porcelain woman dressed in red with a red hood, complementing the buxom fruits, a bit sad, like Gulliver in the land of giants or a baffled Eve in this reproduced Eden. She also belongs to another age than the painting/copy and carries within herself a repeated or extended nostalgia, her sadness in a sharp contrast with the laughing women that are linked to the food-paintings like a pre-menstrual tension. They are not made of porcelain but that does not make them more natural. Like the recipes they belong to another time, a lost world, the smiling posed faces as strange as the porcelained beauty is unremarkable. Half open, extremely red lips point almost to directly towards the food-paintings and it is appropriate that these unworldly women complement this artificial food; arrange petits-fours in a pattern and place a statue there. They would be smiling all the time as known from advertisements from that time (our time?), the perfect housewife with a chequered apron in the kitchen. Every now and then she pushes a plump, pink piece between these unbelievable red lips and bites with these white (and sharp) teeth.

The red lips and the strong white teeth should implicate a sensuous relationship between mouth and food but that image doesn't work. There is something too much about these faces just as there is something too much about all this food. The white droplets that are leaking down the face of one of them evoke dubious ideas on luxury and sensuality, the open laughing lips, toothpaste-white teeth, bright red tongue. All this melts too easily into the scream. This woman is on the verge of breakdown. But Little Red Riding Hood is not there because she is standing in the middle of the wolf's feast. As a bite among other bites. She is a part ofthe fairy tale world of colourful food and stresses the superficiality of the situation, she is a figure of clay, a kitsch, like the food itself, the smorgasbord that everyone dreads to confront in confirmations and weddings, because it is so inedible.

It has been said that all food preparations are loaded with meaning, a symbolic ritual like writing. Instead of making words into sentences, a raw material is made into a dish. This transformation is then extended to another level where the food is put on a display, a showpiece and even more where it's made into an image; a painting. The focus is not on the food but on its visibility, its form, colour and decoration. The fairy tale-world of Little Red Riding Hood becomes mythological where you can make out the Griffon's feet (or the Sphinx's?) on a yellow and green-chequered tablecloth. The golden cups in the corner remind the viewer of orgies of the past and by that the jellyfied pasta is suddenly in a mythical world. But the composition is over-decorated and other objects cut off so not to interfere with the artistic aspic and we can only guess their role. The same can be said about the ornamented piece, the yellow bowl and the metal instrument that pose around the caned-salmon pie with the mashed potatoes. All this is a part of the imagery of the food, if not only to complement it with colour. But what are they? Is the Griffon hollow? Is the metal tube a cake-decorator or is it something much more sinister? (Maybe this is the instrument that was used to sprinkle the woman, on the verge of breakdown, with water?) Because when the food is put on a display it is also its surrounding that become meaningful as can be seen in the black paintings of the piglet and the lobster. They are the most classical part of the smorgasbord and as to emphasise the aura of decadence they are decorated with roses. Somebody has put flowers on the table with these dead animals, a humble red rose with the lobster but a screaming pink one, with the lemon-pig. By that way the imagery of the food is sealed and documented, the food is framed and extended on the throne of the fetish everywhere but with Little Red Riding Hood, because it's her, modest looking, who is in the centre and the food gathers around her and while she is whole the plates are cut off; maybe she's the one who writes that table?

The writing points to the food, the speech and the voice and by that we are back with the mouth, the food and the sensuality. Because it doesn't matter however superficial and disgusting these copious tables are they still have some kind of a strange materiality (opposed to the laughing women that are completely immaterial, a paint on canvas, maybe that is what is frightening the wet one-she's about to discover that her world is only a surface) and that material is marked with lust (appetite?) and disgust. By that the ancient mythological world is appropriate because there is a dubious spirit of Roman orgies that indicate overindulgence and feathers. This spirit of decadence, of abundance, of form and colour is grotesque and points towards the equivocal place of food that is a material, both inside and outside, as defined by the body. The food is a necessity at the same time being an overabundance, there is always too much of it in our bodies. That overabundance is amusingly Biblical because the Last Supper is not only a time of treason but also of cannibalism, being repeated endlessly in the Holy Sacrament-after eating with Jesus we eat Jesus the great sacrifice that supplies us with eternal nourishment.

If the end of the millennium carries within itself an Armageddon and the resurrection of Christ we will be well prepared because our eyes have enjoyed this feast, the Last Supper of all times. And like the Biblical one it can be repeated for another two thousand years.

Re-printed by permission