|
HOME PAGE |
LUXURY NOW |
WINDOW SHOPPING |
BRAND GALLERY |
CITY GUIDE |
LUXURY TRAVELER |
ARTS PORTFOLIO |
Jennifer Rubell deconstructs the traditional gala dinner by fusing food with performance art for astonishing effect. The conceptual artist/caterer explains her appetite for referencing art in food.
When auctioneer Simon de Pury wanted to celebrate his marriage to Michaela Neumeister at London’s Saatchi Gallery in June, there was no question as to who he would call upon to cater for his 600 guests. Jennifer Rubell is the go-to artist/caterer/conceptualist who dreams up spectacular “food projects” for the collecting classes. For the de Pury commission, she created a scene that saw diners feast on unmade beds that recalled the famous Tracey Emin artwork, break champagne flutes in a spectacle that referenced the glass casing of Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde, and cut down sausages that hung from the ceiling in one of a series of rooms of “food installations”. At the beginning of the event, partygoers were able to watch de Pury and Neumeister getting ready in separate glass cubicles before they shattered the glass doors to meet each other. It was an astonishing fusion of food and performance art that is the signature of Jennifer Rubell.
A graduate of both Harvard University and the Culinary Insitute of America, Jennifer Rubell is the daughter of the of the Miami-based art collectors Don and Mera Rubell, all of which contributes to her unique profession. From her base in New York, she has designed parties for the Brooklyn Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, and the annual breakfast at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, among other prestigious institutions.
Rubell is particularly interested in the history of the intuitions she works with, engaging with both its collection and its physical space. Her response ranges from the romantic (three mature apple trees, cut down and laid on their sides, their apples on the ground beneath them) to the jaw-dropping (one ton of ribs with honey dripping on them from the ceiling) and the simple (2,000 hard-boiled eggs with a pile of latex gloves nearby to pick them up) to the technically complicated (cheese heads, suspended from the ceiling and melted by hair dryers, which dripped on to a pile of crackers). “You have an intense feeling standing in front of my work,” Rubell admits of the reaction to some of her most wild projects. “People who have not been to one of my projects will be shocked. But there’ll be at least one person there who knows to cut down a sausage!”
Jennifer Rubell’s definition of luxury?
Bringing the conceptual to the everyday.
If luxury were a person, who would it be?
Marcel Duchamp.
If luxury were place, where would it be?
A museum.
If luxury were a moment, when would it be?
Now.
If luxury were object, what would it be?
A brain.
You describe your work as that of food projects – what does that mean?
I consider my work to be in a continuum of performance art and installations. I’m not sure exactly what the best term would be. Food is something that very central to what I’m doing as a medium. But I situate my work inside the history of visual art and I don’t situate myself at all inside of gastronomic history. I do know how to cook quite well but the scale of projects that I do means I don’t actually do the production. Though I intensely oversee all parts of it in extreme detail and I’m extremely familiar with the materiality of food.
Do you consider yourself to be an artist?
Yes.
What inspired you to deconstruct the traditional meal?
It’s very much about looking at art institutions and places of traditional art viewing and considering the activities there that are theoretically outside of art. I see those spaces as an opportunity. Inside a museum, there are curated shows but there is also the galas, the cocktail parties, the nights to bring in young members, and other events that are not traditionally considered art activities. Those are very interesting to me because they’re occupying the same physical space as art does but not the same spiritual or historical space. A traditional place where women reside is in the support structure of museums, so it’s interesting from that perspective as well.
Your clients include art institutions, galleries, museums and collectors. To what extent do you consult their art collections and make reference to them?
I react to the institution’s history. At the project I did at the Saatchi Gallery, I was basically referencing the two best known pieces that Charles Saatchi owns: Tracey Emin’s My Bed and Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde. The breaking of the champagne flutes was very much my fantasy of the sound of breaking glass inside the Saatchi gallery. The first thing that makes you think of are those Damien Hirst vitrines. It certainly referenced the history of the place and I also engaged with what is currently in the space.
How do diners react?
The effect is hard to describe. You have an intense feeling standing in front of my work. For the first while, people just look at it, photograph it, take it in from all angles. Then someone starts to engage with it and everyone follows. At the beginning, people might not have known but by now people know that everything I do is interactive. There’ll be at least one person there who knows to cut down a sausage! But people who have not been to one of my projects will be shocked.
Which has been your favourite food project?
I’m particularly interested in the destructive attitude towards art history and certain artists. It’s very much about destroying the work of artists that both intimidate me and that I want to emulate. In that vein, some of the objects that interest me most are the chocolate facsimile of Jeff Koons’ rabbit sculpture that people destroyed with hammers at Performa, and the Andy Warhol piñata that people destroyed at the Brooklyn Museum. Seeing how much violence people have inside them is really fun. In London, we did a kind of portrait of the city made up of 100 cakes from 100 bakeries - from Yauatcha to your average bakery, high and low, every ethnicity represented. I really enjoyed watching people destroy them.
At Simon de Pury’s wedding celebration you began with a performance of he and his wife getting ready for the party. Does all your work involve food?
There are big chunks of what I do that don’t involve food. Food is my starting point of how I think about things but I don’t feel constrained by it. It’s the medium with which I have the greatest familiarity. At the moment, I feel food or drink would always be a component of something that I do. For instance, I’m not sure that I would have had them getting dressed in a standalone show, without a full performance. That was a solution to a lot of issues. One being that it was a conceptual wedding, not a real wedding, and I wanted that feeling of anticipation that you have at a wedding whereby the bride and groom take on a status akin to a King and Queen. If they’re just there greeting guests as they arrive, that feels totally obscene to me. I wanted them to be set off and yet I wanted to emphasise their humanity, so he was shaving and having his haircut and she was doing her makeup and getting a massage. It solved the “problem”.
Do you experiment with ideas at home? What are your own dinner parties like?
I don’t change the format of my own dinner parties. And I find it kind of funny that people come to my house and expect something like my work. I have an eat-in kitchen and when everyone has arrived we immediately sit down for dinner family-style at the table. Then we go upstairs for dessert so that everyone can move around and talk to each other. I don’t feel that my dinner parties are connected to my work, except for that fact that they’re logistically streamlined.
How do you see your work developing in the future?
My work always deals with the crossroads of the ephemeral and the monumental. I’m very interested in creating objects that fulfil the function of being at that crossroads, meaning objects that are inherently interactive. The objects I’ve done recently that connect to that are the “Drinking Paintings” I did at the Brooklyn Museum. They are canvases six by ten feet with a spigot that comes out of them. “Drinking Painting No. 4 Lemonade” dispensed lemonade and there were seven others with water, bourbon, gin and tonic, dirty martinis. Of course, those paintings are dealing with Jackson Pollock and the drip. This fall, some of the projects I’m doing have to do with creating more objects that will continue to have a valid life after the performance.