Let Them Eat Cake!
After her recent grueling performance at the New York MoMA consisting of 700 hours of sitting and viewing visitors, “the Mother of Performance Art” Marina Abramović keeps on creating works that can only be experienced sitting down. Her new work of art, called “Volcano Flambé”, is all set to be on Park Avenue Winter’s menu this March. The executive chef, Kevin Lasko and Abramović jointly created this “multisensory culinary intervention” – a highly hedonistic luxury dessert loaded with chocolate, real gold and, allegedly a number of aphrodisiacs!
There are layers of almond sponge cake, banana mousse and dark chocolate ice cream with a coating of Swiss meringue. It’s sprinkled with gold sugar and chocolate crumbs and soaked with dark rum. Of course, it includes a blowtorch to set it ablaze as it is served! The dessert is first-up in a series of four artist-chef collaborations that came about thanks to Creative Time, a non-profit organization for cultural projects.
Along with a fantastic mix of flavors, the dessert is also supposedly an aphrodisiac, at least according to the Agency’s official statement! The performance-dessert is priced at 20 dollars, tantamount to MoMA’s entrance fee. In addition to the dessert itself, a lab coat, a wooden box containing an Mp3 player, a glass of water, along with a fork and spoon are also included in the price. The visitors are kindly requested to close their eyes and put the headphones on so Abramović can guide the listener through a meditative dining experience. “Close your eyes, breathe deeply, focus on the blue flame,” she intones. Then the waiter arrives and flambes the dessert in front of the guest which is followed by a multisensory hedonistic experience. Is this a matter of bringing contemporary art closer to the broad masses or a method of branding it?
Photographs by ARTINFO
