So, it’s that week when Christian kids get chocolate, and certain others among us wish Sarah Silverman would record a seasonal update of her Christmas classic Give The Jew Girl Toys (2005). Easter seems a decent excuse to construct an edition of Wanted! around creative takes on the sweet stuff, and yet… whichever direction you approach it from, chocolate and art emerges as a more or less emetic combination.
Confectionary itself seems to be a field flush with frustrated creativity, giving rise to an alarming world of ‘chocolate art’– nude torso casts of zaftig women; depictions of toothy aristocrats in chunks of Toblerone; chocolate three piece suites that Wonka would have warned against – once chocolatiers start getting conceptual all notion of edibility gets thrown, like caution, to the wind.
On the artworld side, chocolate seems to attract a whole different level of wrong – though the artist is not always to blame. When Janine Antoni exhibits Lick & Lather (1993–4) – 14 self portrait busts in chocolate and soap worn down by devoted licking and lathering – she lays on extra chocolate heads because, despite the evident presence of abundant artist saliva, someone always takes a bite, ‘There’s not a lot of time between smelling and biting,’ she explains, though notes that having to lick the new busts back into shape is ‘a bummer’. And I wonder how many of the good ladies of Somerset dining at the Roth Bar & Grill are aware that Hauser & Wirth’s restaurant is named in honour of an artist famed for his putrefying chocolate-based artworks? (Though my favourite Dieter Roth work, by reputation at least, has long been Staple Cheese, 1970, the description of which in the MoMA catalogue Roth Time, 2003, is priceless.)
Paul McCarthy, Chocolate Nosebar, 2000. © Paul McCarthy. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Roth’s Easterish Bunny Dropping Bunny (1968) multiple was moulded from rabbit dung, and of course it’s the turdy quality of chocolate that often supplies the nasty edge in artist outings to the candy store. Anyone protecting their teeth over the Easter break and seeking motivation not to dive headfirst into the Green & Blacks would do better immersing themselves in the chocolate-based end(s) of Paul McCarthy’s oeuvre. His Chocolate Nose multiple – a simple tubular chocolate bar in innocuous-looking packaging – is disturbing in the same way that the wide-eyed offer of a glass of homemade lemonade from a nephew addicted to practical jokes is disturbing. Coming from McCarthy, is chocolate ever just chocolate? And is a nose ever just a nose? ‘Pinocchio Pipenose’ says probably not…
Guillaume Bijl, Sorry, 2014. Courtesy More Publishing
One is likewise suspicious of the word ‘Sorry’ coming from Guillaume Bijl – the Antwerp-based installationist / animist has been creating Sorry assemblages with found objects since the late 1980s, skewering this word worn down to near-meaninglessness by overuse. In this recent multiple, produced for the Belgian publishing outfit More, Bijl offers clichés of celebration, appeasement or perhaps even self-medication – an icecream sundae, champagne, chocolate, and coffee – rendered powerless but also deathless in the painted plaster models manufactured for cake shop window displays.
Adam McEwen, Chocolate Bar, Edition of 45, Graphite, £3,720. Courtesy the artist and Counter Editions
In its relentless silvery black that thrills my icy, recovering-goth heart, Adam McEwen’s milled graphite chocolate bar invites thoughts of the tombstone as much as it does a slab of Lindt 70%. The perfect gift for anyone who really enjoys chewing pencils, McEwen’s Chocolate Bar (2012) will not exactly melt in your hand, but – the covalent bonds of a carbon atom in graphite being with three other atoms forming flat hexagonal lattices layered in sheets – it will liberally disperse thin layers of itself on any surface it touches.
Renzo Martens, IHA/CPWAL Sculptures
The ArtReview fridge had to be scrupulously policed back last December when Renzo Martens came to talk about his Artes Mundi prize nomination accompanied by chocolate editions produced for his Democratic Republic of Congo-based Institute for Human Activities. The Belgian artist and provocateur is engaged in a ‘gentrification’ project to engage local plantation workers in critical artistic production, with the anticipation of generating revenue through a ‘more lucrative post-Fordist, affective economy’. Recently this has included a series of self portrait sculptures created by the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League that have been cast in fine chocolate using cocoa derived from the region. Lookout for J.J. Charlesworth feature on Renzo Martens and the Institute of Human activities in the April issue.
Bow Wow Wow, I Want Candy, cover, 1982
If your appetite is still intact but you’d prefer to stay well away from art in all chocolate related circumstance, Rococo’s hand painted Easter eggs make absolutely no claim to be art all but are most definitely edible. But if you can’t shake that queasy feeling, try trawling eBay for 99p copies of the Vivienne Westwood/ Malcolm McLaren pop project Bow-Wow-Wow’s I Want Candy (1982) which has spiritually soundtracked this column.
Paul McCarthy, Chocolate Nose, undated, unlimited multiple, €82 (Hauser & Wirth)
Guillaume Bijl, Sorry, 2014, edition of 12, POA (More Publishers).
Adam McEwen, Chocolate Bar, 2012, edition of 45, £3,720.00 (Counter Editions)
IHA / Congolese Plantation Workers Art League, chocolate sculptures, Price: £39.95 + shipment costs. Contact: office@humanactivities.org
See here for past Wanted! columns
Online exclusive first published 31 March 2015.
