Gnaw On This

The prophets were performance artists, fight me

The austerity of Lent is upon us. While my articles¹ are not going to be Lenten per se, if you have not picked this up yet, I write in response to how art is helping me in the here and now. So, during Lent, the posts will probably have a Lenten influence.

After fasting for Ash Wednesday the most salient topic on my mind and in my gut is eating. How can art help me think about eating?

Gnaw, 1992
by Janine Antoni

If you know my work or if you read my post — err, article — about wrestling a few weeks ago, then you know I like performance art. NOT ALL OF IT!² In general performance art reminds me of Old Testament prophets, and this piece by Janine Antoni really reminds me of Ezekiel.

Why?

Well, the two blocks up above started off as a 600 lb chocolate cube and a 600 lb lard cube. Take a closer look at the detail shot:

Have you ever left something out in the garage and found it chewed up by mice?³ Antoni gnawed on the cubes. Her website describes the entire performance like this:

Gnaw comprises two 600-pound cubes – one of chocolate, the other of lard – and a three-paneled, mirrored cosmetic display case. Using her mouth as a tool, Antoni nibbled the corners of both cubes, leaving visible teeth marks in the material. The chocolate fragments, blended with spit, were melted down and cast into 27 heart-shaped packages for chocolates, while the lard residue was combined with wax and bright red pigment to create 135 tubes of lipstick.

Here are the cast chocolates and lipsticks in their exhibition display cases:

My mind goes in a few directions all at once. First, she is not really gnawing on the lard or the chocolate. She is scraping it with her teeth and then spitting the material out. I wonder how long she scrapped at the blocks? All I can find online is she gnawed until she reached a state of physical exhaustion.

I am reminded of the connection between food, eating, and beauty. The glass cases house the chocolate and spit cast into valentines chocolate hearts and the lipstick is the classic seductive red. What could female beauty products made from the artist’s mouth scrapping at the raw materials mean?

Many critics focus on the feminist message, how women’s beauty standards in the 90’s began to become inhuman. Treating women like bulimic cogs in the assembly line of beauty products. I can certainly see that, but I think there is also more.

Artnet quotes Antoni saying “The reason I’m so interested in taking my body to those extreme places is that that’s a place where I learn, where I feel most in my body.”

If Antoni’s work is speaking of the inhuman treatment of women how does this performance make her most “in [her] body”? She also said, “I’m really interested in the repetition, the discipline, and what happens to me psychologically when I put my body to that extreme place.”

Which draws me to the extreme place of the prophets I mentioned earlier:

Saint John Devouring the Book, from “The Apocalypse”, 1497-98
by Albrecht Dürer

God tells St. John to eat a book — and he wasn’t the only one. Ezekiel was commanded to eat a book as well. The crux of this action is the same as the aphorism, “you are what you eat.” Both John and Ezekiel are filled with the prophetic messages they receive and are fueled to fulfill God’s mission for them.

Ezekiel in particular embarks on a ministry which would be described today as performance art. These actions included:

• lying on his side for 430 days

• cooking bread over dung

• shaving and dividing his hair

• packing as if he were going into exile then digging a hole in the wall of his house so he and his family could escape at night

• making a scale model of Jerusalem and building up small siege engines against it

I think Antoni was the most “in her body” during her performances because, like the prophets, her actions were meaningful messages in and of themselves. Her personal focus was on the discipline needed to complete the task. She is simply exploring her teeth as a sculpting tool. She is observing how the things she bites are shaped by her. Perhaps the gnawed objects are just as shaped by her as she would be if she swallowed all the chocolate. We often think of eating and dieting as sculpting only us. Does our eating also sculpt the world? Does it sculpt the world at all like how St. John and Ezekiel’s eating did?

I see the lipstick and chocolate hearts as a cheeky way for the artist to make some cash. How does one sell a performance like this? Make vanity objects out of it.

Eventually the lard decomposed. But the work keeps gnawing at me.

The blocks were set on marble plinths. The lard in particular reminds me of marble. Michelangelo once famously said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” Perhaps every performative act — the block of stone for performance artists — has a meaningful action somewhere inside of it and it is the task of the performance artist to chip away at the edges until something is discovered.

For me, the work ultimately reminds me of how small and insignificant I am. How all of my work is merely a nibble at the corner of life. How my paltry offering is akin to chocolates and lipstick. It reminds me, especially during Lent, the only food which will satisfy and shape me is the spiritual food of the body and blood of Christ.

George Herbert had this little bit to say at the end of his poem Agony: “Love is that liquour sweet and most divine, / Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.” I might nibble at chocolate but I gobble the body of Christ, which I taste as bread.

1. Substack has recently changed the name of these writings from Posts to Articles. I am certain this is because they have been reading my work and feel a far more noble title is demanded by the quality of such “posts.”

2. So much of it is just naked people covered in paint trying to get your attention by screaming at you.

3. They chewed up my headphone pads and the wax I use for sharpening chisels and knives. One winter I was able to trap 21 mice in our garage. Still, they persist.