Page 46 - Studio International - April 1971

Coloured food
Peter Kuttner
To make food the subject of an event is a very
basic notion. What I am doing is simple enough—
it is to take two familiar elements, vegetable dyes
and foodstuffs, and combine them in ways in
which they are not normally combined. This is
not as drastic an action as combining familiar
elements which are not normally combined at all
or of using unfamiliar elements entirely. I wish
to emphasize this fact because it is important to
me that my work should not be esoteric, that is
why I use aspects of the familiar while producing
unfamiliar experiences.
An event involves a coming together of
elements not normally linked to create fresh
forms of experience. Many artists of all kinds
throughout the world are interested in events as
the best means of expressing their ideas. In a
broader sense the concern with event is akin to
the desire for new relationships and possibilities
for humanity which is strongly felt by a growing
number of people everywhere.
Coloured food is the latest in a series of
events which began when I produced the first
multi-media shows at the Middle Earth Club,
Covent Garden in 1967. The first time I offered
coloured food to the public was at an event in
the University College, Swansea on January 31
1970. I decided to produce the food perhaps
two years after Michael Tyzack had told me
about trials he and others had undertaken
colouring eggs at Cardiff College of Art. The
difference between my version and what we are
used to in coloured food is twofold. I use far
brighter colour and I apply it to a wider range of
foods. Both hot and cold dishes can be prepared.
The dyes are tasteless and harmless so the food
can safely be eaten.
The food never fails to produce strong
reactions; it transmutes an everyday, familiar
experience into a new experience. I am currently
conducting an experiment with a psychologist at
Queen Elizabeth College based on the food,
which will enable us to tabulate and analyse
people's responses. Previously I have only been
able to observe them. In general the food is
thought pretty to look at, but unlike food which
is normally good to look at it does not (for many
people) set up anticipatory actions in the diges-
tive system. Some people are offended by the
sight of the food, some find the same food
uncoloured, dull. Recently, at the Royal Court,
I had the feeling it made people happy. Some
people cannot trust their eyes and employ other
senses to identify the food.
Thanks to Mr Dyer and his staff at Floris
Gruhn, the Soho bakers, almost any bakery
product can be produced according to my
specification. In addition I have at different
times coloured fish, spaghetti, rice, potato
salad, eggs, pancakes, cauliflower, cheese and
white wine, fruit juices and coffee. The
experience works to the extent that the food is
well prepared and presented.
Transmuting an everyday experience into a
The significance of the idea is severalfold.
completely new experience refers to our
conditioning, to the kind of assumptions we
make about what we experience. It will be
impossible for people, once they have seen blue
bread, ever to consider bread again as exclusively
white or brown just because of what they are
used to. This kind of realization (governed
admittedly by the intensity with which it
occurs) fundamentally affects our notion of
change and what we think possible for ourselves
and society. Because it is such a basic statement
it can be realized anywhere in the world with
minimal conditions (in areas of chronic food
shortage it would most probably seem repulsive).
In terms of conventional aesthetics the visual
quality is unique in a powerful way, enhanced
by the economy of means with which the result is
achieved and the perfection of product that can
be attained.
Not only do I question particular assumptions
in a given event, my whole work results from
asking radical questions about the context in
which an artist in western society functions
nowadays. I use the term 'artist' for convenience,
although it is so vague. I cannot but be aware of
the multiplicity of activity around me which
affects me in many ways—this is my experience
of living and I respond accordingly. The
response, if it does not initiate my ideas,
certainly determines how they are realized.
Object-making does not allow me an adequate
response—it is more than ever a peripheral
activity among peripheral activities. Now, with
certain exceptions, if one makes an object one
perpetuates a concept of activity which is to do
with monuments, with market investment for an
elite, with a small scale of communication.
Admittedly involvement with an event is no
guarantee against elitism, but it does avoid the
excesses of the market situation. The scale of
communication is important—it is perhaps the
biggest single difference between the present
and the fairly immediate past. I am determined
to relate to the mass media (television
particularly) in spite of the pitfalls, to reach an
ever wider public with new ideas.
My work is to do with people working on
themselves. I wish to remind people that they
can decide about their lives for themselves once
they know what they want to do (I have even
had confirmation of this in a very small way
from people at the bakery). I think we have
failed if we merely tell people what to do. The
beginning of knowing what to do is to know one's
self, to know one's responses to experience
(impossible if people are told how to respond).
We return to the experience—I am interested in
any experience that can powerfully initiate this
process, not all experience can—and to the food.
I feel strongly that the food should be considered
valid as an experience in itself, although too
often we demand more. Is an experience
heightened because it is held to symbolize
something ? I don't think it is, but treacherously
we try and deceive ourselves to the contrary.