You Are What You Eat

The ad-man’s view of the female body

“Twill make old women young and fresh create new motions of flesh” (7)

From the time of Madame Sevigne (1600s), we have been bombarded by mixed reports on the ‘pros and cons’ of consuming chocolate. It seems that as soon as one point of view becomes overexpounded so another contrary way of thinking begins.

Society is fickle and one of the things it is fickle about is the shape of the female body. (Men have somehow remained untouched by hype/public opinion and popular convention on size and appearance or at least to a lesser, negligible effect.)

Since the 1960s with Jean ‘The Shrimp’ Shrimpton and Twiggy, fashion has had a lot answer for. In breaking new ground, designers are literally shaping the world through its promotion of the ‘perfect body.’ There is of course no such thing but there are certain ‘ideals.’

All this places an incredible pressure on impressionable young women and magazine and television images contribute to this pressure. One of the symptoms of this pressure has been the relatively new phenomenon of eating disorders.

**'Gnaw' by Janine Antoni**
©http://www.janineantoni.net/

In ‘Gnaw’ (1992), the American artist Janine Antoni (b. 1964) takes a 600lb block of chocolate and nibbles away at it for 45 days. She then spits out the pulp and it to create 45 heart shaped boxes for holding chocolates. She says she is referring to eating disorders and how society can pressurise young girls into such activity.

Bulimia Nervosa is where a person (usually a young woman) binges on exceptionally large amounts of food (usually high calorie foods like chocolate). She then goes through a process of purging the food (usually by vomiting or starvation).

Constant vomiting causes the stomach acids to eventually eat away the enamel on teeth, causes ulcers and stomach/bowel disorders. This lifestyle governs her every waking hour. Disgust and hatred of food are substitutes for disgust and hatred of the self.

Anorexia Nervosa is far more common in females than males and usually occurs in girls from families where high achievement and scholastic success are highly valued. It is this pressure from family, friends, media, everywhere which leads people to find solace elsewhere. The fear of failure to be accepted dominates her life. The calorie is one escape route. If a girl can control the calorie, and in turn the way she looks - her physical presence in the world, then she has at least succeeded in one thing and her body shape is the only thing that really matters to her at that time.

Antoni is shaping. She paints, draws, sculpts, molds and models with her body. By using a 600lb block of chocolate she is blowing out of all proportion an everyday foodstuff in the same way that the media blows out of all proportion the importance of body shape as opposed to inner beauty. The body is an easy target because it is tangible. Antoni has also done a series of busts, self portraits in chocolate and soap (‘Lick and Lather’ 1993) in which she eats and washes away parts of the sculptures - parts of her own self image.

Her regurgitation of the chocolate from the ‘Gnaw’ block mirrors the bulimic’s purging activities. The act of modelling 45 heart shaped boxes from the spat is a comment on packaging (of chocolates and the inner ‘self’). The boxes look like well produced packaging trays - only when we know the truth behind their construction does the stomach turn.

What is missing from the ad-man’s equation is TRUTH. What is being forgotten is that chocolate was first used for its strengths as a restorative, an energy giving healthful liquor.

Hernan Cortes valued its energy giving properties: “Un taza de este preciosa brabaje per mete de andar un dia entero sin tomar alimente.” (“One cup of this precious drink allows a man to walk a whole day without taking nourishment.”) (8)

Chocolate is a luxury item but has many positive and practical functions. It is a valuable portable snack food providing quick replenishment of energy (used by sportsmen and mountain climbers etc). And lastly, and most importantly perhaps, it is a gift. That is the double irony being dealt with in ‘Gnaw’. Antoni, the artist, through her processes, is providing heart shaped gift boxes for us, the gallery goer, the consumer.

**‘Lick and Lather’ Janine Antoni**
©http://www.janineantoni.net/

Of course, eating is enjoyable, a pleasurable experience but 6001bs of it becomes a nightmare. Antoni answers this by doing exactly the same thing to a 600lb block of lard, this time the regurgitation becomes moulded into 400 lipsticks - again their beautiful production and packaging belies the vulgarity of their construction.

In ‘Stroke’ (1994), Anya Gallaccio (b.1963) painted the walls of the Karsten Schubert Gallery in London with dark chocolate. In previous work she has left arrangements of flowers to wither and die. It is this transition from beauty to ugliness, growth to decomposition, life to death that is echoed in ‘Stroke.’ ‘”In all my work so far, the work only exists for a certain period of time and in a sense it only exists when it is being looked at.” (9)

The ‘paint’ was made by melting 315 bars of Bournville plain chocolate to 63 kilos of liquid and mixed with vegetable fat for adherence to the consistency of household paint. Like Antoni (and Helen Chadwick) the amount of chocolate is taken to excess to be able to use it as a medium with which to create a public exhibition.

“Excess is expression.” (10) Gallaccio says: “I’m completely addicted to chocolate, the idea of making a chocolate room should be something really heavenly and excessive... it has particularly female connotations of binging and desire.” (11)

Its prime associations are with mortality, deterioration and putrefaction. Like Antoni, who literally eats away the chocolate herself, Gallaccio lets light, oxygen, water vapour and mold eat at the chocolate.

‘Stroke’ is essentially a light room made dark - subversive use of materials turns a familiar substance with all its associations with childhood and vibrancy into an excremental lament for loss. Gallaccio is using flowers and chocolate as triggers for associations such as love/ romance/sensuality/greed and satisfaction.

The notion of self disgust/self loathing is perpetuated by advertisers who are responsible for creating a generation of Kate Moss wannabes who are bombarded with the paradoxical image of the young beautiful slim girl tucking into a bar of pure indulgence and sin. The irony here is that neither is correct. It’s like saying “lipsticks make you beautiful and chocolates make you fat.”

**‘Stroke’ Anya Gallaccio**
© Ruth Clark / https://www.jupiterartland.org/

7. ‘Wicked Chocolate’ - Jane Sutherling 1992 8. Rubenstein 1981

9. Anya Gallaccio from exhibition guide of British Art Show 4 - 1995

10. ‘Enfleshings’ - Helen Chadwick 1990 11. Rubenstein 1981

Chapter 7: I Can’t Get No SatisfactionChocolate, sex, the menstrual cycle, life and death

The biggest selling Christmas present in BHS stores last Christmas (1994) was chocolate body paint. For £3.50 you could get a tub of chocolate, a brush and instructions to warm gently and ‘use your imagination.’ BHS store manager Sylvia Buck said: “We sell out by lunchtime everyday.” (13)

The human creature has certain natural cravings. One is for sweet foods. Another is for sex.

Helen Chadwick’s (b. 1953) recent solo exhibition “Effluvia” (1994) at the Serpentine Gallery in London included a piece entitled ‘Cacao.’ A huge circular bath of steel was filled with chocolate which was constantly pumped and undulated by electronic fountain apparatus.

“I needed something that would assert a really, really primal physicality that would also be on that edge of alluring, delicious, repulsive. And I just thought “chocolate, yes.” Her work is generally selfish, inward looking but it is easy to how this sentiment might be echoed by all women. “It is artists like Helen Chadwick who convey more secrets about the female fetishistic imagination than the more obvious ‘sexual’ signs associated with sadomasochism and abjection.” (14)

Like Anya Gallaccio, chocolate provides a convenient, accessible metaphor for a whole array of other associations. It is filth, it is the physical manifestation of human emotions like excitement, orgasm, ejaculation, fear, naughtiness and mortality. Again a transition is implied. The continual, ever changing formations could be interpreted to imply bodily change. The transition is from girlhood to womanhood.

**‘Cacao’ Helen Chadwick.**
Photograph © Edward Woodman

The start of menstruation signifies a change from dependence to independence. The body takes overfrom the person resulting in physical and emotional turmoil, expressed here in terms of bubbling mass. As with Janine Antoni’s ‘Gnaw’, the thought of anorexia as an escape route comes to mind. Anorexia can take away menstruation, remove hips, buttocks and breasts. The ever changing random orgy of patterns that is ‘Cacao’ sums up “...accidents of matter…” (15) with its noisome nausea.

The choice of chocolate is an important one. Had any other liquid been used, then a whole new set of meanings would have been attached. The presentation again is impeccable. The mere fact that here is a huge fountain of inviting globular chocolate mass is a ‘chocoholics’ wet dream, guaranteeing an attentive audience. ‘Cacao’ stands for the “...gynandrous fecundity of waste.” (16)

Chocolate’s association with sex is a long one. Montezuma used to drink it before visiting his harem; the notorious 18th century stimulant ‘Spanish Fly’ has cocoa amongst its ingredients; the Indians of Peru believed in its aphrodisiac qualities, as did Casanova who preferred Chocolate to champagne; Madame du Barry took chocolate before seeing her lovers. Today, chocolate comes in all sorts of suggestive shapes, like penises and white chocolate breasts.

The Aztecs made great play of the ritual of planting cacao beans. The tillers of soil were kept apart from their wives for several days that on the night before planting the grain they might indulge their passions to the fullest. Certain persons were even said to have been appointed to perform the sex act at the very moment the first seeds were deposited in the soil. The cacao bean itself is metaphor bound with fertility and virility coming top of the list. Perhaps it is chocolate’s public persona as a ‘naughty but nice’ treat which adds to its appeal in the sense that the apple was a temptation to Adam. It is forbidden fruit, an indulgence.

Again it is women and not men who tend to use chocolate as a ‘pick-me-up.’ This is particularly true at moments of depression or emotional fluctuation especially whilst menstrual. “...many women claim to experience strong emotional desires for chocolate which are associated with the menstrual cycle, possibly as a result of hormonal changes and their resultant effects on mood.” 17 Helen Chadwick says: “As links in a chain of reflex, I cannot be fixed in absolute terms, I can only present myself as a variable.” (18)

In my opinion, women are targeted more by media pressure on how they should look and behave. Therefore feelings of guilt over which foods are consumed are more prominent as is the acquired ‘need’ to diet. ‘Cacao’, with its cyclical form might be read as a comment on the diet as a never ending cycle. The body responds to a diet by saying ‘l need more food’ so the weight goes back on and the closed loop is formed.

Phenylethylamine is the naturally occurring drug in chocolate most often blamed for causing addiction. It acts in a similar way to an amphetamine - it’s an antidepressant stimulating the brain and creating a feeling of euphoria. This same drug is produced by the body in love, Debra Waterhouse calls it the ultimate ‘de-PMSer.’

Helen Chadwick’s primary concern is with filth. Filth of birth, filth of consumption, filth of menstruation and filth of sex. In short, the filth of life and death.

13. Express and Star 12/12/95

14. Lorraine Gamman – ‘Women’s Art’ No. 65 July / Aug 1995

15. Chadwick 1990

16. ‘Effluvia’ — text by Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton 1994

17. Wall

18. Chadwick 1990

The boxes produced by Janine Antoni were moulded into the shape of hearts, a superficial, unreal representation of love. The acts she goes through to produce her self-portrait busts of chocolate and soap form minor rituals in themselves. By licking and washing the forms, she is harking back to outdated stereotypical views of the role of women, washing and cleaning being the most cited form of obsessive behaviour. The act of scrubbing, cleansing has a whole set of meanings attached to it including Lady Macbeth’s “..out damned spot.” (19) The act of licking has obvious (oral) sexual overtures. In this sense, devotion is eroding the statues and love is both destructive and creative.

It is the repetition of movement that eventually wears down the substance like the process of weathering where the wind incessantly wears down a rock to change its shape and form over long periods of time into new unique natural sculptures.

Helen Chadwick’s ‘Cacao’ echoes the Aztec ceremony of tilling the earth mentioned in chapter 7. The Circular tub of gyrating chocolate also resembles the modern day ritual of tempering in chocolate factories like Cadbury.

Anya Gallaccio’s ‘Stroke’ also sets up a robotic, repetitive act of obsessional ritual. The brushwork is consistent and like ‘Cacao’ is, among other things, an homage to those Aztec earth workers. It is a meditation.

Chapter 9. Conclusion: Only Smarties® Have The Answer

Chocolate has evolved become a potent icon of the modern world. It has been written about, sung about, filmed and by now has probably as many (or more) layers of meaning as bread.

By grossly enlarging the scale of chocolate, Helen Chadwick, Janine Antoni and Anya Gallaccio have presented an anatomical and biographical representation of the female body and persona - open for inspection like flesh laid open to reveal blood, veins and sinew. This preoccupation with the body is in keeping with most Post-Modernist art.

The three show, in different ways, the capricious, transient nature of chocolate. It can melt, it can rot, it can be broken off and consumed - it is infinitely malleable when liquid. “All beauty in the world is poignant because it is endangered.” (20) They have each, either through their own bodies or through mechanical apparatus, become extollers of the particular machinery (actual and metaphorical) that surrounds the history, politics, production, evolution and concept of chocolate.

Through observation and contemplation of issues of female sexuality, tradition, ritual, culture, quality, health etc., each has been able to produce considered thought provoking works of art. Unlike male artists like Roth, Oldenburg, Ruscha and Beuys, they make use of chocolate not only in a painterly, surface sense, but in a wider, deeply layered way.

19. ‘Macbeth’ – William Shakespeare

20. Ian Hamilton Finlay

You Are What You Eat

This article is from:

The Power of Chocolate in Art