Food, with its protean colors, with its changeable and engaging shapes, is the starting point for outlining a marvellous universe, a “WonderFood World”, worth of having a great role in Art, too. “What a WonderFood World” is, in fact, the title of Nouar and Laura Wätcher’s duo show set up by Dorothy Circus Gallery from 5th February 2010.
Nouar is a young Iranian artist, graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California in 2004. Her work draws largely from American mid-nineteenthcentury illustration and advertisement art: protean colors, humor and bodies so suitable that you’d like to eat them. Laura Wätcher is another Dorothy Circus Gallery’s discovery, she is only 22 years old and comes from Malaga, Spain. She is a talented, very sharp illustrator, and describes the contemporary world in a striking, critical way.
“Man ist was Mann isst”
Playing on words, the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, stated an idea meant to be rubbed in the history of culture for a long time: “man is what he eats”.
Born in opposition to idealist theories, the saying “We are what we eat” became very popular because it is easily useable in many fields of human existence, thanks to the frequent presence of food or of recalls to food in every aspect of material and spiritual men’s life.
From the “Panem et circenses” for calming the ancient Roman people, to the “Make love with flavor” of a famous commercial ad on Italian TV, through the big blowouts in the movies, food is a metaphor of love, passion, covetousness, over-indulgence towards life.
All these aspects, together with the presence of food in every public or private social occasion, and with the close connection to Eros, make food a good mean of interpretation of many phenomena of life.
Idiomatic expressions such as “I hunger for you”, “Sexual appetites”, “Men eater”, “Ingredients of love”, “You taste good” show us how often we use terms borrowed from gastronomic language speaking about eros.
