University of Notre Dame Art History Professor Nicole L. Woods recently published “Taste Economies: Alison Knowles, Gordon Matta-Clark and the Intersection of Food, Time and Performance,” in Performance Research: A Journal of Performing Arts.
A version of this text was first presented at the conference PSi #19: NOW THEN: Performance & Temporality, Stanford University, 26-30 June 2013, as part of the panel "Three Scores and Fifty Years Ago: Instructional Performance and Institutional Time.”
The essay reconsiders two performance-based artworks in the late-1960s/early 1970s that explore food as a medium of contemplation, consumption, and display: Alison Knowles’s The Identical Lunch (1969-75) and Gordon Matta-Clark’s Food Restaurant (1971). It argues that in making, distributing, and highlighting food itself as an object-experience outside the boundaries of the traditional gallery and market systems, these artists ultimately question the very organization of cultural capital, revealing the political effects of art that move beyond mere sustenance and conviviality into a realm of perceptual generosity.
Originally published by at artdept.nd.edu on August 27, 2014.