--- title: "From studio to dining table: What a festive spread!" date: 2024-12-19 last_modified: 2025-01-21T18:13:21+01:00 generated_at: 2026-04-10T22:05:12Z url: "https://www.schirn.de/en/schirnmag/vom-atelier-an-den-esstisch-was-fuer-ein-fest/" description: "Sind Künstler*innen besonders kreativ, wenn es ums Kochen geht? Ein Blick in die Küchen der Kunstwelt. Diesmal geht es um Festessen der etwas anderen Art – ganz ohne Gänsebraten." image: "https://www.schirn.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/vorschau_heinrich_final_textur_schirn_mag.jpg" language: "en-US" --- # From studio to dining table: What a festive spread! ![](https://www.schirn.de/en/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/vorschau_heinrich_final_textur_schirn_mag.jpg) Detail © Lea Heinrich # From studio to dining table: What a festive spread! 1 min reading time Are artists especially creative when it comes to cooking? A glance behind the scenes of art-world kitchens. With the focus this time on festive meals of a different kind – with no turkey at all. Anyone who is not a German tradi­tion­alist and does not serve boiled sausages and potato salad for dinner on Christmas Eve will prob­ably braise a piece of meat or a vege­tarian or vegan equiv­a­lent, possibly dishing it up with red cabbage and dumplings. On New Year’s Eve, the preferred choice tends to be cheese in more or less molten form, and if it’s someone’s birthday, then there’ll be cake on the table. Cooking for a festive occa­sion rarely really involves creativity – but is that also true of artists? After all, the nature of the profes­sion involves breaking with conven­tion. So, let’s give our imag­i­na­tion free reign and ask: What would be dished up if we were to drop by for a festive meal at the home of … [Marina Abramović](https://www.schirn.de/en/schirnmag/from-studio-to-dining-table-marina-abramovic-whats-cooking-en/), Sophie Calle or [Gilbert & George](https://www.schirn.de/en/schirnmag/from-studio-to-dining-table-gilbert-george-whats-cooking-en/)? What would [Tracey Emin](https://www.schirn.de/en/schirnmag/from-studio-to-dining-table-tracey-emin-whats-cooking-en/) prepare for us, and what menu would [Carsten Höller](https://www.schirn.de/en/schirnmag/from-studio-to-dining-table-carsten-hoeller-whats-cooking-en/) prob­ably serve? So please take your seats, the table is set, and the meal prepared! ## Marina Abramović We start out on our festive-culi­nary stage race with a strong sense of hunger, because our host made it abun­dantly clear in her invi­ta­tion that we had to fast for five days in the run-up to the dinner. When we arrive in her loft in Manhattan, there’s a heap of uncooked rice and lentils on the long table in the dining room. We are now meant to care­fully sepa­rate these ingre­di­ents and count them before we get anything to eat. On several occa­sions we grow impa­tient and are about to give up, but yet again who wants to make a fool of them­selves in the pres­ence of the High Priestess of Perfor­mance Art? Once we’ve at long last got through the counting, Abramović blind­folds us all and then places a bowl of boiled white rice before each of us. After our long absti­nence from food, the first bite tastes incred­ibly deli­cious, we fall into a kind of trance, and imme­di­ately forget the ordeal we’ve been through. For dessert, there’s the only dish that even Abramović’s iron will cannot resist: white choco­late. While we let the sweet pieces melt on our tongues, the artist gazes deeply into our eyes – so long that we’re moved to tears. Or maybe they’re the product of the raw onion served as the side order? ![](https://www.schirn.de/en/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/detail-Abramovic-heinrich_final_textur_schirn_mag.jpg) Detail © Lea Heinrich ## Tracey Emin On we travel, to the coast of England East of London, to Margate, home­town of Tracey Emin. Hardly have we shed our coats than she leads us to her bedroom. Today we will of course be eating our meal in bed. While we try and find a comfy way to sit between all the crum­pled sheets and used paper hankies, our host wanders in with a tray bearing caviar and oysters. This trig­gers a festive mood, even if the empty vodka bottles on the bedroom carpet some­what under­mine the sense of idyll. A relic of bygone days, the artist assures us, as she no longer drinks or smokes. She demon­stra­tively (and much to our disap­point­ment) serves not cham­pagne to go with the crus­taceans, but Japanese green tea. Accept­able, we think, at any rate better than half a liter of straw­berry-flavored Nesquik, her previous beverage of choice after a long night’s partying. Emin disap­pears briefly, and emerges again with the main course, home­made chicken soup, flavored with herbs from the vegetable patch in her villa in the south of France. We have soon drunk all the soup, sink back into the pillows and our tummies pleas­antly full, imme­di­ately fall into a soft and blissful sleep. ![](https://www.schirn.de/en/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Detail-Emin_heinrich_final_textur_schirn_mag.jpg) Detail © Lea Heinrich ## Gilbert & George It’s a little than two hours’ drive up to London and from there to Fournier Street, where Gilbert Prousch and George Pass­more await us. After a brief tour of their apart­ment, it soon becomes clear to us that the duo has no inten­tion of impressing us with their culi­nary prowess: There’s no kitchen in the place. It’s a well-known fact that they both hate the smell of warm meals, but surely, they could at least have prepared a platter of cold-cuts? Our stom­achs rumble auto­mat­i­cally, and when the two gents offer us a gin-&-tonic we sense that the going is going to get tough. There’s no way we’re going to get blasted as elegantly as Gilbert & George, so better to turn the offer down. While we’re wondering whether not to head for the toilet in order to furtively extri­cate the cream crackers out of our jacket pockets, George stands up and announces that it is high time to head off and take our seats punc­tu­ally at 8 p.m. at their perma­nent table in “Mangal 1”. Relieved, we duti­fully obey and make for the Turkish restau­rant where the duo will order a starter and half a main course each, the way they do every evening. Even if at first sight the routine doesn’t seem overly festive, the two of them evidently really cele­brate the occa­sion. ![](https://www.schirn.de/en/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Detail-Gilbert-George_heinrich_final_textur_schirn_mag.jpg) Detail © Lea Heinrich ## Sophie Calle Across the English Channel to Malakoff, a suburb of Paris. Clad completely in black, wearing dark sunglasses and with a cham­pagne flute in her hand, Sophie Calle opens the door to welcome us into her studio-loft. Jazz music is playing in the back­ground, and the dining table is festively decked out. We give her the gift we have brought, a voucher for an hour with a famous fortune teller, and duly take our places. This time, we’re not alone as Calle has also invited her friends and family. Dominique, Florence, Rafael, Monique – they’re all hanging from the walls in the form of stuffed animals and prove to be poor conver­sa­tion­al­ists. When Calle starts serving dinner, we see red. Not because we find the food repul­sive, but because she has created a completely mono­chrome meal: There are filleted toma­toes, beef tartar, pome­granate seeds, grilled red capsicums, and several bottles of red wine. Ketchup would have fitted the scheme, but we don’t dare ask whether she has some hidden away some­where. As the evening draws to a close, Calle repairs to a chaise-longue and asks us to read her a good-night story before we leave. While hunting for the right book on one of the book­shelves, we notice a small lens unob­tru­sively placed behind the volumes. We defi­nitely don’t mention it; after all, we’re no spoil­sports. Why should we have anything against this becoming an unfor­get­table evening? ![](https://www.schirn.de/en/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Calle-und-Hoeller-Detail-heinrich_final_textur_schirn_mag.jpg) Detail © Lea Heinrich ## Carsten Höller The first thing we notice when step­ping into his apart­ment in Stock­holm is the loud sound of birds twit­tering coming from one of the rooms. Carsten Höller sees our ques­tioning looks and mentions that a couple of dozen song­birds which he keeps as pets live there. We drift past his spot­lessly clean stain­less-steel kitchen (has he ever cooked in it?) and suddenly find ourselves zipping down a spiraling tunnel-slide, landing slightly confused two stories down in a spacious living room fitted out in a Mini­malist Nordic vein. Some­what surprised we see before us a dining table on which a mass of take-away boxes is stacked. He simply didn’t have time to cook today, the artist apol­o­gizes, but luckily his favorite restau­rant, “The Brutal­ists”, has deliv­ered a complete festive meal. Each box contains a single ingre­dient, caringly prepared: here a grey giant prawn, there a Mexican ant. In fact, Höller even dispatched one of his pets to the restau­rant kitchen on our behalf, and now it’s returned as song-bird confit. He assures us that one of his pet birds is only ever served on special occa­sions. It is the dessert that crowns the evening, however, and Höller himself prepared it: caramelized toad­stool, served on a bed of moss. 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