The definition of Food Art or Eat Art usually describes the different artistic practices and implementations of food, dishes and ingredients used as creative material.
Food Art or Eat Art refers to a series of artistic practices which employ food as a creative material.
The artist Daniel Spoerri is known as the inventor of Eat Art and is one of the most significant representatives of object art and one of the founders of the artistic Nouveau Réalisme movement. In particular, the so-called snare-pictures, or tableau-piège in French, became famous. These are artistic portrayals, images and objects which were created around 1960.
Artists such as Daniel Spoerri and other assemblage artists created similar material pictures attaching daily situations such as used dishes, meal leftovers to a solid surface, for example a table-top or a desk blotter using synthetic resin. The snare-picture thus turned into a frozen snapshot of ‘a specific completed process of reality.’ A famous assemblage is the ‘Repas hongrois’, an example of such an art of accumulation. The viewer is ‘ensnared’ by thinking that the table with the leftovers is not hanging but rather standing. Other followers of Eat Art for example include edible art objects made from gingerbread.
Food Art by Thomas Sixt is photography depicting ingredients, dishes and drinks. These always feature a snapshot. A parallel to the snare-pictures can be drawn based on the strong macro-shots of the objects. The viewer delves deep into an object while what the object actually is, is not necessarily clear at first. The snare in this case is ‘not recognising’ a common dish or ingredient which only becomes recognisable to the viewer in a second step.