Food for Thought: On the Surprising Appeal of Inedible Art

Photographed by Eric Boman, Vogue, March 2016

After stopping at a vintage emporium off the Sawmill Parkway on a recent return from a trip upstate, a friend of mine made an odd purchase: a yellowing box of a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts. They were, as it turned out, fake but perfectly realistic: 12 round ceramic facsimiles in every flavor. He planned to spread them out beneath his windowsill—a quiet joke, he said, between himself and unmet passersby.

My friend is not the only one attracted to inedible art. Food as a medium, whether edible or not, is a phenomenon that long predates viral recipes. It’s been almost 90 years since artist Fillippo Marinetti published The Futurist Cookbook, a manifesto that explored food as fertile ground for avant-garde performance and self-expression. Since then, a coterie of artists have followed, using food as a means to speak to social and political landscapes: from Jessica Stoller, whose ceramic busts of women are violently asphyxiated, blinded or decapitated by various desserts; to Lexie Smith, the “bread artist” who kneads sculpture as well as pastry; to Joseph Maida, who makes gelatin tableaus that challenge our notions of desire and gender; to Chloe Wise, with her grotesque lasagna-stuffed makeup compacts. The list goes on.

Now, it seems like food objects are everywhere—entirely accessible and, quite literally, direct-to-consumer, no longer relegated to gallery spaces. We have become suddenly ravenous for food we can’t eat, which is now as readily available as the pastry at your local coffee shop. Below, a feast of options for the food fetishist in your life.