Artist ate his own shape in bread for bizarre sculpture

Times Online ^ | November 25, 2004 | Jenny Booth

[swilhelm73]

The unmade bed by Tracey Emin caused a stir at the Turner Prize a few years ago, but now the Tate Britain gallery has an even stranger bed on display - made entirely of white bread.

The work, simply called Bed, was made from 8,000 slices from which the sculptor, Antony Gormley, carefully ate away his own imprint. The result is the size of a normal double bed, with two hollow human shapes.

Today Mr Gormley, who won fame for the monumental Angel of the North sculpture on a hill near Gateshead, described how he had to eat his own volume in Mother's Pride over the course of three months to create the work.

Once he had shaped the bits of bread with his teeth, he dipped them in paraffin wax to stop them going mouldy, and dried them on radiators in his house.

"I made a drawing like a contour map which told me how much bread I needed to eat every day," he told the Evening Standard.

"The entire house in Peckham was covered in racks of drying bitten bread. I've not eaten Mother's Pride since."

Since then, the work is said to have been treated by Rentokil to prevent it rotting away.

The bizarre artwork is one of Mr Gormley's earliest works playing with the shape and form of the human body. He made it between 1980 and 1981.

Bed has been displayed in Tate St Ives, but today it was unveiled in London’s Tate Britain as the centrepiece of a room dedicated to Mr Gormley's achievements - a rare accolade for a living artist.

Also on display is Natural Selection 1981, in which natural objects, such as an egg, and man-made ones, such as a hand-grenade and a sex toy, have been coated in lead and arranged side by side. Mr Gormley said it was an "ironic reference to Darwin’s theory of evolution".

[swilhelm73]

[MisterRepublican]

Modern "art"=bovine feces

[atomicpossum]

Ooooooooo, how artsy fartsy. I guess you gotta be a Blue Stater to pretend this is genius.

[eagle11]

Did the Creator "eat us" in His own image?

[Rastus]

I guess I'm a red state redneck, but I'd rather watch the crew of Big! making a huge toaster and a huge piece of toast than this.

[LRS]

Yes, but can he pull his head out of his own backside as an encore?

[KidGlock]

And what was strange was that when the bread passed its way all the way through the digestional track, it still looked like the artist.

[Jackknife]

What a retard.

[pt17]

LOL - This is the kind of crap people create when they have no talent but want to get noticed and is to art as carnival sideshows were to education.

[reagan_fanatic]

[swilhelm73]

Good call. :)

[WIladyconservative]

Well . . . at least he didn't excrete the white bread and use it that way . . . be thankful for that anyway.

[baltodog]

WHY IN THE HELL AM I WORKING????

I AM A DAMN FOOL!!!!

I GIVE UP!!! I CANNOT WIN!!!

[Rastus]

This has always been my favorite example:



This "piece" (a fitting word for it) is in the "Art Museum, Philadelphia." Here's what one guy has to say about it:

Whereas, Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain', an ordinary porcelain urinal signed "R.Mutt" for the 1917 exhibition of the New York Society of Independent Artists, is widely considered to be a ground breaking work of modern art, (Arnason, pg.305). This urinal is no different from any other urinal of its type. Initially refused for acceptance, 'The Fountain' got its showing and is now an icon of modern art. What makes this urinal art, as opposed to long rows of urinals in any large restroom? There is something about this urinal entirely invisible to the observer.

Duchamp's urinal is different because it means something different. It has been placed before us by the artist to arrest and challenge our aesthetic sensibilities. Because of where we find it, because of the artist who places it there, because of the name he gives it, we are challenged by it and must consider it apart from other urinals.

Ahem. Sure, dude. Anything you say. If I ever get out to that museum, I'm going to become a performance artist. "Man Peeing in Artistic Urinal."

[BJungNan]

Paid for by...Guess who?

[Thinkin' Gal]

The work, simply called Bed, was made from 8,000 slices from which the sculptor, Antony Gormley, carefully ate away his own imprint.

Surely at least one slice contains a nibbled image of the "Virgin Mary".

[Nick Danger]

A thousand years from now, some archaeologist is gonna dig this thing up and tell everybody that people in our era made mummies out of bread.

[aculeus]

The work, simply called Bed, was made from 8,000 slices from which the sculptor, Antony Gormley, carefully ate away his own imprint.

A gallery assistant lies next to Gormley's Bed sculpture

[Cvengr]

Got milk?