著者

平野 千枝子

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美学 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.61, no.2, pp.97-108, 2010

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Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) is best known for his 'building cuts', which involved the physical invasion of vacant urban buildings. Through these works, he criticized urban renewal and the standardization of space in order to achieve industrial efficiency. Though they received less attention than his architectural works, Matta-Clark was also heavily involved in 'culinary' projects from the outset of his artistic career. The most important of these was 'Food', a restaurant he opened in 1971 along with a group of collaborating artists. At the restaurant, Matta-Clark emphasized human activity and allowed for the purchase, preparation and serving of food to act as a metaphor for cultural transformation. Later, in 1975, he built on 'Food' by giving a performance called 'Cuisse de Bceuf' that involved his roasting 750 pounds of beef in front of the then under-construction Pompidou Center in Paris. Earlier in his career, Matta-Clark also used food as a motif in works such as 'Agar' and 'Museum', which highlight the natural ability of mold to transform the ingredients of food. These projects set out to demonstrate the variety and vitality of unrestricted nature. I divide Matta-Clark's culinary projects into representations of 'natural' and 'cultural' transformation (after Levi-Strauss' The Raw and the Cooked') in order to discuss how Matta-Clark's motif of 'food as symbol of transformation' compliments his architectural work by criticizing the scientific and functional basis of urban renewal.