Cosimo Cavallaro is best known for his quirky work with food as art: repainting a Manhattan hotel room in melted mozzarella, spraying five tons of pepper-jack cheese on a Wyoming home, and throwing 312 pounds of processed ham in the middle of a four-poster bed. (source MSN)
If only I had known decades ago that the Lab Gallery considered this art; I’d be throwing money around like Cavallaro threw ham.
With five children, are you kidding with this mess for art already? I had petrified peanut butter and jelly sandwiches wedged in the sofa, some with just the slightest hint of mold. Then there was the day Raggedy Ann had a salon wash in the (clean) toilet and was tossed to dry on top of her brother’s comforter. Oh, I almost forgot, the day the mixer regurgitated cake mix on the kitchen walls when one of my budding Martha Stewarts lifted it out of the batter just to watch “those little wiggley things” in action.
But, enough of what could have been.
Today, Cavallaro is best known for the six-foot chocolate sculpture display that was shut down in midtown-Manhattan’s Roger Smith Hotel where it was to be featured: 200 pounds of milk chocolate shaped into a nude, anatomically correct, crucified Jesus. He entitled it, “My Sweet Lord.”
The chocolate was donated by the San Francisco based Theo Chocolate Company (theo as in the obrommin cacao or “Fruit of the Gods”). (source: James Panero, The New Criterion)
This is offensive on so many levels I need an elevator to reach them all. But, let’s start with this. During Christmas, we can’t place baby Jesus, snuggled in his mother’s arms or resting in the hay, anywhere near what might be a public building. The Ten Commandments hanging, but no.
The 6-foot sculpture was the victim of “a strong-arming from people who haven’t seen the show, seen what we’re doing,” Matt Semler said. “They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions.” He also said he thought it was a “natural representation of Jesus.” Semler, the creative director resigned in protest.
Semler’s Bible must be made by the Godiva factory if he thinks that’s a natural representation of Jesus. I’d love to be a fly on the wall of heaven if and when Semler has an opportunity to see Jesus’ natural representation. Oh, what fun.
I have to say, though, that death threats made to the artist and others at the hotel are certainly not what Jesus would want either. Besides, that would totally destroy Bennigan’s ever being able to keep their “Death by Chocolate” on the menu ; a dessert that can send you into a choco-coma in minutes.
This Christmas, I’m going to mold my entire nativity scene out of chocolate, and I’m going to that hotel.
