Artwork of the month August

Paul Neagu, Cake-Man, 1971

Paul Neagu

* 1938 in Bucharest, Romania, † 2004 in London, Great Britain


Cake-Man, 1971


B/W photograph
25,3 x 24 cm
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz

 

Two assembled black-and-white photographs taken in 1971 for the exhibition "Romanian Art Today" depict the artist Paul Neagu in the basement of the Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland.

We see Neagu chalking a human body on the ground. The figure is divided into eighty little cube-like compartments. A looping arrow points to the model for the drawing: eighty stencils of cardboard, plaster and adhesive tape for the cells that make up the shape of a body when pieced together.

These stencils served the artist as aids for the Cake-Man performance which he had staged a few months previously on the premises of London gallerist Sigi Krauss. Neagu filled each of the eighty cells with five layers of honey and waffles cut to the size of the stencils and made on site. Each of the visitors who had registered ahead of the event was given a specific cell to eat during the performance.

The starting point for this performance is a body of works which Neagu describes as Anthropocosmos. In these works the human figure is divided and broken up into a honeycomb of cells. The cellular layers exist as separately tangible and dissolve the solid visual outline of the human form, that nevertheless continues to run through them.

In his Palpable Art Manifesto from 1969, Neagu demanded that any consideration of art be based upon all sensory perceptions: sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing.

This enabled Neagu to create his own mental system of ordering to combine his richly varied creations with each other. The participatory Cake-Man is a particularly vivid example that also suggests associations with the Eucharist and erstwhile folk traditions. Romanians, for example, often celebrated the anniversary of a person's death with honey cake and mead.

Henrik Utermöhle

 

«Let there be one, public, palpable art through which all the senses, sight, touch, smell, taste will supplement and devour each other so that a man can possess an object in every sense.»

Paul Neagu, Palpable Art Manifesto, 1969

<b>Paul Neagu, Cake-Man, 1971</b>
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein highlights a work from the permanent collection each month throughout the year. Works from the collection of the Hilti Art Foundation are also included in this series on a regular basis.