Dialektyka kuchni
Banquets and Leftovers

Summary/Abstract: The kitchen is situated next to the reception rooms and is often separated from them so as to avoid all contact with cooking smells and repellent leftovers. This is the domain of a sui generis dialectic of attraction and repulsion, since although the kitchen is a hinterland of the banquet it becomes crowded with guests who wish to take a break from the elegance of the sitting room. The kitchen also attracts many contemporary artists. The author of this text concentrated on examples of artistic activity pursued far from the space of art sanctified by tradition. An artist’s entry into a kitchen is an act of contesting traditional divisions into art and life, overstepping conventions, leaving the stage, and vanishing in the wings. Artists cook for assorted reasons. They reach for food because they seek a convenient binder of a temporary community, stand up for women “imprisoned” in kitchens, seek new fields for beauty or, on the contrary, challenge traditional aesthetic values.

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