Fun on Friday: The Golden Dinner They Called “Art”

I’ve written about gold-covered food here in my Fun on Friday column from time to time. People cover all kinds of foods with gold  — including traditional blue-collar fare such as beer and chicken wings.  I’ve even told you where you can get coffee with real gold mixed into it.

Well, this week I’m going to up my game. How about an entire meal covered in gold? And how about if we call it “art.”

Yes. This is a thing.

It happened in Paris. French artist and performer Frederique Lecerf put on the dinner as a performance art piece.

Yes. Eating gold food is art. Keep in mind here, when I say art, I’m using air quotes. When you use air quotes, you can turn anything into art. Randomly throw paint at a canvas – “art.” Throw sticks in a pile – “art.” Pee in a cup – bingo – “art.”

So, anyway, Lecerf put on this dinner and called it art. It was described as “decadent,” by EuroNews.

“It was part of a wider exhibition at the gallery that celebrated extravagance and exuberance.”

The food was actually pretty simple: chicken, hard-boiled eggs and vegetable crisps. What made the meal special and apparently qualified dinner as “art,” was the fact that all of the food was covered in gold. I’m talking real gold here. The 24-karat kind. There were even gold-covered pastries for dessert.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I love art. But I find the pretension in the art world a bit amusing. Lecerf said she has been putting on these golden dinners since about 2004. She told EuroNews, “She was interested in illustrating the transience of her art through the dinners since nothing remained the next day except the experience.”

Yes! That was exactly what I was thinking when I heard gold-covered dinner — said nobody ever.

And the curators of Vanities Gallery said the idea was to critique the gold market, but at the same time, to show the importance of the material in contemporary art.

What exactly is the critique here? I have no idea. That you can’t have your gold and eat it too? Haven’t they already proved that with cake?

To be fair, maybe I am just not sophisticated enough to “get” it. That’s a legitimate possibility. I tend to be a pretty low-brow kind of guy. Art, after all, is in the eye of the beholder. But in this case, I’m not beholding.

As I’ve said be for, I don’t even really get the whole fascination with eating gold. And it’s a big thing. Not for me though. I certainly want to own gold. I don’t really want to poop gold.

If you are more along my line of thinking, you should call a SchiffGold precious metals specialist. The can sell you the non-edible kind of gold. It might not be “art,” but it can help preserve and grow your wealth.

Fun on Friday is a weekly SchiffGold feature. We dig up some of the off-the-wall and off-beat stories relating to precious metals and share them with you – with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Click here to read other posts in this series.

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