Self-Portrait as a Self-Destructing Chocolate Head
Many of us attending the opening of the New Museum’s “NYC 1993” saw visions of our former selves back in the day, but no one had more selves there than Janine Antoni.
On the second floor, on a row of high plinths, are 14 Antoni heads. These are her famous self-portraits, Lick and Lather, casts made in chocolate and soap that were modeled on classical busts and “re-sculpted” by the processes described in the title.
Standing nearby, Antoni enjoyed watching visitors walk up close to the heads, and smell them.
“There’s not a lot of time between smelling and biting,” concedes the artist, whose heads have been attacked that way on several occasions. “It’s a funny thing when you make pieces about desire and people succumb to their desire.”
Antoni is happy to make replacement heads, which she does using FDA-approved latex molds: “Then I have to re-lick it, which is a bummer.”
Read more at ARTnews.com
Detail of Janine Antoni’s Lick and Lather, 1993.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK.
On view through May 26!