43
Warhol’s recipes
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
YOUNGSTOWN
The late artist Andy Warhol was known for his ability to read the pulse of American culture.
An exhibition of his work coming to The Butler Institute of American Art also demonstrates his ability to roast it.
“Wild Raspberries” is the name of the exhibit and cookbook spoof that Warhol and his friend Suzie Frankfurt created in 1959.
The handmade, limited-edition cookbook makes fun of middle- and upper-class New Yorkers of the era who had an obsession with elaborate French food and elegant dinner parties.
Frankfurt had described the project as a knock-off of the complicated French gourmet cookbooks that were in vogue in the ’50s. It includes recipes for 25 comical dishes — including Seared Roebuck. Frankfurt created the recipes, and Warhol illustrated them.
Susan M. Rossi-Wilcox is the curator of the exhibition, which opened at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh in 2008. She will give a gallery talk at 2 p.m. Sunday during the opening reception, which begins at 1 p.m.
Matt Wrbican, Warhol museum archivist, collaborated on the exhibition.
“‘Wild Raspberries’ is usually considered simply a joke, but its wit is quite sophisticated when seen in its own time,” he said in a press release from the museum when the exhibition premiered. “To start, the title is a pun on the contemporary film ‘Wild Strawberries.’”
The 25 recipes are parodies of dishes that represent every course of a meal. The exhibition is organized accordingly: drinks first, then dinner and dessert.
“The great French chefs named extravagant dishes after celebrities,” said Rossi-Wilcox in the same press release. “The book’s combination of celebrities of the ’50s such as Dorothy Kilgallen and Cecil Beaton with ridiculous-sounding [but accurate] antiquated cooking terms blends culinary history with the guilty pleasure of celebrity-watching.”
Rossi-Wilcox describes herself as a culinary historian who came to learn a lot about Warhol through “Wild Raspberries.”
“This is one of [Warhol’s} more blatant examples of using satire parody, but in a lot of his work, he is making trenchant statements about the times,” she said in a phone interview with The Vindicator. In “Wild Raspberries,” she said, Warhol takes the text of a well-regarded cookbook by master French chef Escoffier and tweaks it with sarcasm and wit.
Rossi-Wilcox, who was the curator of the botanical museum at Harvard University, became interested in “Wild Raspberries” after she learned that it is based on the work of Escoffier. She received permission from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh to go through its archives. The museum soon after asked Rossi-Wilcox to curate an exhibition on Warhol’s pseudo cookbook.
In addition to the cookbook, the exhibition includes related materials, including a screened print of one of Warhol’s famed soup cans. Illustrations from the era and photos of celebrities taken by Warhol also will be on display.
The Butler has painted the gallery hosting “Wild Raspberries” shocking pink for the run of the exhibition.