Word: documenta
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...become friends after being seated together at the gala dinner for the TIME 100 of 2004, of which Ferran was one. Since then, Ferran Adria has become an even more popular and influential global cultural figure. He has been hailed as an artist at Germany's prestigious Documenta arts festival in Kassel, and at Harvard he was rubbing elbows with some of the world's leading scientists. (On Wednesday, he signed an "understanding" with the University's Materials Research center to work on college courses and a book on science and culinary creativity). He's even done a turn...
...course meals the object of countless gastronomic pilgrimages, its 8,000 reservations per season snapped up in a single day, its edible foams and spheres part of the current culinary vocabulary. But since its famous chef, Ferran Adrià, was named a featured artist in this year's edition of Documenta, the provocative contemporary-art show held every five years in Kassel, Germany, El Bulli has become the focus of a lively debate about the aesthetic value of avant-garde cuisine. Suddenly art critics and foodies alike are scrutinizing the gin fizz that manages to be simultaneously hot and cold...
...aren't saying that cooking is a new art form," says Ruth Noack, Documenta's curator. "We're saying that Ferran Adrià shows artistic intelligence." That distinction is lost on Spanish artists, who feel underrepresented at Documenta and have long toiled in obscurity even as Spanish chefs became international superstars. Others complain that the move signals the banalization of Documenta. "Both Adrià's participation and contribution seem ridiculous to me," sniffed the great art critic Robert Hughes, adding that "food is food." Adrià counters that his critics don't understand what he does or his role in the art show...
...lucky Charlies who win golden tickets to the Chocolate Factory, Adrià is an enthusiastic Willy Wonka. "This is the most beautiful thing I've done," he says about hosting the Documenta visitors. "You have to see their faces to understand it." Although Adrià is quick to point out that other media like photography encountered artistic resistance when they were introduced, he prefers to stay out of the debate over whether what he does is art. "That's for other people to decide. Cooking is cooking. And if it exists alongside art, that's wonderful...
...they hadn't been invited to El Bulli by Documenta, the Flögels would have been set back nearly $500 for dinner. When it was over, Franziska, an architect, and Gerhard, a civil engineer, had succumbed to Adrià's peculiar magic. "This is a new way to create taste," said Gerhard. "When you're here, it's clear that it's art." Perhaps. But by the time the Flögels worked their way through those 33 dishes, such abstract questions faded into insignificance. They filed out after midnight with childlike smiles of wonder on their faces. For Adrià, their response...