From Cookbook to Sculpture: Daniel Spoerri’s Recipe Folder Library (1984–1990) and the Aesthetics of Offal

This paper examines the aesthetics and objecthood of recipes and cookbooks in the visual arts, thereby opening up a new research perspective at the interface between cookbooks and artist books, and filling a gap in existing investigations into Daniel Spoerri (1930–2024), the founder of Eat Art. The focus lies therefore on Spoerri’s so-called Recipe Folder Library (1984–1990) as a cookbook in sculptural form. Published by Francesco Conz in Verona (75 copies printed), it consists of a box with one of the artist’s Tableau Pièges attached to its right side (Fig.1). The box contains ten folders with illustrated cooking instructions by the artist’s colleagues, based on the nose-to-tail principle. These instructions artistically and, in Spoerri’s manner, playfully anticipate a trend that has been polarising and debated in society since the late 1990s in the context of sustainable valorization of the whole animal. Although Spoerri’s Eat Art has already been the subject of insightful analyses, the Recipe Folder Library has not yet been examined in depth. Based on archival research and material aesthetic analyses, that incorporate the complex interplay between form(at) and material, colors, font, and illustration, the paper examines how Spoerri adopted the conventional cookbook format and shaped the process of transformation in the artistic field: Which aspects of “cookbookness” are rejected or embraced by this sculptural work, why and with what goal? The paper argues that the case study opens up space for creative negotiation and critical reflection on (the) disgust associated with the topic of offal.