By Edwin van Meerkerk
It just slipped my tongue, honestly. During a talk for elementary school teachers and directors, I was talking about what we do when we teach art and why we should do it. Since many people think that teaching art in foundational education (primary and secondary schools) should have the same cognitive structure as other school subjects: from simple to complex, from concrete to abstract, their intuition is to treat figurative art to younger children and abstract art to older pupils. Art doesn’t work that way. On the contrary, a twelve-year old will often feel embarrassed when confronted with abstract art (as with many other things at that age), and will be less anxious with figurative art. In kindergarten, on the other hand, kids are usually very open, curious, and investigative towards abstract art.
I should have stopped there, but I didn’t. I went on to give an example and somehow, Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematistic Black Square came to mind. And while this is indeed a fine example of a work of art that will trigger the imagination of five-year olds, I did not have any reason to suggest that these young children might think ‘Can I lick it?’ Yet I did. Not giving my slip of the tongue (there it is again!) much thought, I continued my talk and answered questions from the audience afterwards, just like any other time. When it was over, one of the participants came up to me and told me that they had made a note of my licking remark. Spot on, they said.
I could have left it at that, patted myself on the back for an inadvertent flare of brilliance, but it made me think of the infant impulse of licking a painting. Why don’t we even consider the taste of a painting, a statue, the smell of a musical instrument, the mouthfeel of a stage prop? Even as we have been discussing embodied art, embodied experience, embodied learning for years now, our taste and smell are disconnected from our artistic experience.
Malevich himself loved curd dumplings with sour cream and I do not need to dive deep in my memory to imagine the taste, smell, and mouthfeel of this Ukrainian delicacy. This imaginary capacity is never triggered by any other cultural expression, not even when I can rationally deduce a smell (dancer’s sweat), taste (oil paint), or mouthfeel (a clarinet reed). And while the latter example is simply a demonstration of my utter lack of musical training, this is precisely what made me think when I inadvertently suggested having a desire to lick a painting.
There is, of course, the discipline of food art, a brief fashion a couple of years back, with Dave Edwards’ ‘Le whif’, breathable chocolate, as one of its creative and inspiring examples. But this discipline has now receded to the margins of the art world. Yet the edible elephant is still standing in the room, looking as tasty as before. So where do we go from here? Real change, I firmly believe, starts from the ground. So here is a call to all arts and culture students: whenever one of your lecturers mentions, plays or shows a work of art: ask them what it tastes like.
References
Olga Koutseridi (2025) Cherry Varenyky. https://www.seriouseats.com/cherry-varenyky-recipe-11777084.
Aleksandra Semenovna Shatskikh (2012) Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism. New Haven: Yale University Press.
