Butter und butterähnliche Speisefette als Material von Kunst- und Kulturobjekten

Abstract

Butter and butter-like edible fats as material for art and cultural objects
The article provides an overview of the use of butter and its surrogates as a material for the creation of three-dimensional cultural objects and works of art in selected geographical regions from the Middle Ages to the present. In Buddhist Tibet, for instance, yak butter is traditionally used in sacred ceremonies as fuel for sacrificial lamps, while dyed butter serves as a decorative element for sacrificial cakes and for forming mandalas. The butter sculptures known since the 15th century for the Buddhist Mönlam festival are particularly elaborately designed. In the Western world, sculptures made of butter have been used as decoration for aristocratic table banquets from the Renaissance to the Baroque period. After that, butter sculptures only appeared again at the end of the 19th century, mainly in North America, as advertising and marketing objects of the dairy industry. In the fine arts, edible fats have been used as a material since the 1960s, with Joseph Beuys making the most consequent use of fats in his work genesis. The contemporary artist Sonja Alhäuser, for example, creates baroque-like sculptures made of butter. Presented in refrigerated display cases, they Show the transience and fragility of the material.