It’s the last day to devour the painting of an artist-painter. Literally. This Friday, March 18, the gastro-artistic festival of Culinary Fine Arts ends in Normandy. For a week, Norman chefs pushed the doors of museums in the region to set up their stoves. With a challenge: to recompose the paintings of painters on the plate.
A fun way to desecrate museums. In Cherbourg, chef François Eustace was invited in front of primary school pupils to recompose on the plate a work by Guillaume Fouace, a painter from Cotentin. “It’s a black color, it has no taste, it’s just to color and to make a foam that reminds the rock that can be found on the canvas”, he comments. Facing him, the children try to make connections between the master’s canvas and the chef’s cuisine. “I like shellfish, leeks, I like everything”enjoys a young boy.
This artistic experience is intended as a gateway to the world of culture. “The museum can also be a place of exchange. It’s not just a place where you don’t have the right to touch or speak. Indeed, you don’t touch the works, but somewhere you can touch differently with the culinary fine arts. We touch them with our eyes, with our taste buds. It’s an enrichment. It’s very important to show the museum in this light“, says Michelle Mollo, head of public service at the Thomas-Henry museum in Cherbourg.
Bustling above his small mobile kitchen, François Eustace sees himself again at the age of the children facing him. “It really brings back memories of my youth, what I was able to experience with my parents, my family, when I returned from fishing”.
Like him, other chefs got their hands dirty, imagining themselves holding a brush. Chef David Lecoeur cooked within the walls of the Charles-Léandre museum in Condé, and the chefs Marina Cazet and Julie Boucy respectively awakened the taste buds of the Epoxy museum in Rouen and the Fine Arts museum in Saint-Lô.
Culinary Fine Arts are held in various museums in Normandy until Friday, March 18. Information on the event website.