The futurist banquet: Nouvelle cuisine or performance art? Futurist experiment with culinary theatre

The Futurist movement was not only an artistic but also a social and politi cal force for innovation, conceived as a total and permanent revolution enc ompassing all aspects of human life. One such aspect was food. Banquets had been a highly developed performative art in the Italian Renaissance and we re again placed in a theatrical framework by the Futurists after the First World War. They founded three night clubs, where food and drinks were serve d in Futurist fashion, and opened several restaurants dedicated to a renewa l of Italian culinary habits. In the 1930s, the Futurists focused on the cr eation of a new lifestyle called aerovita, which included cooking and dinin g as paratheatrical arts. Many of the recipes(or rather scenarios) in the F uturist cookbook La cucina futurista of 1932 derived from banquets that Mar inetti, the driving force of Futurism, had organized as a kind of savory-ol factory-tactile theatre accompanied by music and poetry recitations. The hi ghly imaginative table scenery and food sculptures were complemented by inv entive lighting effects and an amazing mise en scene of interior decor, fur niture, and waiters' garb. This essay describes and analyzes some of the Fu turist experiments with culinary theatre, the manifestos dedicated to Futur ist cuisine, and some of the Futurist concepts of dining as a performative art.