Lick and Lather

Have you ever wished you could eat a piece of art? What about bathing with one? Well, this artist decided to do both. Janine Antoni is a fascinating contemporary artist who uses everyday tasks as her canvas and her body as her tool. Lick and Lather is a captivating piece that captures Janine Antoni's style in a fascinating way.

What’s the story

Lick and Lather is a sculptural series created by Janine Antoni in 1993 [figure 1]. It is a series of fourteen busts, seven molded out of chocolate and seven molded out of soap. These busts are self-portraits that Antoni slowly changed after they were fully sculpted. With the chocolate busts, Antoni chewed and ate pieces off and Antoni bathed with the soap busts, slowly taking away from the original portraits. Each bust is unique in how it was altered. Some busts are missing small pieces like their noses or other facial features. Others are completely flattened at the top or missing their features entirely. In this way, these busts are still self-portraits but they also begin to challenge the idea of how we see ourselves within the context of our lives.

[Figure 1] Janine Antoni, Lick and Lather, 1993, chocolate and soap, 60.96 x 40.64 x 33.02cm (24 x 16 x 13in), National Gallery of Art, East Building, Washington D.C. — [Figure 1] Janine Antoni, *Lick and Lather*, 1993, chocolate and soap, 60.96 x 40.64 x 33.02cm (24 x 16 x 13in), National Gallery of Art, East Building, Washington D.C.

Antoni's works often consisted of organic materials, and Lick and Lather is no different. She often used chocolate in her works to represent desire [figure 2]. For most people, chocolate is often a desire. It tastes good, appeases the sweet tooth, and if given as a gift, implies love and care. We desire all of the connotations of chocolate; food, contentment, and love. More often than chocolate, though, Antoni uses soap, or sometimes lard, to create sculptures [figure 3]. Soap, in this instance, is a stand-in for beauty. When we are looking to find beauty within ourselves, it is implied that the best way to do that is by being clean, in every way possible. So, Antoni chose these two mediums because they are things that we want for ourselves or that we want to be.

To begin to dive deeper into the intentions of this work we have to look at Antoni's techniques and her influences. As you can guess from the description of how this work was made, Antoni created her works from everyday activities. In this case, those activities were eating and bathing. She uses these activities, that most people do daily as both the art and the method through which the art is created. In this way, everyday activities become moments of awe, instead of moments of normalcy, because the products of these activities are more noticeable as art. Antoni seeks to draw our focus to the purpose and outcomes of activities that we would normally see as mundane. She also uses the body as her tool. Now, this is an interesting interpretation of an artist’s expression. For Lick and Lather, Antoni used her teeth and her body, but she has also used her hair, her eyelashes, and other body parts to create her work of art. Antoni has said that she does this so that every viewer can begin to empathize with her process. We all have bodies, so we can begin to understand what it would feel like to gnaw on a large block of chocolate or bathe with another object in the bath. For us, this may just be a king sized chocolate bar and a bottle of shampoo, but we can begin to identify with the feelings as well as the presentation of the sculptures. This leads to the bigger that Antoni seems to be asking with this work. How do you relate to your own physical appearance? Do you want to gnaw on it to change its appearance? Maybe you wish to wash away some part of yourself. Either way, these busts are much more personal than they first appear, for both artist and viewer [figure 4].

[Figure 4] Janine Antoni, Lick and Lather, details, 1993, chocolate and soap, 60.96 x 40.64 x 33.02cm (24 x 16 x 13in), National Gallery of Art, East Building, Washington D.C. — [Figure 4] Janine Antoni, *Lick and Lather, details*, 1993, chocolate and soap, 60.96 x 40.64 x 33.02cm (24 x 16 x 13in), National Gallery of Art, East Building, Washington D.C.

As far as influences, Antoni has said that she was heavily influenced by the art of the 70s and the Minimalist movement within her career. We can see that a bit in Lick and Lather because it is a sculptural series alone. The busts are all identical, apart from their alterations, and therefore, are somewhat repetitive, which lends to Minimalism. Another influence for this work alone was Greek sculpture. Antoni has said that she chose to do seven heads of each material because the classical proportions for the height of a female body were equivalent to the height of seven female heads. This connection to classical Greek art also makes sense because classical art sought perfection. It is characterized by idealized busts and statues, which is what Antoni started with. However, she turned away from the idealized bust and altered them. This alludes to the idea that human beings searched for perfection for a very long time and have only recently begun to realize that we cannot search for perfection or create it, we can only appreciate, and work with, what we have.

Who is the artist

Janine Antoni was born in Freeport, the Bahamas in 1964. She went to Sarah Lawrence for her undergraduate career and got her M.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design. During her graduate career, she began to experiment with using her body as her tool. She even started her duality of chocolate and lard during this time. These works easily fall into the realm of important pieces by female artists during the 70s and 80s. Antoni was influenced by the female artists that came before her and she has continued to influence female artists as she continues her work. Antoni was also inspired by the art of the 70s in general.

Some of Antoni's other works that are noteworthy in understanding the beginning and progression of her career are Gnaw (1992) and Loving Care (1993) [figures 5 and 6].

Why is it important to art history?

This work is a unique piece of art for art history because it challenges the idea of what art can be made of, and how it can be made. Artists are almost never praised for coming up with a new way of creating art. However, artists continue to defy expectations and break boundaries, and therefore they continue to create original works of art that confuse and amuse the audience.

When it comes to Janine Antoni this originality takes form in her techniques but also in her understanding of identity. By slowly taking away from the busts she created for Lick and Lather she is questioning how she feels about herself and if she's ok with disrupting her image for the sake of eating and bathing. Then, she poses this question as a hypothetical for the viewer, would we be ok to alter our appearance for the sake of taking care of ourselves. This work also has to do with identity because it allows the viewer to put themselves in the place of the artist. Antoni purpoesfully used her body as a tool because everyone has a body. So, no matter who the viewer is they can relate to this piece in some way, which is not a common occurrence in portraiture. Antoni gives up the representation of herself to be on the same level as the viewer, which rarely happened before the contemporary art movements.

How can you form your own perspective?

What do you think about this work of art? Do you find it weird? Does it interest you? Are you wondering how long it took Antoni to eat off pieces of seven chocolate busts and bathe with seven soap busts? What response did this work of art get from you? The best part of contemporary art is that it pushes the boundaries and gives you so many more questions to ask. This work is a wonderful mixture of the archaic and the new. It creates a path to the conclusion that the artist wants to lead you to, as the viewer. Can you find it?

The best way to form your own perspective about this work is by contemplating those questions and by trying to respond to Jenine Antoni's question as well. Does using a tool that everyone has - the human body - make a work of art more understandable?

This article was written with the help of the National Gallery of Art's website and content. You can find their discussion of Lick and Lather here.

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