Dorothy Iannone: A CookBook

Created in 1969, when Dorothy Iannone was living with Swiss artist Dieter Roth, the Cookbook is a perfect example of how she mixes daily life and an existential approach, culminating in her vision of cooking as an outlet for both eroticism and introspection. A real book of recipes full of visual delights, the Cookbook contains densely decorated pages with patterned designs, packed text, and vibrant colors. Personal sentences are interspersed among the lists of ingredients, revealing the exultations and tribulations of her life between the lines of recipes. Filled with wit and wordplay, associations between aliments and idiosyncratic thoughts—“At least one can turn pain to color” accompanies the recipe for gazpacho; “Dorothy’s spirit is like this: green and yellow,” is written next to the ingredients for lentil soup—the Cookbook constitutes a mundane but essential self-portrait of the artist as a cook and a lover.