For a recent review in Mutual Art, Michael Pearce discusses Iconophages: A History of Ingesting Images by Jérémie Koering. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt appears below:

“Koering promptly reminds his readers of customary and innocent instances of eating images – gingerbread men, cakes cast as figurative portraits, marzipan figures of Santa Claus – and suddenly the light of inquiry shines upon these gentle cultural phenomena. We are what we eat. But what images are we eating, and why?

It’s a charming idea for an art history. There is a bite-sized hole in Western culture left by edible art, an unexamined lacuna which Koering characterizes as a sort of communion – when art is made to be eaten, it is not art, but a representation of art, and eating it is to become it. This destruction is not iconoclasm, as much of this art is deliberately made for the purpose, created to be consumed, the act of ingestion an affirmation of the representation.”