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Bompas & Parr Remastered The Last Supper :Jotta


Sam Bompas and Harry Parr – gastronomic scientists, jelly architects and food smiths respond to Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, the ultimate piece of food based art history! Bompas & Parr exhibited with jotta and Intel’s Remastered project, which asked artists and designers to re-image artistic masterpieces.

The Last Supper, one of the world’s most famous paintings, has been relentlessly studied, scrutinised and satirised. Bompas & Parr were only interested in what Jesus and the twelve disciples were eating; leavened bread, wine, eel, citrus fruit and herbs. This led them on a quest to uncover and recreate the most exciting, infamous and indulgent last meals in history.

“We wanted to explore some of the more appetising and interesting last suppers.”

Bompas & Parr found three of the most fascinating last suppers to recreate using their extraordinary brand of food design. The duo worked with photographer and graphic designer Ann Charlott Ommedal to capture the styled set. They explored numerous technologies to create the scenes from rapid prototyping on a PC for the jelly mould design, to electric glowing olives and 25 litres of liquid nitrogen.

Last Supper 1: The Titanic

“The story of the Titanic is fascinating. Only two menus survive from the night of 14 April, 1912. The menu from First Class features a jelly for the tenth course.

The guests who tucked into the jelly that night included some of the ship’s most renowned passengers: John Jacob Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim, andIsidor and Ida Straus. Several hours later the Titanic sank, taking 1581 passengers and crew with her.”

Last Supper 2: François Mitterrand
For their next pre-death culinary concoction, Bompas & Parr looked to the former French President François Mitterrand. During his last days, “Mitterrand decided to stop taking medication and concentrate on his last meal, two dozen oysters, capon in cream and roasted ortolan, the tiny songbird that is consumed whole in one large single bite.”

It is illegal to eat the endangered bird, and with good reason. Ortolan are captured alive before their eyes are poked out to disrupt their eating habits. They are then force-fed, before being drowned in Armagnac. It is traditional to cover your head with a napkin when consuming your ortolan. The napkin is used, depending on who you believe, either to keep the delicate aromas in, or to hide the act from the gaze of God.

Last Supper 3: Robert Buell

Finally, Robert Buell, an inmate of Death Row in Ohio ate a single black, unpitted olive for his last meal in hope of an olive tree sprouting from his body as a sign of peace. His corpse went unclaimed by relatives after the execution and his grave has yet to bear the olive tree. We’re not sure how Buell was actually executed, but Bompas & Parr sure did sizzle that olive.

Bompas & Parr design spectacular food experiences often working on an architectural scale with cutting edge technology. Projects explore how the taste of food is altered through synaesthesia, performance and setting. They have designed jelly architecture for Lord Foster, and worked with the likes of Heston Blumenthal and Courvoisier to recreate Victorian dining experiences as well as a glowing jelly installation for San Francisco MOMA.

Orignial Work: The Last Supper 1499 by Leonardo Da Vinci
Original Medium: Painting New Medium:Food design and photography

See all the Remastered works at intel.co.uk/remastered

Bompas & Parr are inviting you to come up with your own personal Last Supper; the most imaginative and interesting concoction for your last ever meal will be selected and then created by Bompas & Parr for you! Visit facebook.com/inteluk to take part.

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