In 2010, the year he turned 80, the artist Daniel Spoerri returned to Romania, the country he had left at the age of 12. Among his many discoveries was the local custom of picnicking in cemeteries. “Romanians eat with their dead,” Spoerri remarked in a 2015 biopic, gazing at a photograph he had brought back from his visit of a dining table next to a grave.
The image might have been of one of his own works. In 1983, Spoerri had organised an al fresco dinner for 120 guests in a town outside Paris. As they ate, a nearby crane dug a trench the same size as the dining table. Halfway through the meal, diners were asked to remove their place settings – plates, glass and cutlery – and lower them into the 40-metre ditch, which was then filled in with earth. The performance was called Le Déjeuner sous l’Herbe, a play on the title of the famous Manet painting.
