MARIO GARCIA TORRES 'THE EVENING BEFORE THE MORNING AFTER' COCKTAIL NIGHT AT CELESTE BAR, MEXICO CITY

From: Mario Garcia Torres
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:18:41 -0500
Subject: The Evening Before the Morning After

Yo! I am organizing a small show, or gathering, or event-exhibition, or cocktail menu at Celeste Champagne Bar in Mexico City. I proposed to present each month an artist cocktail in the bar, and I would love,- be honored-, if you accept this invitation. I am asking you to send me the recipe or name or whatever of a cocktail that you like, or that you have mixed or customized yourself to be included in this menu, and which would either have your name or a title that you wish to put to it. How does this sound? It would be amazing if you accept to participate. Here is below an intro text that I wrote for it, and that will be printed in our menu. I look very much forward to hear from you.

All my best,
MGT

PS: In case you feel lost on this cocktail world as I was not too long ago, I invite you to enter into it through the Mixilator: http://www.cocktaildb.com/mixilator

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The Evening Before the Morning After
Thursday August 25, 2011
Celeste Champagne Bar

Alcohol (as well as drugs) consumption has been historically, and most probable mistakenly, connected to a creative act. Yet there has been a number of visual artists that have resort the old idea of drinking and getting drunk to create their work, both as a medium and as its “content” as the English duo Gilbert & George argued with their Drinking Sculptures series where they took pictures of themselves in that very same act. In one of their most iconic works, besides the one which this menu take its title from, is Gordon’s Gin Makes Us Drunk (1972), the couple is seen on a video piece indulging in the mentioned spirit. Similarly, the entire Andy Warhol film Drink (1965) is a long take of the filmmaker Emile de Antonio downing a bottle of whiskey. The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends -I wouldn’t limit it as only such beverage- is the Highest Form of Art (1970), declared Tom Morioni as he inaugurated what now is called a social situation type of artwork.

By chance, and several years before this, the experience of art through a cocktail was extended after the fact, some would say into the morning after. Those who attended the opening of the French artist Yves Klein at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris on April 29, 1959 could acknowledge it. For this exhibition the space had been painted with white enamel and stripped of all objects and furniture except for a white, empty cabinet. The almost bare gallery could not be seen from outside as the windows had been painted blue and the door was covered with a heavy curtain of the same color, and two Republican Guards kept watch over it. Nevertheless the artist had arranged for a specific cocktail made with Gin, Cointreau and Curacao to be served. To the French artist’s delight -who had been painting deep blue monochrome paintings made out of a self invented recipe for such pigment- all who enjoyed the drink eventually found their pee stained blue.

Thinking about this and proposing, again, to use the idea of the cocktail as a medium, or more so to use the mixology that such a drink requires to provoke a specific aesthetic experience, or… maybe just as a decoy to have a good conversation, I have invited a number of artists friends to present their own cocktail, either one that they like, have customized or that have put together themselves. Each month a new cocktails by artists will be presented until a full bar menu is completed. As an honorary place, the menu will open with the historic blue cocktail.

Mario García Torres

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The Klein International Blue by YVES KLEIN
Gin Bombay Sapphire, Curaçao Amerlalis, Cointreau, lemon juice $95.00

Caesar by RODNEY GRAHAM
Clamato, vodka Three Olives, green bean pickle $90.00

The Luis Barragán by PABLO LEÓN DE LA BARRA
Tequila Herradura Blanco blessed by a priest $75.00

Happy Stan by STAN DOUGLAS
Vodka Chopin, tequila Corralejo, lemon juice $135.00

El López by EDUARDO LÓPEZ
Ron Bacardi Blanco, lemon juice, mineral water, ginger syrup, cucumber, mint $70.00

Wendt Up by KONRAD WENDT
Blueberry tea, Black tea, Amaretto Disaronno, Grand Marnier $150.00

Jonathan Johnson by CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLF
Lemon Soda, Rioja La Vendimia Rioja Red Wine, vodka Three Olives $220.00

Luis G. Urbina by ZELIKA GARCÍA
Moet & Chandon Brut Imperial Champagne, vodka Belvedere $360.00

Araki by ARAKI NOBUYOSHI $25.00