Footnotes

PROVENANCE
The Lucio's Collection, Sydney

LITERATURE
Stephen Bann and Anthony Bond, John Beard, Hardie Grant Books, Sydney, 2011, p. 289 (illus.)

It has been said that the painter Pierre Bonnard sought first and foremost to paint the savour of things, to recover their savour.

Looking does not necessarily mean seeing (as eating and drinking do not necessarily mean tasting). To see something is to explore it visually. Prolonged looking leads to seeing more, understanding and enjoying more – what Bonnard spoke of as 'the pleasure of seeing and its rewards'. It is an act of intelligent seeing.

Lucio's is an intelligent restaurant, perfectly blending feeling, thought and action. It is about a confirmation of structure and purpose that has evolved from experience and an understanding of the past. Tradition and skills are re-enacted here and magically fused with new ideas (respectfully muted when appropriate) to give definition to our own contemporary palate. It is not about a search for novelty, but about an elevation of spirit and conscience which we can discern by the manner in which an idea is realised and presented by us.

I am reminded of a definition of research by Chambers, the eighteenth-century composer-musicologist: 'Research, in music, is a kind of prelude or voluntary wherein the composer seems to search or look out for the strains or touches of harmony which he is to use in the regular piece to be played afterwards.' This seems appropriate to the working sensibilities that emanate from Lucio's kitchen, where what is created and prepared serves to educate as well as to delight us. The experience cultivates a greater awareness of sensory wonder and stimulates our receptivity towards aesthetic well-being. We leave the restaurant fulfilled in a complete sense rather than full in a sense that is basic.

The intervals or spaces between our active tasting and consumption are the intervals that establish the condition for a contemplative reflection on what we have experienced, or how the ordinary became extraordinary. Away from the restaurant we recall from memory our sensual inscriptions. It is the space between all things as well as the things themselves. It is what Mondrian meant when he said his goal was to undermine the distinction between foreground and background in painting. He wanted, he said, 'to give painting a holistic object-like quality of its own'.

Returning to Lucio's is an act of confirmation – a means of rediscovery rather than an act of repetition. It cultivates the pleasure of discernment, a means by which we are able to measure and compare. It is somewhat akin to looking at Bonnard, or listening to Monteverdi, or reading Rilke – you have to do it often, a process that synthesises our knowing. It is the 'blood remembering' within us that created a state of delicious anticipation for the next encounter.

John Beard, 1999
The Art of Food at Lucio's