Label Collection: Anathemayonnaise

Much as we did not think it possible in this here world (perhaps in the next one, provided one gets sent to the place down below…), it turned out that there did exist a Mayonnaise still worse than Heinrich Hamker (see F13.) and Uncle William (E12.), for both of which I warned you a few weeks ago. It was this liquid concoction from a supermarket in a Spanish village north of here by the name of Brion.

E82. Froiz. Brion, August 2009. € 0,85 for 450 ml.

Let me tell you the story of how I can by it. In the summer of 2009 I happened to be participating in the town’s yearly plastic art-festival (yes, dear reader: I paint… and I dare say with considerable success: my expressionist ready-mades are still the talk of the town during every reunion of the 1959 Venice biennale!) One afternoon the hotel kitchen was closed. I felt a little peckish. So I took a walk to the next intersection where they assured me I would find a bakery for bread and a supermarket for Mayo. I found them both. I bought a wonderful, steaming baguette. In keeping with my habit, I bought the supermarket’s own house brand Mayo for the label collection… And I paid the price for my dedication! It was awful. It was disgusting. It made you gag, and retch, and consider suicide, and plan re-education camps in the deepest frozen depths of Siberia for sauce manufacturers and their entire families. In short, dear reader: it was Anathemayonnaise! I could not consume even a single spoonful of this stuff!

You will not be surprised to hear that I found another use for it. After all, I am an inventive man and I learned the tricks of the trade from good old Pablo P., who used to say that one should never let a good catastrophe go to waste (which is why he painted the Guernica). So I mixed onto a single canvas ink, sand, and this Mayo, let it dry, covered it all in superglue, let it dry again, sprinkled it with oxen blood, let it dry, and then daubed it in petrol, set fire to it, extinguished it quickly, froze the painting, and defroze it in a blazing oven, and then planted mustard seeds in the available fissures of the surface.

Three days of watering it and it turned into a masterpiece (see the illustration for a detail), which I then offered to the supermarket in question as a homage to their brand name. Unfortunately they refused buy it. Which shows you that even they didn’t like their own mayo. Need I say more? Avoid this brand, dear reader, at all cost!