Batali Breaks Down Bunnies, Smashes Piñata at Brooklyn Ball

Last night at the Brooklyn Museum's annual Brooklyn Ball, food artist/caterer Jennifer Rubell presented "Icons," a participatory performance art and dinner gala. It featured Champagne fountains inspired by Marcel Duchamp; eight "drinking paintings" with spigots poking through the canvas that delivered guests their cocktails; heads molded out of cheese suspended in the air surrounded by heat guns, causing them to drip onto crackers below; and 700 blank paint tubes filled with dips and spreads.

For the main course, guests had to carve their own rabbits, turkeys, pigs, and beef, and the event ended with a "fashion forward" carnival in the museum lobby, complete with a 20-foot tall Andy Warhol head piñata.

A Video of Batali hitting a giant piñata and breaking the bat. >>