The statue
This is one of my favourite genuine Marmite stories. The sculptor Jeremy Fattorini took 420 jars of a special Champagne-flavoured Marmite (a limited-edition variant, no longer available, do not write in) and sculpted a life-sized version of Rodin’s The Kiss with it, the two embracing figures and all. The finished piece was installed for public viewing in London’s Greenwich Park.
Greenwich Park is the right venue. The Royal Observatory, the Maritime Museum, the rolling Thames-side hill, and now a life-sized Marmite Rodin. Tourists arriving for Greenwich Mean Time got a bonus.
How long it took
Two and a half weeks. Fattorini did most of the modelling work by hand, packing the Marmite into a framework and shaping it the way a sculptor would shape clay. He said in the interviews at the time that it was a good thing he liked the taste, because he was licking his fingers throughout the entire process.
The Champagne-flavoured Marmite, for reference, was a 2008 limited edition that paired the classic yeast extract with a noticeable note of, yes, Champagne. It was an acquired taste even for Marmite lovers. Sculpting two and a half weeks’ worth of it into a Rodin must, by the end, have done some quiet violence to Fattorini’s palate.
Why this is, actually, charming
The sensible reaction to “someone has sculpted Rodin’s The Kiss out of Marmite” is to roll one’s eyes at yet another brand stunt. But the stunt itself is too sincere to dismiss. A real sculptor, doing real sculpting work, with a recognisable piece of fine art as the source material. Not a Marmite jar made to look like a statue, which would be the lazy version. An actual statue, the right scale, the right pose, made out of Marmite.
The thing was reportedly hard to keep upright in warm weather (Marmite, as anyone who has left a jar in the sun knows, does soften), and it was eventually dismantled. No-one ate any of it on aesthetic principle, although there were jokes about it.
What is left of it
Photographs. A small piece of British advertising history. The good question, when one thinks of Marmite stunts, of “was that real or did I imagine it?”, because of course someone sculpted Rodin’s The Kiss out of Marmite. Of course they did.
The Hate Party would have been unmoved either way.
Source: Marie Claire UK, 2008 coverage.
