Food As Art Research
Is there a better way that we can follow to evaluate art value for food? The article “Can Food Be Art” is written by Sara Davis, she basically wants to tell the reader to explore the aesthetic value of what people eat. She has pointed out in the very beginning to the article, most of people identify works of art with their own sense and understand, and they would often to say “I will know whether it is or is not a art when I see it”. From her point of view, she claimed that it is hard just to define whether food is or is not an art, because we might just miss the point and the judgment we made about art will be unsound. Basically, we were wrong at the beginning by asking ‘is food art’; instead, we should ask whether food could be crafted with art value. Different people have different cognitive response to what they have seen and how they would feel. We see and hear and taste every day, we rely on our personal sense to guide our thoughts and feelings. Then we make our own conclusion whether we like or dislike the food we had. The example she gave in the article about when she returned back from a long trip and saw the homemade left-over in the fridge, she could recall memory of the lovely moment which she was surprised and being loved by her neighbor. She concluded that the question of ‘is food art’ does not matter any more, because you will know it when you eat it.
Telfer said that an art form is a type of work of art, a class to which works of art in a similar medium belong (18). So if dishes of food are works of art, then food is an art form. She tends to give a meaning of food and a conclusion of food whether it is art. When we are talking about the food, there are many general questions can be asked to the public, “have you ever been to a really fancy restaurants?” The answer would be either yes or no. Then you can ask, “why did you chose to go there?” Up to this point, I believe different people would come up with different answers. Maybe is because this restaurant have the best food in town, or their food look so good and must be tasted good, etc. I think most of people will experience a situation that you will have a kind of thought “this case was so beautiful that it would be a shame to eat it”. In Telfer’s article, she called this is a reaction to an aesthetic subject. “We naturally associate the word ‘aesthetic’ with the arts, but we can also speak of an aesthetic reaction to natural things such as a beautiful landscape, or to man-made, non-art objects” (9). In most of time, human beings’ reactions to food are drawn by its smells and visual appearances first. Nowadays, people could not only to make food faster with better taste, but also to make food look good. Unlike art that hangs in a gallery or in a museum, food cannot last long. Food must be consumed before it goes bad. People go to museums or galleries to see art works and they will enjoy what they have seen. Many food artists nowadays would ‘save’ their works by taking photos of them. They take photos of their works to make them to be a ‘permanent’ art before they are eaten. If you haven’t had this experience, I will suggest that you go to a fancy restaurant and order a nice meal; you will find that the visual enjoyment of food and consumption of a delicious meal can excite the senses just like any permanent work of art.
After reading Sara’s article, I have many thoughts came to my mind. I like the conclusion she made at the end, and left readers with a thought they could carry on. As Ellen has claimed in her article, her palaeoanthropsychobiological view is that “in order to include human history, human cultures, and human psychology, art must be viewed as an inherent universal or biological trait of the human species” (15). Art is a normal and necessary behavior of human beings and it does not have a particular meaning. Human beings should be encouraged to develop their own understanding and feeling about art. We live in a changing world, and ways in which we talk, exercise, play, work, social, learn and love might change as well. We can give different meaning to them as we can apply this logic to define what art really is. As I think of food, it can be a battery, a transportation and an inspiration for myself and help me to live in a better live. We should learn to appreciate food, and we will see the ‘aesthetic’ beauty within it.
Dissanayake, E. (1991). What is art for? In K. C. Caroll (Ed.). Keynote adresses 1991 (NAEA Convention), (pp.15-26). Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.
Telfer, E. (2002). Food as art. In Neill, A. & Ridley, A (Eds.), Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates (2 ed., pp. 9-27). New York: Routledge.
Davis, S (2012, December). Can Food Be Art? [On-Line The Smart Set From Drexel University] Retrieved October 26, 2013 from http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article12061201.aspx