Completing this assignment was thought provoking for me and it required a lot of thinking before I could answer the questions. The reason for this is because I am someone who loves food. I love eating but I also get great enjoyment from trying new foods. However when I think of food, I think of slow food. Whenever I travel, the number one thing on my to-do list is always trying the local food. So after much thought, I came to the conclusion that food is a form of art. It is a craft like any other that people spend their whole lives trying to master. One thing that makes food so special is that you can admire its preparation and aesthetic look but you can also get a more personal experience when you actually taste the food. In the reading, Tefler says, “Aesthetic reaction is a pleasant reaction to something. But it will not do as it stands. An aesthetic reaction need not be a favorable one, and even where it is, pleasure may not be the right characterization of it” (Tefler 10). I think this quotation summarized food perfectly. When you look at food you might get a “pleasant reaction” or appreciate what you see but I think it is hard to fully experience food and gain pleasure by just looking. In order to get pleasure, you must actually try the dish. If you walk past a wedding cake, you might say that looks “nice” but you won’t get pleasure until you try it. This is why the author says pleasure may not be the correct word for aesthetics.

In addition, I found the multimedia portion of the assignment to be interesting. If we consider food to be art, someone might say, ‘how is fast food art?’ After watching the YouTube videos I can see how someone might think that something such as fast food can never be art. The man in the video went into great detail about fast food and all of the chemicals that can be found in the food. He also went on to talk about the rather gross way the food is prepared. Initially I would agree with those people that fast food is not art but then I started to think more; is there not creativity in the way the food is prepared and how McDonalds can make the Big Mac taste the same anywhere in the world? I also started to compare it to a ‘typical’ art form such as drawing. If I go to a restaurant and get a coloring sheet with the outline already printed on the paper and color it in with my crayons that I am given, is that not considered art? I would consider that art. Therefore I think the way that the fast food companies are creating their food is very similar. The food is already close to being premade and all you need to do is add a few steps in order to complete the preparation process. Although this might not be the prettiest art, which is how some people view the crayon coloring sheets, it is still its own unique form of art.

Lastly, I think the theory that describes food the best is Modernism. Dissanayake describes modernism when she writes, “A concern with elucidating principles such as taste and beauty that govern all the arts and indeed make them not simply painting or statues but examples of (fine) art” (Dissanayake 17). Modernism reveals that art can be more than your ‘typical’ art styles. It can be defined as many things. However I think the part that stands out the most to me from that sentence are the words “taste and beauty.” Food has taste from through its flavors and beauty from the way it is presented. Both of these elements represent Modernism.

References
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.