Summary:
The article starts off by the author, an artist, telling the reader that she spends one to two hours a night cooking and wonders whether she is wasting her time. She then realizes that she uses quite a bit of creativity while cooking and realizes that food is a form of art. She then uses the rest of the article to explain to the reader why food is a form of art.

Analysis:
These two articles take two different perspectives on determining whether food is a form of art. Throughout the article that I examined, they were constantly giving real life examples about why food is art. I found this interesting because the article talked about chefs who did things like “[create] elaborate installations using cupcakes” and created an “unlimited ocean” which “was a grid of 30,000 piles of rice” (Strycker 1). The article also gave examples of museums that had interactive exhibits where “members of the community [would] bring fruit and collaborate with one another to make jams” (Strycker 1).

Although there were some areas of overlap, I felt like our assigned reading tried to use hard evidence to prove that food is a form of art rather than showing us like my article. Tefler take a bunch of different points of view and theories and proves to the reader why food is a form of art. An example of this is when she writes, “I have so far discussed cookery as an art, but perhaps cookery is a craft. So we need to know what the difference is between art and craft” (Tefler 15). The author then goes on to break down each point and prove why food is an art and not a craft. Although this quote does not directly show why food is an art, it reveals the theme of the paper and how the author uses each page to slowly prove her point of food being an art.

The areas that stood out the most to me where these two articles over lapped is that food has the ability to draw more emotions and engage more senses than other pieces of artwork. The article that I selected does a good job describing this when the author says, “And perhaps more than any other discipline, food has the ability to appeal to all of our senses—a combination of colors, textures, crunches, smells and tastes goes into the making of a meal” (Strycker 1). It is amazing to think that experiencing food is able to bring together so many of your senses. I personally believe that this is what makes food so great. Teflers also discusses how she enjoys the combination of the different senses while eating food when she says, “I like the way cottage cheese contrasts in flavor and texture with rye bread” (Tefler 10). Tefler also argues in her article how food allows for someone to not only experience the five senses but also pleasure. The reason both of these articles bring up this point is because food is unlike any other form of art. A person is allowed to activate more senses with food than they can from a painting. Furthermore, there is a lot more to food than the taste and the way it looks. In my chosen article, the author writes, “These chefs aren’t just cooking inventive and delicious cuisine. They are also using food to tell stories, conjure memories, and to establish philosophies, such as a connection between cooking, community and sustainability” (Strycker 1). Although the food itself may be transient, this quote demonstrates how there are many more aspects to food that will last much longer. Tefler backs up the idea that food has much more meaning to it than people realize when she says, “it can symbolize a nation’s way of life and traditions” (Tefler 25).
To conclude, I just wanted to say that this week has been a very interesting week while trying to decipher if food is a form of art. For each item that I have written this week, I have gained a new perspective on food being art. I especially enjoyed the contrast between the two articles above because I felt like they go hand in hand. After reading both of those article, I can now say with certain that I consider food to be a form of art.

References:

Tefler, E. (2002). Food as Art. In Neill, A. & Riley, A. (eds.) Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates (2nd ed., Chap. 2). New York, NY: Routledge.

Strycker, J. (2013, January 7). From Palate to Palette: Can Food be Art? Retrieved February 2, 2015, from http://createquity.com/2013/01/from-palate-to-palette-can-food-be-art/

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.