Is food Art? Discussion
I believe that some special food can be art in certain situation. It depends on how people view food, and the definition of art. In the reading, the author wrote that philosopher J. O. Urmsom, he think that art is something we will react aesthetic. As a result, food can be art. Anything is beautiful can be art. Is food beautiful? Different people have different ideas. Sometimes I think that Food is very beautiful, because it looks beautiful.
From Ellen Dissanayake’s essay, the author think that anything which is special is art. Besides, art has very important meanings to human beings. As a result, some food can be art, because sometimes some food is special and may have important meanings to people. For example, the birthday cake has the special meaning for some people. For another example, some dinner may have special meaning for some people, especially, there are many kinds of dinners have different meanings. When the baby born at 100 days, the family should have a big dinner with relatives. When people get married, when people die, when people move in to new house, every time big event happen, people need to invite relatives to have dinner. It depends on the importance of the event, some events may keep some days.
According to my point of view, I don’t think that any food is art. It needs some conditions to become art. First, it should looks beautiful. Second, it should important to people, which can have some special meanings. Third, it may cooked by some famous cook which have special talent.
It is very hard to decide food can be art all the time because with the time goes on, the taste and smell of food will changed, it will hurt the feeling oof aesthetic. Therefore, some design of the food may become art because of the design may not change with the time goes on.
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.become art because of the design may not change with the time goes on.
The author uses examples like, when baby born at 100 days, the family will have a big party with their relatives. To my knowledge, this is a folk custom in China, and it is very interesting. According to Ellen Dissanayake’s essay, she thinks that anything which is special is art, but I don’t believe the food of dinner like people invite relatives to have dinner when they get married, die, or moved in to new house are arts. There are important events, and have special meaning of food, but I don’t think food in these events are arts.
The common with my opinion is not all food is art, just a part of food as art in special situations. With the time goes on, the taste and smell of food will changed, it will hurt the feeling of aesthetic. It is an important point of food as art, but I still confused about “Therefore, some design of the food may become art because of the design may not change with the time goes on”. In my view, whatever the design of food, if it not an aesthetic design, it never be art.
You bring up an interesting point when you mention how food changes with time. This is very true because you cannot leave food out forever and it will never mold or go bad. But is the way food looks the only art part about it? On page 10 Telfer discusses the enjoyment between cottage cheese and rye bread. The author is making a point that the art to food can be within the taste themselves and how each spice or texture compliments another. It takes real skill to be able to know which types of foods and what consistencies go together. There may be more to art as food than just what is seen by the eye, the art of food may truly be in the tastes. It is interesting though to think of all the people that take pictures of food and put them up in restaurants or homes for viewing. What is the difference in a piece of art that is a picture of a meal versus the meal that is actually in front of you waiting to be eaten, why do people view this art types differently?
Thanks for your replies, you guys are right. Food can be viewed as art, it is not only about look and it also about taste. When people taste the food, and then people can feel about how good the food are. I agree with your ideas. But I think that photo can be viewed as art, why food can not be viewed as art. People can enjoy the music, but people can also enjoy the food. Why do people like listen to music, because it give people’s feeling which the music give people same emotion. The food can do the same thing. When people die, relatives eat together, they can feel about the family bring the feeling to them. Sometimes,ugly is not bad thing. It really depends on is it special.According to Ellen Dissanayake’s essay, she thinks that anything which is special is art. I think that special is very important to decide if food is art.