Category: Unit 04

The article that I found comes from the Washington post and is quite thought provoking when deciding on the issue of whether food is art or not. The article is divided up into 4 parts but I’m only going talk about the first one for length’s sake.  In this first part, Palate vs. Palette: Avant-Garde Cuisine as contemporary art, it introduces the reader to a small restaurant just outside of Barcelona by the name of elBulli, which some claim is “one of today’s greatest temples of artistic innovation” (1, Gopnik). In this restaurant is the work of the well-known Ferran Adria, one of the greatest chefs in the world. When asked by one of his critics how good the experience was at elBulli he stated, “I enjoyed it enormously, and it made me vomit.” This is because some of Adria’s dishes consist of fried rabbit ears, embryonic pine nuts, and a Styrofoam box filled with parmesan air. Adria isn’t concerned with the taste per se but rather, he wants his cooking to be like encountering a foreign cuisine.  This brings to light the issue of “contemporary art” and how it plays into the whole role of art as food issue.

Contemporary art is defined as art made and produced by living artists today. However, it has roots going back to the early days of modernism and has gradually evolved throughout the years. There is a specific term that I feel vividly describes Adria’s form of contemporary art, and that’s the species centered view of art. Dissanayake’s species centered view correlates with this perfectly when she states that it, combines modernism’s proclamation that art is of supreme value and a source for heightened personal experience with postmodernisms insistence that it belongs to everyone and is potentially all around us. It does this by thinking of artmaking and experiencing as a human behavior” (Dissanayake, 22).  This is exactly what Adria’s purpose is when making these dishes for his customers. He provides a heightened personal experience with sources of “food” that is all around us in our everyday lives but which may not be instinctively thought of as being used in or part of art. For example, if you were to serve the average person a Styrofoam box filled with parmesan air as mentioned above they would look at you like you were crazy and walk out never to come back. This is what I find so fascinating and which goes back to Dissanayake point of “making something special.” Adria takes these items and provides an outlet for people to experience something that is totally beyond the norm when eating a piece of food. Isn’t that what all art is supposed to do? Provide the viewer with an experience while giving way to a whole new type of world that they may not normally be accustomed to?

Another key point in the article relates with the topic that we currently discussed this week and that is the experience of an “aesthetic reaction.” Now in the article that we read this week Urmson discusses aesthetic reactions only in the positive sense but doesn’t provide insight to a potential negative aesthetic reaction. However, this is where Tefler comes in and provides key insight that accurately describes what Adria is trying to do for his customers. Tefler states that, “an aesthetic reaction need not be a favourable one, and even where it is, pleasure may not be the right characterization of it.” Adria’s goal is not to provide people with tasteful pleasure, but rather to provide them with an aesthetic reaction that they’ve never had before, in some cases this could be the reaction of pure disgust. Now when thought of from afar we would think that an aesthetic reaction could not possibly be one of disgust, but I argue why not, its still using all of our human senses to derive whether the experience that was just had was a pleasurable one or not. Why does it always have to be a favorable one to be considered aesthetic?

Overall, I believe that his article sheds some really interesting light on the issue of whether food can be considered art or not because it could even be argued that the food isn’t really food at all but rather a cultural experience. In retrospect, after reading Teflers article in comparison with Gopnik’s I believe that all food can officially be considered art, and potentially on the flip side, some art could even be considered food. It simply just depends on the type of “aesthetic experience” that was had.

Gopnik, Blake. “Palate vs. Pallete.” Washington Post. The Washington Post, 23 Sept. 2009. Web. 01 Feb. 2014. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/09/22/ST2009092203340.html?sid=ST2009092203340>.

I absolutely believe that art can be a form of food. However, it needs to be brought about in the right circumstance. In last week’s post I discussed how my father sculpted a flag all out of wood in tribute to 9/11. He was able to express himself and his patriotism through this piece that he created. Well I believe that the same goes for my mom as well. As far back as I can remember my mom has been making the absolute best, made from scratch dinner dishes that her mom (my grandmother) taught her to make when she was a little girl. These dishes show my mom’s heritage, her background, and her sense of culture just as my dad was able to do with his carving.

This is why I believe that slow, thoughtfully prepared food is an art form. This is due to the fact that an “aesthetic reaction” is brought about for both parties involved. An aesthetic reaction is referred to by J.O. Urmson as a kind of pleasure brought about to one of our 5 senses and I can honestly say that whenever I eat my mom’s food each one of these senses is overflowing with awesomeness. However, I feel that it’s not these 5 senses that bring about an “aesthetic reaction” for her when she cooks for us. There is another untold sense that brings her joy. One of the quotes by Tefler, I feel explains this extremely well when he says, “some of the most powerful aesthetic reactions involve being impressed by some unexpected or short lived phenomenon – perhaps something too quick to pay attention to” (10).  Well I believe that this short lived phenomenon is the satisfaction that my mom gets for providing food for her children. Every time I ask her if she wants me to make dinner she turns me down and says absolutely not (and by no means do I argue). But this has always intrigued me. So I eventually asked her. I said, “mom why do you enjoy cooking so much”? And her answer really surprised me. She said I don’t really know how to explain it but whenever I cook and provide a meal for everyone I get a feeling of satisfaction and overwhelming accomplishment; like that of completing a project. This is my mom’s “aesthetic reaction”. She doesn’t necessarily get it from the smell and taste of her dishes that she makes (although I can’t see how not) but rather her aesthetic feeling comes from seeing my father, my brother and I clean up the beautiful meal that she prepared for us all.

Overall I believe that I take more of a post-modernist view when it comes to food rather than a modernist. I don’t put myself up in the elite category when I try and make a home cooked meal for my roommates and I don’t believe my mom does either. I agree that some food, especially at expensive restaurants, can be viewed as art due to the degree of the food and elegance of the preparation that the food was prepared with. However, this doesn’t mean that my mom’s food would stack up any differently. Dissanayake stated that art took into account human history, human cultures, and human psychology. On one hand you have the expensive restaurant that could be viewed in the mindset of human psychology, i.e. it looks great and I’m paying a lot for it so it must be art. Then on the other hand you have my mom whose cooking could be viewed as more part of a human culture because her cooking comes from her mother and her grandmother’s heritage. Both I would argue are pieces of art just in two separate categories.