Is food art?

My opinion is that food is art. Elizabeth Telfer says that “aesthetic qualities are capacities which some things have to arouse reaction of a certain kind in us.” [1] “It is at least reasonable to allow an aesthetic satisfaction to the connoisseur of wines and to the gourmet” (Urmson 1962: 14).  If there is aesthetic satisfaction, then food is a work of art. A work of art can also be “made for use”[2]. Food is made for use as well as for pleasure and  nutrition. Elizabeth Telfer says that food is often arranged in creative and attractive ways which constitute a visual work of art. The taste of food and drink as well as the look of it can give rise to aesthetic reactions, so that food and drink constitute works of art appealing to the senses of taste and smell.[3] “If the distinction between craft and art is based on the degree of creativeness, some cookery can still qualify as an art.”[4] A cook following a recipe still needs interpretation. [5] The cook has to make choices, so he is an artist, a performing artist and cooking is therefore a kind of performing art.

There is the argument that memory is needed for subsequent analysis of a work of art. Food correspondents  are able to recall the food by written notes, as any kind of critic might be. [6]

Food is a minor art and fine restaurants aren’t subsidised. This art form will survive without state subsidy, whereas major arts, such as opera, won’t.[7]

Aesthetic eating is eating with attention and discernment. It takes some practice. [8]

Food is a minor art because it is transient, cannot have meaning or move us. A recipe is not transient, but the nature of ingredients changes through time. Food cannot have meaning and that’s another reason for being considered as a minor art. There can be emotion behind the product but not in the product itself, like in major arts. Food also cannot move us  fundamentally, but it can cheer us. [9]

Postmodernism best represents my views about food and art. “The postmodernists’ exposure of the rigid, exclusive and self-satisfied attitudes that often lay behind the rhetoric of modernist ideology is, in large measure, welcome, as is their preparing the way for the liberation and democratization of art.”[10] Postmodernist aesthetics proclaims that there are a multiplicity of individual realities that are infinitely interpretable and equally worthy of aesthetic presentation and regard. [11] It, to some extent, means that it depends on us, what is to be called a work of art.

I also agree with Ellen Dissanayake when she says that “art is a normal and necessary behavior of human beings that like talking, exercising, playing, working, socializing, learning, loving and nurturing should be encouraged and developed in everyone.” [12] According to this theory food is art because it is necessary for a normal behavior. Also, food preparation can be a kind of a ritual and Ellen Dissayanake talks about rituals having aesthetic value. [13]

Not all food is art. Slow food is art and fast food is not. I agree with Scott Huette when he says: “It’s a flavor that the guests, some of whom live just a few kilometers away could find only at this table on this hillside, served by this mother and son with their monumental square faces out of a Renaissance fresco.” [14] On the other hand he also says the following: “The McDonald’s corporation has a slogan – one taste worldwide . That perfectly encapsulates the stultifying, homogenizing effects of its global empire. Why would anyone want to live in such a world? What conceivable motive other than a profit motive would drive anyone to pursue one taste so ruthlessly?” [15] That is why fast food is not art. Art needs to have a spiritual quality, and rarely something made fast can have it. Slow food has tradition and that is a major value for it to qualify as art both in aesthetic and classifying sense.