Abstract

          This paper highlights that nowadays, due to the rapid changes in conceptual art research, food can successfully become independent art object. Providing opinions of four authors, including such famous researchers as Cynthia Freeland, Blake Gopnik, William Deresiewicz, and Fabio Parasecoli, the author compares food with art through matching their functions, ways of expression, emotional background, and influence. Conclusion confirms that despite highly close and vivid connection between art and food, food cannot be considered true art object, as it has the lack of emotional and cognitive richness within the deep narrative and representational character.

Keywords: cognitive, foodism, haute cuisine.

Food as Art Object

          Nowadays, the concept of art and beauty is changing rapidly. It has become not surprising today that something ugly, disgusting, shocking, and controversial is considered true art. For instance, it is appropriate to provide the thoughts of a well-known art researcher Cynthia Freeland, who mentions in her But Is It Art? that art is more than expression, as it is cognitive act, which “communicates complex thoughts” (Freeland, 2002, p.154). For Freeland, almost everything can be the object of art, including food. Analyzing emotions, which art causes in human soul, she insists that “the attractiveness of food served up in dishes decorated” (Freeland, 2002, p.129) on the picture can lead to strong emotional realization of love and pleasure. Obviously, food can definitely be the same attractive and interesting art object, catalyst of emotions, as anything else, which the viewers used to evaluate as art.

Another important point of view, which analyzes food as art object, is the article in The Washington Post entitled “The Big Debate: Can Food Be Serious Art?”. This article provides a set of arguments for and against the fact whether food is serious art or not. Food is compared with other areas of art, including music, photography, painting, and design. In fact, after reading the article, it becomes apparent that food is no less significant art object, than any picture, photo, or musical piece. Food and art have much in common, considering their way of expression, sensory pleasure, experience, goal, popularity, and attendant management. The argument for food’s ability to cause critics and disruptive attitude seems to be especially important and bright: “Does any other art form threaten its audience quite as cooking does?” (Gopnik, 2009).

Comparing the previous article with the post from The New York Times entitled “A Matter of Taste?”, it becomes obvious that it has more detailed description of what to consider art and how it can match with food. First of all, the author of “A Matter of Taste?” insists that art and food have a common issue – human senses and pleasures. Moreover, it is possible to suggest that food can be not only art object, since it is able even to replace art as such. There is the new term, so-called foodism, which reflects food as the popular direction in market industry and production, since it becomes the most important category in life. In fact, food has already ceased to be just the means to stave off hunger. People create the great business chains, based on food, as “Food, for young people now, is creativity, commerce, politics, health, almost religion” (Deresiewicz, 2012). Obviously, food is art now, since it factually matches the same qualities, which art has. However, the author points that it is important to remember that foodism cannot replace art, as food “is not narrative or representational, does not organize and express emotions” (Deresiewicz, 2012).

The last opinion, which is important to provide, is the article of professor of food studies “Is Food Art? Chefs, Creativity, and the restaurant Business?” on Huffington Post. Fabio Parasecoli makes the emphasis that food as art object should be investigated not only as products and dishes, but as the whole industry of food establishments. Food expresses the same creativity and innovations, as art does. Moreover, innovations in food industry become the true directions, trends, which are shared by chefs all over the world in the same way, as art sphere does. Food can be successfully compared with high art, since there is even the special term haute cuisine, which reflects the most creative approaches in cooking. Especially talented chefs are purely like artists, since “They are ready to show off, to shock, and to entertain” (Parasecoli, 2013). Obviously, if consider food not as the set of usual dishes, but as the highly intellectual, talented, and creative activity, it is possible to suggest that food is one of the most amazing and interesting art objects.

In fact, all four sources, which are used to describe food as art object, can be considered quite similar. All of them show that it is natural today to find food as the same reliable, creative, and interesting art object. Four different authors highlight that food require the same creativity, open-minded and talented attitude as any other usual art object. However, different articles point out slightly different accents in their understanding food. While Cynthia Freeland provides quite general image of art as the cognitive action and controversial area, where food plays the role of emotional catalyst, Gopnik in his “The Big Debate: Can Food Be Serious Art?” concludes that food is the same functional and profitable object of art, as music, photography, painting, and so on. Besides, Deresiewicz in “A Matter of Taste?” insists that despite highly expanded adoration of food and the appearance of foodism as the new art trend, food cannot be considered purely art, as it does not have the same emotional and cognitive depth. Contrast to this point, professor Parasecoli in “Is Food Art? Chefs, Creativity, and the restaurant Business?” makes the emphasis on food industry and restaurant business as the objects of art. He thinks that creative and innovative experiments of the most gifted chefs express such a new art trend as haute cuisine.

In conclusion, the author would like to conclude that today, food and food industry occur to be the center of various human talents, including creativity, lateral way of thinking, original tastes, and emotional background. In fact, the entire process of food production, including cooking, supply, organization, design, and richness of taste, can be successfully compared with art, as it has approximately the same influence on a person. However, due to quite limited emotional and cognitive spheres, food cannot be surely considered true object of art, since it has no ability to satisfy spiritual needs and mental interests, preferring sensual feeling as dominating.

References

Deresiewicz, W. (2012, October). A Matter of Taste?. The New York Times.

[On-line Newspaper] Retrieved October 26, 2012 from           http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/how-food-replaced-art-as-     high-culture.html?_r=0

Freeland, C. (2002) But Is It Art?: An Introduction to Art Theory. Oxford: Oxford           University Press.

Gopnik, B. (2009, September). The Big Debate: Can Food Be Serious Art? The           Washington Post. [On-line Newspaper] Retrieved September 23, 2009 from           http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/22/AR2009092          203137.html

Parasecoli, F. (2013, August). Is Food Art? Chefs, Creativity, and the restaurant           Business?. Huffington Post. [On-line Newspaper] Retrieved August 29, 2013           from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fabio-parasecoli/food-art_b_3830791.html

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.