Deresiewicz, W. (2012, 27 October) A Matter of Taste? [The New York Times On-Line] Retrieved January 31 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/how-food-replaced-art-as-high-culture.html

The article “A Matter of Taste?” by William Deresiewicz spoke a lot about how food has in ways replaced art recently and the value we put on food today. William spoke about how food is regarded how art is regarded and that now we put more value on food than we do art pieces. In the article, he mentions aestheticism of food and how so many people share a similar passion for food today. Ultimately, Williams believes that we are heading down the wrong path in valuing food over art and feel that food should not be regarded in the manner it is today.

This article was very interesting to me and had a lot of links to the things that we learned this week. The article spoke about aesthetics of food and how it has appealed the minds of the 21st century and that food has become almost a religion to some today. We spoke of aestheticism in our reading “Food as Art” by Elizabeth Telfer and in our videos also drew a line where aestheticism of food separates whether food should be considered art or not. In the videos, they spoke of how slow food should not be considered art because it is not unique or made in an artistic way. The article by William Deresiewicz also spoke about how food should not be considered art because even though it incorporates our senses, it is not something that is symbolic or that will express emotion. I do not agree with these as I feel that there can be something symbolic about food and that food can definitely bring up emotions in someone because senses are heightened. I thought this article was very interesting in pointing out how food is being regarded in today’s culture, which is something that I agree with. Food has become a very broad subject and has allowed for a lot of different inputs from people who feel that food has become a lifestyle and the experience behind making and creating food is exactly like art. I believe that this is because food is an art form and that we should be treating it that way to allow artistic freedom and to bring along new ideas to art.

The article I chose also spoke about how food specifically cannot introduce new ideas and provoke any thought for people. Elizabeth Telfer would refute this point in her article when she said, “Many meals are intended by their cooks to be considered largely in this way – to be savoured, appraised, thought about, discussed – and many eaters consider them this way” (Telfer 7). Many foods are meant to bring up discussion and when a group of people go out to a restaurant, the experience brings up a lot of conversation to be considered by everyone and in which case could bring up new ideas that were sparked by food. Food can bring people together and provoke deep thinking by a lot of people, much like the first thanksgiving brought the pilgrims and Native Americans together. In many ways, food is not seen as art because people see the food itself as something that we must do everyday and focus on the item of food as whether it is art. For me, art is a process and an experience, not just an individual item, and the craft behind making and eating food can really bring up a lot of different senses and emotions. If I go out to eat at a restaurant with my friends, I look forward to not only the food that I get to experience but the company and ideas discussed with my friends and that is something that I can relate as art.

One thing that left me thinking after reading my article was when he spoke about food taking the meaning that art once did in a lot of places.  I believe that this is because food and art should coexist together to help bring new ideas and food is an art because it is “replacing” the things that art once used to represent. Art traditionally challenges thoughts, creative, and represented a wide range of standards. Today, art does this by using different dishes and different palettes to be criticized by others for its representation and also to bring people together to discuss real issues and challenge thoughts. Food is art because it not only encompasses all the ideas art is meant to represent, but also brings an experience that many other art forms do not normally bring with them.

I really like the idea of seeing food as art and I have thought about this many other times. According to Ellen Dissanayake in “What is Art For?” she believes in a species-centered view of art from humans as “thinking of art as kind of behavior that developed as they evolved, to help them survive” (Dissanayake 2). She also goes on to talk about how art has become something that is psychologically challenging and that it can be a number of things. For me, food embodies all of these characteristics, some foods more than others, and that basically all food is art. In Elizabeth Telfer’s article “Food as Art”, she discusses how food can be related to the art forms we all think of at first but also provides reasoning behind why people may believe that food and drink are not art forms. She claims, “It would be implausible to maintain that food and drink never constitute works of art in the classifying sense. People sometimes treat them as works of art, and I have argued that we can compare the creator of a recipe to a composer” (Telfer 11). I agree with her as I feel that food is something that not only a behavior that has helped us survive and think differently, but also affects us in ways that aren’t always measured the same as the way that art affects us.

Art to me is something that creates some sort of impact or reassurance in values and for me, food of any kind does this to me. The feeling that I get going to my favorite burger place back at home with my family or friends is something that I don’t feel towards anything else and has an impact on my mentality and emotional state. The video on fast food this week was interesting to me as it pointed out a lot of good details on how some don’t consider fast food an art form and that there may be “a line drawn” between what food represents an art form and which one’s don’t. Similarly, Elizabeth Telfer discusses a counterpoint of how our senses are not as highly developed so eating may create a faulty experience than what we think like certain other art forms do from time to time. For me, the experience that comes with food is just as much of an art form and even if the food may have been duplicated and uniform, the feelings that come from the food qualify it to me as an art form. What was most interesting to me was how one video talked about the aesthetics of slow food and whether it would be considered more of an art because of the effort put in to make it more aesthetically pleasing. I feel that there is just as much importance in the taste as their is in the “decoration” and that the best food that can be represented as art, takes these two ideals into equal consideration. One question that remained with me was whether the experience with food as an art form can be just as impactful as an experience with another art form? This question I felt really made a clear distinction on if food should be considered an art form or not.