Classifying Art: can food be art, too?
Elizabeth Telfer’s speculations about food as art deal with some very intriguing and important issues pertaining to art in general. Whether we classify food as an art form or not may not be fully answered until we first make some important distinctions. The distinctions that Telfer herself emphasizes, argues, refutes or proves, include the issues of aesthetics and what constitutes aesthetics, art vs. craftsmanship, and creation vs. interpretation.
First of all, what is the purpose of making distinctions between different forms of art? Is there a purpose? I believe it is very important to have clear ideas about what makes one type of art different from another. If we want to fully integrate ourselves in our own artistic specialties, shouldn’t we also be able to draw connections from other disciplines to inform artistic choices? Bands of highly respectable music educators have decided this is an important skill; Music Education National Standard number eight states “Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts,” which specifically advocates the integration of other arts in the art of music. In order to draw information from one discipline of art to another, it seems reasonable that clear distinctions between different art forms must exist in order to blur the lines and create something innovative. This is purely speculation, but I think it is relevant to our discussion about food as an art form.
If food is to be considered an art form, then, as with many art forms, we must again attempt to answer the question: what constitutes art? The concept of disinterest may be quite applicable to the idea of food as art. Dissanayake says, “‘disinterest’ implied that viewers could appreciate any art, even the artwork of eras or cultures far removed from their own, whether or not they understood the meaning the works had for the people made and used them.” (Dissanayake, 18) Though the concept of disinterest is only one lens through which we may perceive art, if we look at food through this lens, it seems to fit in as an art form. Think of how wide a variance there is in different cultural foods. Can these differences be equated to variants of the art form, food? Perhaps, yes!
Lots of art forms, as Telfer points out, represent something else: they tell “us something about the world and ourselves, and we can see the world and ourselves in the light of ways in which they have been depicted in the representational arts.” (Telfer, 25) We have a couple of important choices to make: should art represent something else? Or, can food (in general) represent something deeper or multilayered?
I don’t have answers to these questions. Personally, I am used to understanding and analyzing art in a representational way, because frankly, it is not that fun to sing a song if you don’t have some kind of background story to compliment it. But just because I am used to interpreting art this way, does not necessarily mean it is the only way to do so. With that in mind, let me propose a broad definition of art: something that allows for self-expression as well as provides some kind of communication from at least one person to another.
If this is the definition I choose to use to define art, then yes, I think food is a form of art. The reason I am at this point convinced of the merit of food as an art form is, at its summation, quite simple: if our definition of art is too narrow, how can we possibly promote higher thought and come up with innovative, expressive art?