The first people I observed were two girls eating lunch together. They were chatting and laughing with each other while eating their meals. They seemed to be looking over a piece of paper together, so they could have been studying for a test or discussing a homework assignment. They were both wearing headscarves, so from this I can assume that they care about their culture and where they come from. The headscarves demonstrate make me believe that they value their culture and are not afraid to let people know this.

I also observed a girl who was watching something on her laptop while eating lunch. She was wearing black pants, a jean top, and slip on sneakers. She had a backpack sitting by her feet, so I am assuming that she is a college student passing time before her next class. From the way she was dressed I assume that she cared about her appearance, but also wanted to be comfortable. She looked put together, but did not look like she spent hours thinking about what to wear, or doing her hair and make up. For the time that I observed her, she appeared to be very relaxed and content. She was eating and watching something on her laptop the entire time I was watching her, she did not appear to be bored or wanting to do something else.

The third person I observed was another girl using a laptop. She was wearing what I believe to be a very casual outfit. She was in running shoes and shorts, a tank top that looked like one would work out in, and a sports bra. She had her hair tied back in a ponytail and a headband on. From her outfit I assumed that she either had just worked out or wanted to be very comfortable that day. On the day that I did my observations, it was 80 degrees out so I think that the reason she could have been wearing this outfit was because she knew that throughout the day she would be getting very hot, and this outfit appeared to be very breezy and lose fitting.

In Rachel Hite’s article “The Aesthetics of Food” she addresses the issue over whether or not food should be considered art. She firsts analyses Elizabeth Telfer’s essay, which is the assigned reading for this week, “Food As Art” where she discusses Telfer’s beliefs that the art of food comes from the aesthetic reaction that one can have based on the taste and smell of food. Telfer then goes on to compare food with paintings or literature and states that she believes food does not have meaning in the same ways that paintings or literature does. Hite disagrees with this point and backs up her argument with a an essay by Glenn Kuehn called “How Can Food Be Art?”. Both Hite and Kuehn disagree with Telfer’s statement that food can have no meaning. Food is an art and therefore it automatically has meaning or significance behind it, both Hite and Kuehn agree. Since food is “essential to our survival, food not only must be art, but it potentially offers some of the greatest artistic meaning we can experience” (1). Food can be experienced in more ways then paintings or literature can. Not only can one get a visual or emotional experience from it, but they are able to smell and taste it as well.

It was interesting for me to read an article that examined the reading assignment for this week because it helped expand my thoughts about Telfer’s essay. I believe that food should be considered art for a multitude of reasons. I agree with Telfer on her point about getting an aesthetic reaction from food based on taste and smell. However, I agree with Hite in how she criticizes Telfer’s argument that art cannot have meaning. When one is working of creating a meal, there can be a large amount of thought that goes into it. One has to decide what they want to make and what ingredients to add to it. A chef must decide which foods pair well together in order to cook an amazing tasting meal. The work put into it and the purpose behind a meal gives it meaning. For example, cooking a meal that’s recipe has been passed down generation to generation has huge meaning to it because it has been around for so long. Most people create meals that their great grandmother cooked and that in itself gives a meal meaning. They joy that comes from creating something that has been in someone’s family is also a reason to give meaning to food.

Although I do believe that certain food should be seen as art, I do have to say that there is some food out there that I find to not be considered art. The video on fast food, gives a perfect example of this for me. In my eyes, fast food is not an art. It is solely a money making process. Fast food companies do take into consideration what their customers will enjoy eating, but it not only to make sure that they have satisfied customers it is more about how to get the most people to come to their restaurant to spend money. There is not much criteria to work in a fast food restaurant, so that means that the chefs most likely do not care much about how well they are cooking their meals. In Hite’s article she does not address the issue of the specifics about what types of food should be considered art. She states that “good food is inherently art, and I absolutely view it through an aesthetic lens” (1) but she never goes into a definition of what “good food” is. This left her article hanging because I wanted to know more about this definition. She did a nice job of stating her reasoning for why she believes food to be art, but left the types of food she believes are art open for interpretation. In Telfer’s essay she is clearer about the types of food she believes to be art, “I said that both an original recipe and an actual dish (a particular performance of a recipe, as it were) are works of art if they are regarded aesthetically” (10).  However, she does address the issue of making food in mass quantities. This I believe is an issue with defining food as art. Food that is produced with machines and not much human participation to me is not art. I see art with food production through a chef who is working hard to hand create a meal or many meals for people. This takes a lot more time and effort to make then it does to produce a hamburger for a fast food chain.

Work Cited

Hite, Rachel. “The Aesthetics of Food.” The Muse Dialouge. Web. April 26. 2014 http://musedialogue.org/articles-by-genre/artsandlife/food-as-art-vol-1/the-aesthetics-of-food/

Tefler, E. (2002). Food as Art. In Neill, A. & Riley, A. (eds.) Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates (2nd ed., Chap. 2). New York, NY: Routledge.

It was interesting to compare the fast food video with the slow food video because both types of food have specific aesthetics too them that make them distinguishable from each other. The fast food, as described in the video, has a look to it that is standard for almost all fast food chain restaurants. Each comes with “a paper cup full of carbonated water, ice, sugar… frozen fries… a thin frozen hamburger patty containing meat from hundreds of different cattle…” (Fast Food Video Presentation) To some this may sound like a mouth-watering description of the type of meal that they eat almost every day, but to others this meal is not appetizing at all. Slow food on the other hand has a different form of aesthetics to it, it is all about how natural and organic looking the food is. The reason for calling it slow food is that it took time in order to produce. People spend many hours slaving over one meal in order to have it turn out exactly as they imagined it. This is the complete opposite of fast food, which is produced in mass quantities at the fastest rate possible in order to feed the most amounts of people it can.

Food is similar to art in the way that it does come down to the eye of the beholder, to one some may look amazing, delicious, or beautiful but to another it may look awful or unappetizing. However, when looking at slow food most all can take into consideration the work that went into making the food. There are many meals that one can tell took lots of time and expertise in order to make. To me slow food is based more off art then fast food. It take a lot more time and energy to create an amazing looking slow food dish then it does to create a fast food dish, and I believe that this is more important. Some may argue that fast food has an art form to it that took a while to perfect but that is in no way comparable to the art of slow food.

I believe that food can be considered an art form. However, I have a set of criteria for that. In order for food to be considered an art form, it should have taken the chef a decent amount of time to create their dish and the dish should not be for a mass quantity of people, like how fast food is created. A chef should think about the detail of their meal in the same way that an artist thinks about their painting or drawing. I believe that Dissanayake’s “making special” is a great example of this. In order to make food art, the chef needs to make their meal special. They have to evaluate what ingredients should go into it, and how they will all flow together. They have to think about the way the dish is presented and how that relates back to the ingredients. Food is an art form that takes a lot of time and concentration.

 

Many people have done lots of research and devoted a lot of time to the discussion of what is art? When it comes down to it, each person trying to answer this question has come up with their own answer that is used to help describe their personal feelings and beliefs about what truly defines art for them and how they believe others should think about art.

In Ellen Dissanayake’s article What Is Art For? she discusses the conclusions that she has come to in order to help answer this question. Dissanayake coined the term paleoanthropsychobiological to help give a label to her collective feelings on art and also to help others have a better understanding of art. Paleoanthropsychobiological is a combination of three different aspects to help further understand not only her view on art but a Western view as well and to give a name to some of the feelings that one may have about art. Her definition of the word is used to suggest that what is necessary to comprehend art is to know that art includes all human history and societies, and “that art is a psychological or emotional need and has psychological and emotional effects” (Dissanayake 1).

When discussing art in her essay Dissanayake also uses the term “making special”. Her definition of this is that humans have a inclination to work to make certain aspects of their lives and activities special. Many humans want to be able to distinguish the portions of their life that are exciting or special from the portions that are average or not fun to them. When using “making special” to discuss art, Dissanayake suggests that humans focus on what goes into creating art. That art is special because of the effort, time, and patient one puts in to making a piece of art that they care about. Some examples that Dissanayake used to talk about this were body painting, rituals, and markings on utensils.

In her essay Dissanayake discusses art throughout different time periods. One time period she mentions is the Greek and Medieval times and how during this period art was not used or discussed in the same ways that it is now. Most art during this time was focused on religion. Another time period that she discusses is the postmodernism during the mid-twentith century. In this time period art was said to need to be more then just its appearance, it needed to have meaning behind the painting or drawing. Not only the artist but the viewer also should be able to give an interpretation to the piece of art. This means that there would end up being multiple  views and interpretations to one single piece of art. Dissanayake also mentions the modernist time period during the eighteenth century. During this time people worked to understand what went in to making a piece of art and what ideas led to someone creating a certain piece. In this time period they focused on art as an ideology.

 

Do our human beliefs and values relate to what aspects of the world we define as beautiful? When watching the presentation the first thing that came to my mind was what truly makes something beautiful and why do different people find beauty in different things? It is very interesting to me that one person could find beauty in something that someone else could either find repulsive or not even care for. Dutton talked about how the skill put into something is a factor in defining beauty. I do agree that this is true, but it is interesting that even an appreciation for craftsmanship can differ so widely from person to person.

Another question that I had when watching the presentation is what part of us and our history helps us conclude what sorts of skills in art we define as beautiful? Dutton said that it is not our culture that helps us define what is beautiful, that it is instead the craftsmanship or skill behind the artwork. I agree that this is a factor but this also makes me wonder where we developed opinions of skill or craftsmanship. This makes me believe that it is our values and human beliefs that help define our appreciation. We are the way we are because of how we were raised or who we were brought up by, so that has to play a role in shaping our ideas of beauty and skill. I also believe this to be true because I find myself agreeing with the people I grew up with on beauty. We tend to have similar opinions on what things are beautiful and what are not. I do not think there is any true way to define what makes people find beauty in different things. There definitely are some aspects that play in to it, but I do not think that there is a set of common things that define a persons appreciation or ideas of beauty.

The reading about values made me think a lot about nature versus nurture in regards to human beliefs and values. There is always a debate between these two things about what factors, people, and personalities truly form ones values and beliefs. Some people feel very strongly that values are formed based on nurture. They think that the people who you were raised by and the place that you came from is the source of your beliefs. Others feel that it is about nature, the way that someone is when they are born, their genes. Then there are others who think that it is based on a mix of the two. I feel that both nature and nurture play a strong role in forming values and beliefs. Both are key factors because each is just as apparent in everyday life as the other. “The proposition that individual human beings are programed into their values, either by the influence of genes on personality or by social pressures, can neither be proven nor refuted” (8). The beliefs we have are formed as result of many factors, for example, the people around us, the environment we grow up in, and the genes that we have. When we are young we are most susceptible to have parents or guardians form, or heavily influence, beliefs and values for us. They are the ones that we look up to when we are little because they are such a key factor in our lives. Personally, I feel that my parents had the most influence over my beliefs and values. I think that having strong role models in ones life can lead to them thinking the same way as them. Another source of the formation of ones values can come from the environment they grew up in. Most people are very similar to the people they grew up around and have a lot of the same values as they do. This can happen because many people feel that since all the people around them think one way, they should think that way as well.