Objective:
- Explore the notion of food as an art-form
Food Art
Elizabeth Telfers’ article Food as Art is a great piece of work that explores many avenues on whether food should be considered and art form and why many people have different outlooks on the subject. This work was extremely interesting to read and brought up numerous views on the topic that I have never thought much about. Telfer brings up the issue of classifying “dishes as works of art” on page 17 and offers an issue of making thousands of pies off the same recipe, is this considered a work of art still? She compares this to engraving or print-making and says, “Since we can call each engraving a work of art, we can call each Marks and Spencer pie a work of art” (Telfer 17). She is making a point that even though something can be replicated a thousand times or more it is still considered a work of art. When reading this section and thinking of the video clips, it brought up the issue of fast food. McDonald’s is all about making everything taste the same everywhere in the world. They produce millions of meals a day that taste and look the exact same. I would say that this type of food is not art, but from Telfer’s article, maybe the very first recipe created for a hamburger at McDonalds was a work of art. It is hard for me to call any kind of fast food art, but maybe this is my dislike for fast food coming through.
I think there is a limit to where and when food is considered art. Telfer makes an interesting point in saying that, “if I like the way cottage cheese contrasts in flavour and texture with rye bread, my reaction is aesthetic, whereas if I am please with the combination because it is low-calorie and high-fibre, it is not” (Telfer 10). She is making a good point of food has to have some form of aesthetics to it for it to be considered art. Many of the things I eat on a daily basis are because I know that they are healthy and my body will benefit from the nutrients they contain. I would not consider my daily eating habits as a form of art. But when I go out to a nice meal I can find myself really appreciating the time, energy, and thought that must have been made in order for my meal to taste and look the way it does. I lived with a chef once and he was always very particular in the way he presented a dish and he would spend hours and hours perfecting a new dish just to his liking before he would serve it to anybody in his restaurant. Maybe from living with him I am biased in the way that I view food as art. I understand the things that go into making a “perfect” dish and I believe the chef should be praised for the work they put into creating a meal.
When looking at Ellen Dissanayake’s article I may have taken a modernism view of food as art, where “art had become if not a religion, an ideology whose principles were articulated by and for the few who had leisure and education enough to acquire them” (Dissanayake 18). I for some reason have this view on food as art maybe because of the culture we live in and all the television shows on food that are broadcasted daily. I do not believe I am educated enough to view a lot of food as art because I am not accustomed to many of the taste that are out there. I have foods that I enjoy and others that I do not, but I am no good at telling you why or which specific spices I do or do not enjoy. There are many people out there that study food and what tastes go with what for a number of years, I believe thess people truly understand why certain dishes taste better than others.
Reflection and Future:
Elizabeth Telfer showed in many ways that food is food. From this assignment I was able to explore the notion of food as an art-form. Some people believe that food is not art because we eat it and we need it to survive. Telfer points out on page 18 an argument against food as art as, “it might be claimed that nothing useful deserves to count as a work of art.” This artifact helped me see that this is not true and that food does hold its own art-form and there are people who praise and live for the art of food.
Even though food is useful there is still an art to creating something special and something that pleases the taste buds. Not everybody can create something spectacular in your mouth that you want to eat forever and forever. This assignment helped me realize that there is more to food than its substance. People can eat to be sustained but a lot of people eat for enjoyment too and that is where the art part comes into play for me.
I think that the way I look at food from here on out is going to be more with an artistic eye thanks to this objective. I hope that in the future I will be able to appreciate meals more often and think about the hard work and thought that somebody must have done in order for me to enjoy my food so much. It will force me to take some time to think about what I am eating instead of just shoving it all into my mouth without really tasting it and look at the way it was presented.
This is a montage of photos I took of a meal I had on the East Cost. Though there may seem like no creativity to the way this food looks on the eye, the flavors of this meal were spectacular, so I know an artist created it.