MCAAD250, Spring'15

This article is debating where or not food can be art and how maybe the importance of food in our culture has turned it into more than just something needed to survive. Food can be experienced in many ways, whether it is through private dining experiences or eating out. The author draws on two ways that food and art can be connected. The first is the idea of “haute cuisine”. This is described as chefs that “are expected to offer patrons (and critics) dishes and menus that stimulate and surprise them, find new methods to manipulate ingredients, and interact with technology and design in ways that keep them on the cutting edge and ensure coverage from the press, TV, and the Internet.” It is the innovation and creativity of the chef that makes what they do important and could be considered art. The second connection the author makes is that certain chefs are like avant-grade artists that “the pioneers or innovators in any art in a particular period” and that chefs who create next, innovative experiences for their audience could be considered artists and therefore what they produce is art. The author compares the process of how these chefs work together in the same way that the artists of avant-garde movements came about their artistic processes and forms of expression. The comparison of donors of artists and clients of chefs shows that both are valuable and wanted for consumption is someway.

When comparing this article with Elizabeth Telfer’s article, “Food as Art”, both are arguing that food can be considered an art form but Telfer describes “ the art of food as minor” because it can not have the same implications that more traditional forms of art have of the viewer. Parasecoli’s description of food as art seems to express the opposite. The use of the term “haute cuisine” and what makes up this idea of cuisine makes it seem as though the author thinks of art as a true form of art. Parasecoli judges it on how innovative the chef can be and the experience of the senses that is created for the audience. Telfer looks to the idea of judging it solely based “on how the object appears to the senses.” She explains that because “no two people can appreciate the same [dish]” then there is no way to judge the end product. This though can be argued against because everyone has their own individual experience of an artwork and so all judgments have to be subjective.

When looking at the idea of preference and how that plays into how we judge art, Paraecoli talks about it in that clients who like what the chef do will support that and keep them relate. This is the same for artists who have patrons that support them because they want them to continue to product work. Telfer talks about preference in a way that explains that even though some people may not like how something taste, they can appreciate that others fine it pleasing. I think that these two ways are not so different because they are both suggesting that food and art are appreciated by people is similar ways that make them seem almost the same.

Parasecoli, F. (2013, August 29). Is Food Art? Chefs, Creativity, and the Restaurant Business? Huffington Post. Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fabio-parasecoli/food-art_b_3830791.html

Telfer, E. (2002). Food as art. In Neill, A. & Ridley, A (Eds.), Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates (2 ed., pp. 9-27). New York: Routledge.