The article “Food is NOT Art” was wrote after the author listened to a presentation about treating food as art. The author stated some concerns about the presentation. He presented three reasons to explain why he/she thought food is not art by using examples and quotations. In the first place, the author thought food does not have the same purpose with paintings or movies. People need food to survive. Secondly, food is not art because food cannot influence people in the same way of art. Food would disappear after people eat it. Last but not least, the author also thought food cannot last over generations but art can. These are the three main reasons the author raise to rebate the presentation he/she had.

After reading the article “Food is NOT Art”, I thought that food may be is not an art but some thing like art. I would like to use the statements in this article to support my conclusion in the following.

The article “Food is Not Art” has different positions about the issue whether food is art. In the first place, from the article “Food as Art”, Elizabeth states that food is art since “there can be aesthetic reactions to taste and smell” (Elizabeth, 11). What’s more, “as with the other senses, the non-neutral, vivid and non-instrumental reaction to tastes and smells can be combined with a judgment for which the judger claims objectivity” (Elizabeth, 11). Based on the understanding of Elizabeth’s statements, we could know that, Elizabeth use people’s aesthetic reactions as a standard to say whether food is art. In contrast, in the article “Food is Not Art”, the author states some opposite opinions on this topic. The author raised the “purpose” of food in his/her article. He/she thinks people need to eat food for survive and they only need food when they need it. In his/her words, “humans necessarily must consume food, so their aesthetic interest in it may not be genuine; rather, their appreciation of its beauty may just be influenced by an inherent anticipation of its taste or desire to consume it” (Web). These two articles stated totally different opinions about whether food is art. In addition, in the article “Food is Not Art”, the author also stated an interesting but considerable opinion. He/she said, “People do not go to restaurants to see the food. Instead, they go to eat it, ultimately for the reason of survival…. People go to museums, watch movies, and play video games for the sake of doing those activities, not for the sake of surviving” (Web).

Secondly, the author of “Food is NOT Art” states that “Food does not have he ability to influence us the way art does because of its limitation of remaining in the physical world. All art seems to require a medium of some sort, and physical food cannot be its own medium. If this is the case, the food cannot actually express anything meaningful in our minds or inspire the deep thoughts that other art can” (Web). Because food cannot exist for a long time like other forms of art, such as paintings or movies, people do not have enough time to do some research on the food to figure out the true value of the food. Based on this perspective, the food may be cannot be named as art even though sometimes food could let people have the same sense or reactions when they say other forms of art.

Last but not least, the author of “Food is NOT Art” raised another important idea to express his/her position. The author mentioned “To use an economic term, food is a rival good. In other words, if one person consumes a piece of cake, for example, then another cannot consume the same piece of cake. Unlike many famous paintings, statues, and architectural feats, food does not persist over time” (Web). The statement in the article really point out one essential different between food and art. The value of the artwork may be increased as time went by. People in different time period could have different understanding of the same art based on different experiences. However, food did not have this characteristic. Food stimulates people’s sense in a very short period of time. Only a small amount of people could appreciate food’s value and beauty. Therefore, food is not the same as art.

In conclusion, based on the contrast of the two articles, I conclude that food is not art because food’s purpose, ability for people to share, and persistence are different from the normal art.

Cited Work

Mstoibe. (2012, December). “Food is NOT Art”[On-Line Blog]. http://artblog.catherinehoman.com/food-is-not-art/

Food is the necessity for people’s daily life. Even though food is normal, I still view food as an art. Food is not just the thing to feed people. People pursue to make delicious food with great look and taste so that they could distinguish their food with others. In the process of making more delicious food with great look and taste makes food a kind of art little by little. Just like what Elizabeth Telfer said in “Food as Art”, “it is generally agreed that there can be aesthetic reactions to tastes and smells.” People not only want to stay away hunger, but also want to enjoy the figure and smells of food. They appreciate the food in good shapes and have aesthetic reactions.

What’s more, food could be a representation of the different cultures of the countries all over the world. For instance, burger is a form of traditional food of the U.S.A, while dumplings is that of China. People could think of the countries when they saw the food. Dissanayake stated different theories about art in her article. I found that postmodernism’s theory, Art as interpretation, could support my opinion. The postmodernism thought “Rather than assuming that art reflects a unique and privileged kind of knowledge, any ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ is only a point of view- a ‘representation’ that comes to us mediated and conditioned by our language, our social institutions, the assumptions that characterize individuals as members of a nation, a race, a gender, a class, a profession, a religious body, a particular historical period” (Dissanayake, 5). From my point of view, art could meets postmodernism’s understanding of art well. The climate, topography, social structure, and culture are some of the elements that determine the diversity of food in different countries. For instance, people in the U.S.A have the different food system with people in the Africa because of the climate. Therefore, the ways they made food are totally different. In this way, we could say that food is also a interpretation to state the culture or climate of a specific area.