This week’s reading is much more interested for me because I really love to eat delicious food. The author Tefler, E. (2002) in the article “Food as Art” discusses about how to distinguish “aesthetic” between art and our daily activities. He points out that “Is food art?” is always an controversial issue in our society. Some people don’t agree that food is art while the author insist that food is kind of art and also has its “aesthetic.”
Coincidentally, today is Spring festival in China, which is a traditional “New year” for Chinese people to celebrate. Relatives will stay together in one person’s house and eat together. In my country, the “Food” is also an significant part of culture. For example, we will always eat”Fish” in the Spring festival because the “Fish” has the same pronunciations as “surplus.” The fish means that people will have enough things to spend every year. According the Tefler, E(2002), he states that” Our reactions is aesthetic, in many simple cases, if it is based solely on how the object appears to the senses.”(Page 9) In my opinion, the food which can contain people’s emotion is an art work because it has a power to make people feel enjoyable and aesthetic. Although the author thinks that “food can not move us at the way that music and other major arts can.”(Page 25) However, some food really have its special meanings for me to remember. The taste from your hometown I will never forget because I already mixed my homesick and the taste of food together. The meal made by my mother, which is not really delicacy as an expensive restaurant or an excellent cooker, but it’s my familiar taste, which can bring me into a extremely sweet dream of my past. So I think that food can be an art in some certain ways not because it looks beautiful or taste so great, but because who made it for you and how you feel about it.
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.
I really enjoyed reading your response to Elizabeth Tefler’s essay. I too come from a Chinese culture and am familiar with a lot of the traditions that you mention. You bring up the idea that food that has the ability to emotionally impact a person is art. I believe that this is a powerful idea, because food just like music and specific places are able to remind a person of particular memories. For example, I used to commute from Portland, OR to Hillsboro, OR everyday going from my grandma’s house to my own when my parents got off work. Every morning my mom would listen to K103.3 Portland’s Soft Rock station as we would drive to the city getting caught up in traffic every morning. Now, every time that I hear their theme chime, my body automatically reacts and I get the car sick feeling that I used to feel every morning growing up during the commute. Going back to food, I believe that a lot of food is able to have the same effect. Certain flavors are able to bring me back to certain people, restaurants, and places that I have visited. I believe that this is a valid way of distinguishing food as art. Tefler discusses philosophers who disagree with your viewpoint however by claiming that, “although food and drink can give rise to aesthetic reactions, they cannot constitute works of art” (Tefler, 12). How else could you defend the way that you see food as art given Tefler’s counter?
Hi shuwen, happy new year! I do enjoy the food in Spring Festival even I have not attend the official event for about 3 years. For me, I do believe that not only the food is a kind of art, but for the process of making the food. In China, different place has different traditions to celebrate the new year. The main event during the celebration are relative to food such as dumping, fried Tofu and so on. Even for western people, they eat turkey in their traditional Christmas dinner. For me, I do not care what we eat during the Spring Festival but I do care gathering together with family members and enjoy the process of making food and celebrate the new year. Thus, the process of making food makes me feel happiness. The cooking process should be a great piece of Art.
I loved hearing about your culture and how food becoming such a huge part of your life and how you identify it with your home. I agree that art does strike emotions and memories, but one part that I think you may be misconstruing a way of defining art. The effects of art on the viewer are secondary to the inputs by the artist. So while artwork may strike some and not strike others it is still artwork based on the emotion and intentions of the artist. I do, however, agree with you that food is art to an extent. With the preparation and stylization that is put into cooking and preparing the fish, artwork is being performed. The fish by itself is not artwork. To call the fish by itself art is like referring to paint in a bucket as art. Not until that paint is carefully added to a canvas or medium is the paint considered a part of artwork.
The notion of food being connected to personal emotions is something I have carried around with me since I was a young child. Ever since I was young, I have had a really strong connection with smell and the emotional connections that comes along with it. I work at Sephora and we carry a wide range of fragrances and cologne. One of the things I learned in the Sephora fragrance training program is that fragrance and cologne are “scented memories” that carry much more than florals, citrus, or woods. This is how I relate to the scent of food. Every Christmas my grandmother makes a rack of lamb roast that smells the whole house and is literally the essence of the holiday season for me. Same situation with the fall season, any scent that is pumpkin flavored such as pumpkin pie, is the scent of all the leaves leaving the trees.