When people talk about food, they are talking their tastes, textures, smells and colors. As one object that is demanded in everyone’s daily life, food plays an important role. Depending on different point of views on food, some people see food only as something that they need to consume, while some concerned more about their features and believe that food in an artwork that people can made in their daily life. Today, I’d like to talk about this topic based on the article from Jacquelyn Strycker “From Palate to Palette: Can Food be Art?”
Strycker, as an artist who has a lot of passion on cooking, believes that food is of course art. At the beginning of her article, she first described how she cooked last night with “broccoli rabe with caramelized onions and vegan fennel sausage, along with a creamy parmesan polenta and a crusty whole wheat rosemary bread made from the Camaldoli sourdough culture that I feed flour to each day” (2013). She enjoys cooking, and sees the process, combining textures, flavors, scents and colors, as a creative way to practice. She then cited and discussed an opinion article on New York Times: A matter of Taste by William Deresiewicz, which claims that food “food has replaced art as high culture” (2012), about can food be seen as art. She first pointed out the long tradition of food being as artistic medium. She discussed the European sugar sculpture, porcelain and table layout during 16th to 19th centuries. At that time, table decorations were seen as “an aspect of political and social prestige, and required the skills of the finest artists and craftsmen of the time” (Royal Guard, as cited by Strycker, 2013). She then used several examples, like German artist Wolfgang Laib and emerging artist Leah Foster and briefly introduced their artwork which are made by rice and cupcakes.
In Strycker’s point of view, “Combining and transforming materials is a fundamentally creative activity, whether those materials are paints, clays, musical notes or edible ingredients” (2013). She believed that during the process of cooking, the combination of different ingredients, the control of the degree of the temperature is creative; even they are not painting or sculptures. Comparing to Strycker, Tefler mentioned about the aesthetic reaction, “there can be aesthetic reactions to tastes and smells and as with other sense, the non-neutral, vivid and non-instrumental reaction to taste and smells can be combined with a judgment for which the judger claims objectively” (2002).
In conclusion, by comparing several articles both from class and outside sources, I found knowing deeper about what is art and how can some food be concerned as an art. Therefore, as some food can satisfy human’s emotion, and is a creative way to show how the artist’s, or say cook’s view, it can be seen as a form of art.
References:
Deresiewicz, W. (2012, October 26). A Matter of Taste? Retrieved October 26, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/how-food-replaced-art-as-high-culture.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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.
Strycker, J. (2013, January 7). From Palate to Palette: Can Food be Art? Retrieved October 26, 2014, from
http://createquity.com/2013/01/from-palate-to-palette-can-food-be-art.html