This is a conflicting question that food is an art or not. In the beginning Tefler’s article, she talks about the Aesthetic reactions. When people see food, they do like to watch them. After chef cooking a meal, food is more like an artwork. The appearance of food brings people aesthetic satisfaction. Food has their color, shape, and flavor. People get these information by using their sense organs. When people appreciate an artwork, they also use their sense organs to do it. Food is the product of nature. In the broad way that people define art, food should be an artwork.
But in my opinion, food is not an artwork. For an artwork, it must last a long time period. Some painting or music could be preserved for several decades. A dance could be inherited by different generation. Dancing also could be spread to the whole world. Food cannot be like that, because food is hard to keep. In Tefler’s article, she claims that “To be a great work of art, an object must have had the chance to “speak” to different generations.”(p.24) An artwork carries a lot of information, people could get information from this artwork’s expression. Different generation might get different information from an artwork. This is about history of human, and the progress of human’s civilization. From this point, we also can realize that an artwork should be memorable. For a food, it is hard to imagine that to have a memorable issue. From Ellen Dissanayake’s essay, “What is Art for?”, she mentioned that “art is a behavior of making special”. People eat food every day, and people get nutrition and energy from it. Food is a very common thing since human’s civilization begun. Food can be grew everywhere with soil and water, and everyone has the ability to grown it. Most food has the similar shape and color. I think food is not that special to be an artwork. Food is just a member of food cycle.
Hi Zheng:
Nice work Zheng! I think you have a very clear order. At your first paragraph, you summarized the Tefler’s article and get the author’s idea. Then the second paragraph you share your opinion about is food art. However, I disagree with your idea that food is not an artwork. I think it is a logical question. Like you said painting or music could keep for a long time, but it only exists in a correct environment. If a painting exists in a very humid environment, it cannot conserve a long period. On the other hand, food can preserve for a long time, if we create an anaerobic and sterility and low temperature environment. In addition, food can also spread to the whole world. More importantly, food as a media of culture already separated to the entire world. Finally, artwork should be memorable. Honestly I tasted many tasty and memorable foods. I think I will not forget them in my entire life. lol
Hi Kaiqing, thank you for your valuable comment. I can see that we have a totally different idea. I can see you have a lot of knowledge about biology. If a painting is an artwork, people will keep it in a safe place. People always keep artwork which is valuable for human’s history or aesthetics, they always keep artworks in the museum. Did you see some food will be preserve in the museum? I think food is just a medium that the whole world transports the energy. Just look at the food chain, it is a circle. When people eat food they got energy, and then the residue will compost. The compost in the earth provides energy for plants. An artwork should be in a special form. I think food have the appreciated value, but is does not have the collected or preserve value. I think the value of an artwork is very important, or this will not called artwork.
Hi, Zheng! In your first paragraph, you talked about the relationship between aesthetics and food and I also mentioned this relationship in my post. I believe that food could be considered as art so I cannot agree with your opinion. You think food is not an artwork because food cannot to speak to different generations. However, I think food could be inherited by different generations. The cooking method of food could be inherited by human so that form the different food systems in the world today. For example, Chinese food have a long history and it be inherited by generations of Chinese so that our food is very special compared to other food systems. On the other hand, you said food is a very common thing so it is no special to be art. However, food could be cooked to many delicate dishes which are special compared with ordinary food, and each chef would cook out different favor or form for a same dish so it accord with ‘making special’. Overall, I think food could be seen as art but everyone could have different opinion with this issue.