A Hierarchy of the Senses or of the Arts?

[stefanyb]

Art is about ideas. It’s as simple as that. To the extent that food or dining or gastronomy or anything else is about ideas, that is the extent to which it is art and, I dare say, its rare perhaps never, that the raison d’etre of food, any food or dish or cuisine, is about ideas. Also, at least to me, the ideas expressed must be primary to any other aspect of the endeavor. It may not be in the form of words- after all, a visual artist is expressing ideas through form, color, composition etc., a musician through sounds, but it must be the driving force.

That’s why people get bogged down in the functionality debate (if it has a function its not art) because if function is at the heart then ideas must be secondary and food or dining etc. has, at least to me, at its very core, function. Food and its production may be artistic but unless the creation is of ideas first and dinner second we have craft (small c) not art. That’s not to say art cannot have functionality but if you deconstruct it that function must not be at its heart.

And that’s why when asked I will always say it’s the intent of the artist that determines whether or not something is art. If the primary intent is the communication of ideas then its art. If not ,not.

[Fat Guy]

I'd like to post this passage from Plato's Gorgias:

+++

[socrates speaking]

And now I will endeavour to explain to you more clearly what I mean: The soul and body being two, have two arts corresponding to them: there is the art of politics attending on the soul; and another art attending on the body, of which I know no single name, but which may be described as having two divisions, one of them gymnastic, and the other medicine. And in politics there is a legislative part, which answers to gymnastic, as justice does to medicine; and the two parts run into one another, justice having to do with the same subject as legislation, and medicine with the same subject as gymnastic, but with a difference. Now, seeing that there are these four arts, two attending on the body and two on the soul for their highest good; flattery knowing, or rather guessing their natures, has distributed herself into four shams or simulations of them; she puts on the likeness of some one or other of them, and pretends to be that which she simulates, and having no regard for men's highest interests, is ever making pleasure the bait of the unwary, and deceiving them into the belief that she is of the highest value to them. Cookery simulates the disguise of medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best for the body; and if the physician and the cook had to enter into a competition in which children were the judges, or men who had no more sense than children, as to which of them best understands the goodness or badness of food, the physician would be starved to death. A flattery I deem this to be and of an ignoble sort, Polus, for to you I am now addressing myself, because it aims at pleasure without any thought of the best. An art I do not call it, but only an experience, because it is unable to explain or to give a reason of the nature of its own applications. And I do not call any irrational thing an art; but if you dispute my words, I am prepared to argue in defence of them.

Cookery, then, I maintain to be a flattery which takes the form of medicine; and tiring, in like manner, is a flattery which takes the form of gymnastic, and is knavish, false, ignoble, illiberal, working deceitfully by the help of lines, and colours, and enamels, and garments, and making men affect a spurious beauty to the neglect of the true beauty which is given by gymnastic.

+++

[stefanyb]

I'm thinking Plato agrees with me

[chefette]

I am thinking we need the Cliff Notes to get through Fat Guy's post.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

GORGIAS-10

I was saying, as you will not have forgotten, that there were some processes which aim only at pleasure, and know nothing of a better and worse, and there are other processes which know good and evil. And I considered that cookery, which I do not call an art, but only an experience, was of the former class, which is concerned with pleasure, and that the art of medicine was of the class which is concerned with the good

Here Plato has Socrates say that he doesn't consider cookery an art, rather an experience.

Clearly 2500 years ago they had as much difficulty attaching a value to the rather semantically slippery word, 'art' as we do now.

[Suvir Saran]

I myself find that pastry has been an excellent outlet for my otherwise constrained artistic inclinations.  In pastry I have been a sculptor, a fashion designer, a hat maker, a florist, a painter, an architect, and even an actor who created many desserts/pastries as well.

Chefette, I am not a pastry chef,  but in my catering Indian dinners and events, I find myself doing just what you say you found possible with pastry being your outlet.

I can be a craftsman around food, I can be a culinary artist if I want to.

Similarly I can be a craftsman doing brilliantly executed serigraphs or I can be an artist who does most moving serigraphs that leave a lasting visual impression.

Food, music, painting, sculpture, photography, pottery etc all have possibilities that make some indulging in them become craftsman while others pursuing them are artists.

I think the heart of this debate lies in the capabilities of the person indulging in them.

It is upto us to be craftsman or artitsts or both.  The best of us can do both.  It is a perfect marriage when the artist in us leaves a meaningful and compelling impression and the craftsman in us ensures that what we express is sound in its basics.

[Hopleaf]

“Food cannot express emotion (though a cook may ‘express herself’ and feelings such as love for friends in the act of cooking). Nor can it move us in the way that great art can. … Perfumes and flavours, natural or artificial, are necessarily limited: unlike the major arts, they have no expressive connections with emotions, love or hate, death, grief, joy, terror, suffering, yearning, pity, or sorrow, or plot or character development. But this need not put them out of court.”

Perhaps what begs attention here are the particular choices of words here. And rather than argue for or against, let me just ask a few questions for us all to ponder.

When she says that food cannot express emotion, is she suggesting the inherent necessity for food to interact with our sensory perceptions? In other words, food on its own cannot DO anything, least of all express emotion. That being said, the same could probably be said of a painting or a book. If an fan of Monet has never seen one of his paintings, that one painting is limited by the lack of viewing. Accordingly, if a Steinbeck fan has never read Travels with Charley (how can they call themselves a Steinbeck fan, right?) that book hasn't effected them.

How do you think she views great art moving us? Does it seem that she is overlooking food's associative nature? Anything created that interacts with our sensory perceptions can induce a memory or cause an emotion. For me, to exclude food from this group (great art) is narrow-minded. The simple smell of olive oil heating up in an omlette pan causes me to recall my childhood and for some reason makes me miss my since-departed dog Sasha. I'm not exactly overwhelmed by grief at Sash's death, nor am I succumbed by sadness for my lost youth, but that can't be said of a painting or a book or music either. In this sense, she's really missing the boat when she says that food can't have expressive connections.

And I promised not to argue for or against. Ha!

[chefette]

You provided us the following quote:

Food cannot express emotion (though a cook may ‘express herself’ and feelings such as love for friends in the act of cooking). Nor can it move us in the way that great art can. … Perfumes and flavours, natural or artificial, are necessarily limited: unlike the major arts, they have no expressive connections with emotions, love or hate, death, grief, joy, terror, suffering, yearning, pity, or sorrow, or plot or character development. But this need not put them out of court.”

Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 1999) is quoting Elizabeth Telfer, Food for Thought: Philosophy and Food (Routledge, 1996) and an unpublished MS by Frank Sibley, ‘Tastes and Smells in Aesthetics’.

However, it appears that you pulled this completely out of context as both philosophers in question – Dr Korsemeyer and Dr. Telfer – actually support the argument that food or more specifically cooking should be considered art. The quotation you provided is pulled from a philosophical debate about food and its relation to philosophers (whether philosophers could afford to allow themselves to become diverted from the high pursuits of the mind by the lower pleasures of the body (food, drink, sex).

Dr. Korsmeyer’s book is actually intended to explain how taste came to occupy so low a place and why it is deserving of greater philosophical respect and attention.

Dr. Telfer is interested in exploring how our aesthetic responses to food might validate cooking as an art form.

So I suppose the real question you are interested in us debating is not really whether food can or should be considered an art but where we each believe it should be ranked in the hierarchy of aesthetics and why. Maybe everyone else was really getting that and I am just now catching the real drift – oh well.

That is a pretty tough question, especially after skimming through some of the writings of Korsemeyer and Telfer. And I think that you really cannot get away from one of the key problems in all discussions about art – when is something really art, and who is to say that it is or is not art? I think that alot of this ranking of the arts has alot to do with a bunch of ancient Greek guys sitting around (naked) with a bunch of young Greek (hunky swarthy also naked) guys in a bath, smoking something that probably is illegal now, and feeling pretty strongly that not succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh brought their spirits closer to God. Since God is the ultimate creator and thus the ultimate artist and that being high on the plane toward godliness somehow granted an endeavor greater or higher artliness. Considering that they basically avoided or could not afford any nice food it is no wonder that they did not accord cooking a good artistic ranking.

[Jonathan Day]

A few excerpts from the starter thread, emphasis mine

(Telfer) ...Perfumes and flavours, natural or artificial, are necessarily limited: unlike the major arts, they have no expressive connections with emotions, love or hate, death, grief, joy, terror, suffering, yearning, pity, or sorrow, or plot or character development. But this need not put them out of court.”

(JD) Accepting, for the moment, that cookery is a form of art, is it at a lower level of hierarchy than other arts?...Where, in a hierarchy of the arts, would others place cookery? Is it similar to pottery or rug-making, a useful or decorative art? Or are the chefs who aspire to artistic creation wasting their time and that of their customers?

Chefette is right on several counts. The Telfer quote was hard to interpret, because it was a quote inside a quote. Korsmeyer, in particular, wants to see taste take a bigger place within aesthetic philosophy.

I had hoped to avoid the old discussion "is food art, or not?" -- at least in this simple form, because of problems of definition. Again, chefette identified the question I was hoping we might focus on:

(Chefette) So I suppose the real question you are interested in us debating is not really whether food can or should be considered an art but where we each believe it should be ranked in the hierarchy of aesthetics and why.

Exactly so.

What I continue to wonder about (and here it would be great to hear from artists from many disciplines) is whether cookery offers the artist wide enough scope (or complexity) for expression. Last summer, for example, I made a particularly great soupe au pistou: the vegetables and herbs all came from our garden, and the flavours and textures balanced better than I had hoped. "Wonderful," said everyone at the table, and "More, please." Then it was gone. Gratifying, but very transient, and not leaving much scope for further analysis.

Given that the pastry cook's creations are in some sense more plastic and more durable than the ordinary cook's, does pastry offer more complexity or scope?

What about the winemaker's art?

[chefette]

I have been involved in the arts all my life. My Granfather was a carpenter and loved to putter around creating furniture and clever things, my Aunt is an artist (a professional one), my Step mother is a porecline painter, and my sister is a professional graphic designer. Instead of coloring books I had reames of drawing paper and all sorts of really cool paints and colored pencils. I was going to attend art school at Boston University but changed plans.

Having created many paintings, drawings, photographs, a few sculptures and other items, I find that you follow the inspiration of something you see (external or internal stimulous) to express yourself and create something. If it is a painting or a photo or a sculpture it has some level of permanence and could potentially be enjoyed, questioned, experienced and critiqued by many (or not). If it is a poem or a song/music or a dance I may create it someone may be present to enjoy it but it is fleeting and gone when completed. True, these things can be recoirded but so can a menu or a recipe.

I guess that looking at it this way you could divide up the arts potentially into

1- those that have lasting material form, remain relatively stable over time, and are available for appreciation as created by the artist for many others over time

2- those that are created by one artist but have no durability or lasting physical form and require active input from another artist to be appreciated but are thus subject to constant reinterpretation and the respective talents and ideas of a succession of 'performers'

I think that cooking as an art falls into category two

I really do not believe that arts in one category are necessarily superior or better than those in another. Again you have to consider that anything in and of itself cannot really be considered art. I think that the essence or art is the process, creation, and interaction between the artist and the beholder or audience. For instance there is no real artistic value in painting or the visual arts for someone who cannot see, no art in cooking/food to someone whose sense of taste or smell is impaired, no joy in music for those who cannot hear it. So, if there is any hierarchy it has to be fairly individual. It would be the result of personal experience, perception, and values.

To some, cooking and food might be considered the highest form of art. Because of its fleeting and highly temporary nature.

In cooking one has a concept (for a dish or a meal, whatever). One takes that concept or inspiration and creates something, this creation may be captured for recreation in a recipe (recipe writing in itself is considered an art to some), the dish or meal is presented to a diner or diners who may admire its appearance, its smell, the drama of its textures, temperatures, and flavors.

As an artist I have found that the creation part of the process is probably the most significant. In most arts there are skills and principles that one must learn and assimilate in order to excel and you put these skills to use to create things. You create these things partly for yourself, partly for others, once you have completed a project it sort of goes off into the wide world on its own. I don't see that cooking is any different.

[Hopleaf]

Ok, with this new, perhaps original, bent in mind

(Jonathan) What I continue to wonder about (and here it would be great to hear from artists from many disciplines) is whether cookery offers the artist wide enough scope (or complexity) for expression.

my two cents worth:

I'm not so much an artist as an art appreciator, so I consider myself able, not necessarily in an authoritative sense, to respond. having toyed here and there with artistic endeavors (drawing, painting, ice carving, clay throwing, cooking) I can honestly say that there is as much artistry to cooking as might be seen in the act of drawing. As for scope, with certain obvious limitations which other art forms also seem to have (canvases are not limitless, ice blocks not endless, clay not infinite) cooking, for me, was as gratifying at the end of the day as was a finished drawing or ice carving I had created.

I think it was cheffette who mentioned something about where the culinary arts fit into a hierarchy of the aesthetics, and I just wanted to ask whether or not the arts are/can be viewed in a hierarchical sense? they all seem to speak to different parts of our human experience on this earth. I can't personally say that a black & white photograph, however particularly impressive I find it, is better or ranks higher than the gorgonzola-stuffed filet mignon at Zia's Trattoria (NW-side Chicago). They each appeal, equally, to a different part of me.

[chefette]

The hierarchy part is not my idea - in fact I say that I do not believe that the hierarchy makes any sense. The hierarchy concept is from the original issue and I believe comes originally from the aforementioned ancient philosophers who apparently were not "equal opportunity" appreciators.

I think we are in agreement on the cooking is as artistic as any other art line of thought.

[Hopleaf]

ok, seems like we've kind of plateaued. What can we come up with as far as particularly influencial people through history that have helped take food more seriously and develop it into an aesthetic thing that can both be created artisticly and appreciated in an artistic sense?

A couple of ideas to start the ball rolling (mostly from the modern era since aside from some big names I'm not well read enough, and mostly in regards to the US, since I don't know the Eurpean scene much):

Delmonicos in New York city. Forgive me if I've got this wrong, but wasn't this one of the first restaurants to offer fine dining options, something which in early 19th Century America was relatively unheard of?

Clearly from a media standpoint, we've probably got to tip a hat to Julia Child for putting food on the map (someone would've done it at that point in time anyway given the changes happening in food production and distribution at the time, thankfully it was her). But to me, someone that really open the doors wide to a larger audience of the importance of aesthetically presented food was Emeril Lagasse. All his efluvious expressions aside, he's done wonders to increase people's awareness of culinary artistry. Most every dish he prepares, he finishes with plate presentation.

In a more historical sense, Escoffier started it all by organizing what was previously unorganized. But Carême probably did more for food aesthetics.

At any rate, just wanted to start the ball rolling in a slightly different direction and see if it maintains its momentum.

[ballast_regime]

viva la symposium!

the quality of discussion is decent, but i agree with hopleaf's assessment of this topic, that it has slightly stagnated ("plateaued," in his tongue), for understandable reasons:

(i) we are at an impasse about what constitutes art;

(ii) we are uncertain about what we're really discussing (i.e., a hierarchy of the arts, aesthetic preference or food as art?);

on (i), merriam webster can provide us a little insight. it defines "art" as, "skill acquired by experience, study, or observation," which is a throwback to times when art was craft, and vice-versa, when it was primarily either functional, social, or religious in nature. another definition--the most comprehensive--further fleshes out art: "the conscious use of skill or creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects." definitionally, art is slippery, especially because exceptions abound. art isn't always conscious (it could be algorithmic, unintentional, aleatory, and so on); nor is it necessarily creative (anyone seen tomcats?); and it certainly doesn't have to be aesthetic (see my preference post about karlheinz stockhausen).

all in all, the one aspect that is present in all definitions of art refer to its process, implying that it requires time and skill (even here there are exceptions, but i find these characteristics to me, for the most part, universally applicable). there are many schema designed to dichotomize art into its appropriate constituent parts: organic vs inorganic; representational vs abstract; permanent vs impermanent (chefette); rational vs irrational; functional vs aesthetic; and on and on. most of these systems are just that: intellectual devices used to try and make sense of something that is too broad, rich, and complex to effectively capture like a butterfly. so, when someone tells me food isn't art, i say ok, since such claims are objectively inarguable. i may personally disagree, but my opinion is no more valid than theirs.

other egulleteers have also done a very good job summing up art: lord michael lewis has pointed out that art is a proxy for real-life experience (and it often is, but i know most of you can think of counter-examples), while chefette earlier posted that art is fundamentally about ideas (i think this idea could be construed to say that art, like everything, is informational, since it exists, and it is therefore too broad to be meaningful for me).

on (ii), i think it would be wise to think long and hard about what we want to accomplish with this topic. are we driving at the nature of art, or food in general? or are we supposed to be contemplating what is beautiful and what sorts of things move of more than others?

on hopleaf's assertion that plating foodstuffs in an "aesthetic" way is important, let us not forget japanese kaiseki, which has a longer traditional of refined presentation than either the examples he listed. i would also point out that, while important to the experience of food as art, i don't think plating is integral.

which brings me to an important question: what elements within food in general, and dining in particular, allow it to be an art for each and every one of you, if anything?

ian

ballast/regime

[Jonathan Day]

I had hoped that our focus would be more on the nature of food than the nature of art -- as Ian says, the characteristics of food and cooking that lend themselves to art. To change media for a moment: do certain types of paint (oil, watercolours, acrylic, etc.) offer the artist more flexibility and subtlety than others? Switching back to cooking: is pastry, as I asked in an earlier post, superior to savoury cooking as a vehicle for artistic expression?

Yet it seems that we cannot avoid the question of "what is art?". So here is a personal point of view.

Art is "the making well of whatever needs making", and it applies equally to bouillabaisses, operas and buildings, as long as all are made with care and attention. It is for human use, not for an aesthetic thrill or a sentimental experience.

In this sense, cooking has the potential to reach the highest levels of artistic relevance, despite its temporary qualities, precisely because it is so closely linked to one of our most basic needs. The customer (who is also a kind of artist) should in some sense know what he or she needs, in the same way that a good cook knows the exact ingredient needed to complete a particular dish.

What gets in the way of this artistic communication, in restaurants? Style for the sake of style, elaboration for its own sake, innovations that don't teach us more about the foods themselves but are simply innovations.

The Indian art historian and writer, A.K. Coomaraswamy, wrote "The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man a special kind of artist." (See several of the essays in his Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, Dover 1956).

[ngatti]

It is at this point that I interject a thought that has occured to me while reading this thread.

I get the sense from the thread that as we attempt to insert culinary matters into some sort of hierarchy of arts; we seem to assume that the activities of painting, sculpture, literature, theatre etc. belong in that hierarchy.

Fine, but I make the observation that throughout this conversation we continually seek metaphor(s) for culinary matters (often time pulling the metaphor from within the exisiting ranking), before we are willing to place them within the hierarchy.

Nick

[Nick]

Maybe it has something to do with conceiving "art" as long lasting - the paintings, the sculpture. The art of cooking is devoured and is gone, with only the memory remaining. Like sand art from Tibet.

"The monks are making a sand mandala. The brilliant-colored sand creates a replica of a statue of a palace, as seen from above.

"The monks will work from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day. When it is complete on Sept. 8, the mandala will be swept away."

The nature of impermanence.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

I had hoped that our focus would be more on the nature of food than the nature of art.

Sadly, this will not be possible given the topic title.

In the search for a consensual definition of Art it may be of some value to consider works of art as they consensually perceived. The common threads that hold them together seem to be:

i) They are considered to be representational artefacts worthy of representing a society's cultural achievements (there is always a lot of argument about this, but the criterion stands). Due to this historical perspective, we tend to define Art by its permanent examples.

ii) They should not be the things they represent. Essentially they serve to evoke something, whether this is an apple or depression. Gustave Courbet's Still Life with Apples and Pomegranate fulfils the criterion in the above, so for most it's Art. The apples that inspired his painting, however, are not. They are part of the real world/creation and their real/miraculous nature precludes them from being Art. Cheese, therefore, is not Art, but Dieter Meyer's cheesy canvases could, at least, be considered so.

How does one use this template against the food of Adria, for example? First of all, we have to ask ouselves why Adria's name crops up so regularly in discussions of this nature.

Clearly, there are elements to Adria's cuisine that correspond to ii., mainly the fact that his food doesn't seem to address hunger, or at least, satisfying hunger is not a priority. One could go on, but perhaps the main reason that so many cite Adria as an artist is that we instinctivley recognise Art, and in this case our instinct defies the definition of the inadequate linguistic tag, 'Art'.

Art as an emotional and intellectual response came before 'Art' as semantic label. The fact that this emotional response has been unsatisfactorily encoded into a familiar word does not mean that we should reject what we sense to be Art if it does not fit the definition, but rather; the definition should adapted to include the stimulus.

[chefette]

(JD) "I had hoped that our focus would be more on the nature of food than the nature of art"

Well, you did not ask about food in the first place - you asked about cooking. Cooking and food art two different things just as painting and paints are different. Cooking, like painting is an activity, a process. In cooking you use creativity, concepts, and skills to create something using food. In the case of cooking, both the raw ingredients and the final composition are categorized as food.

What IS the nature of food? Anything that one can consume as sustenance? That really does not help in the discussion. Maybe you were really thinking about more focus on cooking?

I was thinking that over time our interactions with food have become more complex and our manipulation of it from raw material to edible 'art' or product has become more sophisticated. Then I thought that this statement can easily be said to be fatally flawed. To me it seems that while we might perceive that there has been progress, and complexity and sophistication and growth here that in fact we are seeing greater simplification and minimization of food in its more artistic sense.

I read an assessment of language in which the premise was basically that language and communication becomes ever more complex and diverse, more sophisticate. The results of the effort indicated though that as society grows more sophisticated and complex language actually becomes less precise, less subtle, less descriptive, less nuanced as we develop more shorthand forms of communication in our speech.

While one might have consumed bread and an apple as a meal many years past, one might now consume a cheeseburger with fries and a coke. Have we progressed? Is there more art in this food? In all respects I see more art in the bread and the apple. Presumably one would have made the bread or know well the person who did, and one probably grew, or at least picked the apple from a tree. Even if this was not artistic to the consumer, I prefer the picture it evokes.

JD "Do certain types of paint (oil, watercolors, acrylic, etc.) offer the artist more flexibility and subtlety than others? Switching back to cooking: is pastry, as I asked in an earlier post, superior to savory cooking as a vehicle for artistic expression?"

Answering in terms of paint, yes different paints give different effects and support different types of expression. But the key is the technique, the style, the skill, the vision of the person wielding the paints.

Switching back to pastry, yes I think that pastry gives one more latitude and a better vehicle for artistic expression than savory cooking. This is both in terms of creating food (desserts) and in using food to create art. That said though, there are plenty of opportunities to be artistic in savory cooking as well not only in creating foodstuffs, but also more statically artistic - look at butter and ice sculpting, tallow sculpting, salt dough, glazed poultry, hams, fish, those giant jellied platters that used to be on buffets, carved gourds... on and on.

(JD) Art is "the making well of whatever needs making"

I thought you were reading these posts. Need has nothing to do with it. Art is about creating. I think need might actually detract from art. If it NEEDS to be made then its harder for it to be art. Things that NEED to be made CAN be made artistically, but ...

Art is about WANT. I make a painting or a sculpture or a croquembouche with sugar flowers because I WANT to. Because a creative spark sets me off to do this thing. I may be making the croquembouche because I will have hungry guests and need to feed them, but I CHOOSE to make this fanciful dessert to delight and astonish my guests.

(JD) "... cooking has the potential to reach the highest levels of artistic relevance... because it is so closely linked to one of our most basic needs."

NO, No, No, Nooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

This is actually a somewhat complicated issue at the heart of all these philosophical discussions. On the one hand when people use food to create art or when people make food in an artistic manner the SERIOUS THINKERS brush it off as impractical, frivolous, and wasteful. On the other hand, because food is something we NEED, and most food needs a bit of manipulation or interpretation to be consumed these SERIOUS THINKERS say it is not art because it is a fundamental requirement of life. So there you have it, no matter how you look at it cooking is and is not art. It is just that simple.

[Wilfrid]

I am not surprised that an impasse has been reached with respect to finding a definition of art. I have never seen convincing criteria which can reliably distinguish art works from other "objects", and the more I see what is exhibited in galleries, the less I expect such criteria ever to emerge. A good history and discussion of the question, in lay terms, can be found in Cynthia Freeland's recent book.

Criticizing the notions of art already advanced on this thread is probably fruitless, but I am willing to do so if anyone wants me to. Just to address the original quote from Korsmeyer, I am merely surprised that anyone today would advance the ability to express emotion (or to "move us") as the defining characteristic of art.

More constructively, I can suggest some ways in which we go wrong when we attempt to consider what aesthetic appeal food and drink might have. I agree with Nick Gatti's earlier comment that we are too hasty to take other art forms as our model. The fundamental point is that food (or cooking) and drink appeal primarily to the three senses of taste, smell and olfaction. Sure, one can see, touch and even hear food too, but that's secondary. No other art form I can think of makes its primary appeal to those senses. It is a reasonable premise, therefore, that there may be no strong analogy between the kind of aesthetic appeal food and drink have, and the kinds of aesthetic appeal to be found in music, painting, performance art, and so on.

Secondly, we experience taste and olfaction (smell is a bit different) by putting the food and drink inside our bodies. It's a special fact about food and drink that we then have to either swallow it or spit it out - again, no clear analogies with paintings or symphonies! Wine connoisseurs do, of course, spit. Although I haven't tried it much, I suspect that tasting and spitting when it comes to food would inhibit enjoyment of textures and after-tastes. But the fact that food and drink pass through our bodies tells us about the physiological disposition of our organs of taste and olfaction, and not really much else. Similarly, the fact that we require refreshment in order to live is an important and interesting fact, but since any aesthetic appeal of food and drink is likely to be epiphenomenal to its nutritious value, I don't know why that fact alone would lead one to disqualify food and drink from aesthetic consideration.

Finally, it has been observed that food and drink are "ephemeral", in the sense that there are problems preserving them or exhibiting them in museums. Well, I don't know how true that is of wine, but I suppose when a vintage has been drunk that's an end of it. Again, this seems to me to be no more than an interesting contingent observation. We have been able to record performance art - including sound synchronized with pictures, anyway - for less than a century (I am thinking the Vitaphone was demonstrated in the mid-twenties). Imagine a counterfactual situation in which the gramophone (and its descendants) had not been invented, but a machine for recording and replaying the taste and smell of a dish had. That doesn't seem to me to be inherently absurd. One could then borrow copies of Escoffier's best dinners from the local food library. Would food then be art, but musical performances not?

I don't have a strong view on whether food and drink are art, and I am sceptical that any such thing as a "hierachy" of arts has been demonstrated anyway. But these are examples of the kinds of questions that need to be addressed.

[Lord Michael Lewis]

The fundamental point is that food (or cooking) and drink appeal primarily to the three senses of taste, smell and olfaction.  Sure, one can see, touch and even hear food too, but that's secondary.  No other art form I can think of makes its primary appeal to those senses.

***********

Imagine a counterfactual situation in which the gramophone (and its descendants) had not been invented, but a machine for recording and replaying the taste and smell of a dish had.  That doesn't seem to me to be inherently absurd.  One could then borrow copies of Escoffier's best dinners from the local food library.  Would food then be art, but musical performances not?

While I'm certainly not arguing that prepared food is Art, I am surprised at how glibly you write off the externals of experiencing a dish. Eating (for want of a better word) is a two-stage process. first externally, and subsequently internally.

The first part of the process involves anticipation of the second. Indeed, as with language, without using our predictive powers, particularly our visual knowledge, the event is virtually meaningless. While we can make some sense of food once it's in our mouth it is a low level evaluation based on a cross reference of only three, perhaps four, of the senses and is mainly Bottom Up processing. In order to comprehend what we're eating we need to see it in order to activate our previous knowledge (Top Down processing) and bring it to bear on each new situation. It is not then unreasonable to suggest the external stimuli are those contribute at least equally to the higher pleasures of dining.

***********

As you rightly point out, recording the performing arts is very recent, but it has not altered the definition of Art, and no one would suggest that a recording or print is a performance or a paiting; they're substitutes. It could be argued that Escoffier's written work was a substitute for his cookery just as sheet music or the text of a play are technically lesser substitute for the real or recorded event. Indeed, many chefs claim that they can read and experience a recipe just like a composer can work with sheet music alone.

[ballast_regime]

wilfrid has advanced a notion that argues food and drink as art engage different senses than any other artistic media, and therefore should be treated as having intrinsically different aesthetic appeal. while i don't entirely disagree with this idea, i do not think food as art is entirely dissimilar to other arts. there seems to be a lot of concentration in this topic about the way in which people experience food as art (sensational experience), but two things ought to be pointed out.

one is that there is very little that the hard sciences understand about aesthetic preference when it comes to food. evolution hardwired humans with a body that is capable of experiencing the outside world in myriad ways--taste, smell, and sight among them, all of which are used while eating--but one would be hard-pressed to rank the senses, or to try and perceive them as being discrete and separate from the others. there is a lot of physiological overlap in the human body, and as such the brain processes all of these experiences as one: consciousness. when the senses are being triggered during a meal, a diner almost always "feels" one thing, even if that one feeling is textured, nuanced, and with many layers. a cold, paper-thin beet ravioli stuffed with pine nuts and warmed goat cheese will be, despite all the information it contains (different textures, temperatures, colors, and tastes on the tongue and in the nose), seen as the same when plugged into the brain. there are so many factors, both internal and external, that can confound the experience of art. a person may be sick with a stomach flu, going through a divorce, exhausted, or simply cold. all of these will affect the way a person interprets art at a given time. one of my favorite restaurants in phoenix, arizona is restaurant hapa, where i have had many dozens of meals. during these repeated dining experiences, i would often eat a particular dish over and over. some nights it just plain tasted better than others, even if it were objectively made the same. it could've been my mood, the weather, the amount of alcohol i consumed, or even divine intervention. to make statements about food as art and how its different from other artistic media because of the way in which it's perceived is tricky, simply because no one knows enough to make such statements. there are some philosophers and biologists that think all aesthetic preference has the same evolutionary root in our brain, which means there may or may not be qualities that bind all arts together (there's bound to be some forms of overlap, just probabilistically speaking).

the second and more important point is that, although food is different than other arts, there has been so little "theory" developed about what it means for food to be considered art (and by art i mean a media that where the creative and interpretative processes are conceptualized and explored just as much as the end product [the art] itself [i.e., people ask questions about what it means to be an artist just as much as they do about what a particular piece of art means itself]). this discussion will benefit greatly from the study of other artistic media because they provide a starting point. we take what's relevant, and scrap the rest. what will it mean to have a food theory? will food ever become art if a restaurant's main goal is profit and survival? will food as art ever have artistic movements like expressionism or romanticism that come out of a particular time, culture, and ideology? what sorts of tastes to people prefer, and why? it is my opinion that food as art will learn a lot from the hard sciences, which can inform curious observers about the nature of the human brain and body: its preferences, its dislikes, and so on. the other side of the coin is, how should food as art be different than other artistic media? are restaurants the only place one should be able to experience truly fine dining (say, of the ducasse level)? can a plate with a collection of arranged foodstuffs have a theme, a message, an ideology? can it say something--anything? how? no one knows the answers to these sorts of questions yet, but i look forward to hear people's responses.

as a side note, i would just like to say that i do not think that because a person puts food inside their bodies that it categorically makes food different, since most of this experience is still cerebrally-processed, like all other arts. in fact, all art goes from the outside-in, and ends up as firing of neurons in the gray matter of that wet computer in our skull. of course, food can cause indigestion or other physical discomforts, and it also leaves a taste on the tongue and in the nose--but the final result is something that is emergent and synergistic, something emotional, something not readily put into words.

although i think a hierarchy of the arts is not feasible, i do think most of the population unconsciously has preferences for some (say, for narrative media, like films, books, and music first) over others (like functional, non-narrative media, like architecture, food, design, and so on). such a fact is inevitable, but shouldn't be of any concern.

chefette argued that pastry probably provides more of a chance for artistic expression than savory cooking, but i'm not so sure. for one, kaiseki is among the most aesthetic forms of cuisine in the world, and there is little, if any, emphasis placed on sweet things. my girlfriend, who lived in taiwan for many years, has said that she hated asian meals (her father was a chef-owner at a chinese restaurant as she grew up) because of their lack of desserts (or because their desserts simply "sucked"). what's more, protein and non-sweet foodstuffs have been very important to our evolutionary forebears in uncountable ways, which may or may not mean that humans have an aesthetic preference for savory things (the proof's in the pudding, so to speak, since most of the world's cuisines do not place a lot of emphasis on desserts, which is because a lack of money and access, but also because of preference too).

chefette has also pointed out that need has little to do with art and artistic preference, but i think this is completely untrue. the more someone has of something--say, design or food--the less inclined one will feel to imbue it with "special" qualities, to see it as unique and elevated. therefore, the more functional artistic media probably aren't appreciated as much as those that aren't as everyday and utilitarian.

wilfrid asked one of the most important questions that i've seen asked in this discussion: what if most people had a food replicator (a la star trek: the next generation) that could create any food-related thing a person's heart could desire. what would this do (other than solve hunger and make ron popeil even richer) to food as cuisine? there would still need to be people to create dishes and particular types of cuisine. (wilfrid's comparison to music was inaccurate, since a recording of music is still a replication of techniques that most people couldn't do [that is, i listen to yo-yo ma on cd because i couldn't do what he could do, and would still go see him in concert because even if i had a cello, i couldn't play the way mr ma plays (as an aside, i really don't like yo-yo all that much)], which makes the food replicator different than a cd player). if haute cuisine were infinitely replicable, would the preciousness be lost? my guess is, yes, since part of its darling nature is not only its insouciance, but also its uniqueness (i.e., that the experience won't be had again and again). there have been times when i would eat at the same restaurant--say, gramercy tavern--over and over, but it would lose its impact because it became routine. too much of even a good thing is a bad thing, like having to wade through my boring-ass writing.

ian

ballast/regime

[Fat Guy]

Historically, those society has appointed as judges of culture have a poor track record when it comes to recognizing art. I was recently reminded that Van Gogh never sold a painting during his lifetime. And while contemporaries of the great portrait artists probably acknowledged them as artists to some extent, they were seen by many primarily as people you could hire to paint your picture -- the equivalent of photographers, before photography existed.

Perhaps this would be an aid to conceptualizing the extent to which cooking is art: It seems today we acknowledge that phototography can be art and that it also can be just a craft. Yet in the early days of photography, the general view was that a process that simply captures an exact image of what is before the lens could never convey emotion -- to use the standard articulated in the opening quote -- or otherwise do the things that art does. Those people have been proven wrong over and over again by the great photographers whose work is art. Yet when I take a photograph, it is never art.

[chefette]

Well, what about our drive and desire to own art. Why do you buy a painting and put it up where you can see it . It stirs fantasy, desire, lack of satisfaction with current lot in life or location, etc. In this sense art might be considered frustrating. We somehow want internalization and satisfaction.

Maybe food or cooking could be considered a really perfect art because it gives us almost complete satisfaction in every sense. Even if you yourself are not the food artist or creator, merely the appreciator:

We may hear it being prepared, the slicing and stirring and clanking of pots and pans and kitchen noises

We smell it (when we smell something we really like do we not close our eyes and smile?)

We see our food and admire it (why so many sexy food magazines with such nice pictures if not for our visual enjoyment), whether it is a precarious architectural arrangement that looks impossible but enticing or something rustic and hearty making us feel close to the earth, stong and heart -- all before we even approach it with a fork or spoon

We have tactile contact with food both preparing

We have the opportunity to own food by eating it. Have you never had a dish that as soon as you tasted it you just thought it was the BEST thing and wanted it to last forever?

Maybe food leaves all other arts in the dust as sad little wanna bes. Why do we have to start this discussion and run it by accepting the premises of another time?

[Jonathan Day]

Art is "the making well of whatever needs making", and it applies equally to bouillabaisses, operas and buildings, as long as all are made with care and attention. It is for human use, not for an aesthetic thrill or a sentimental experience.

In this sense, cooking has the potential to reach the highest levels of artistic relevance, despite its temporary qualities, precisely because it is so closely linked to one of our most basic needs.

On the one hand when people use food to create art or when people make food in an artistic manner the SERIOUS THINKERS brush it off as impractical, frivolous, and wasteful.  On the other hand, because food is something we NEED, and most food needs a bit of manipulation or interpretation to be consumed these SERIOUS THINKERS say it is not art because it is a fundamental requirement of life.  

Maybe food or cooking could be considered a really perfect art because it gives us almost complete satisfaction in every sense.  Even if you yourself are not the food artist or creator, merely the appreciator:

We may hear it being prepared, the slicing and stirring and clanking of pots and pans and kitchen noises

We smell it (when we smell something we really like do we not close our eyes and smile?)

We see our food and admire it (why so many sexy food magazines with such nice pictures if not for our visual enjoyment), whether it is a precarious architectural arrangement that looks impossible but enticing or something rustic and hearty making us feel close to the earth, stong and heart -- all before we even approach it with a fork or spoon

We have tactile contact with food both preparing ... and eating it.

(quote slightly shortened for clarity)

Chefette, you disagreed with the first quote above. And you were right, in part, because I implied that there was one "basic need" i.e. hunger.

But if I build on your lovely and evocative third quote, and change mine from "one of our most basic human needs" to "our basic human needs", then I think we may be on the same page.

Our hungers are for more than nutrition. Not everyone can always enjoy luxe, calme et volupté but these are in some ways as important as food and water. My children's eyes still light up when they come to a table set with beautiful linens, china and candles; they will almost always taste everything when it is presented in a setting like this, even if they subsequently reject a lot of it. They love to be in the kitchen when I am cooking, and even to help out, and to my shame I too often chase them out.

These are needs for the soul as well as the body. But they are no less basic. I think this is what Isak Dinesen was getting at in "Babette's Feast".

Satisfying these needs (physical and spiritual) is "making well what needs making". In this sense, as Chefette says, the cook can be a true artist.