Food Criticism

[baphie]

Baphie - That was one excellent post and could make for it's own topic. How is it that food came to be studied as part of sociology? Was that driven by the foodies, the sociologists who were looking for one more item to add to their discipline, or by the aesthetes who rejected food as not being on the same level as real art.

Thanks. A history of aesthetic criticism is too far out of bounds for here (and brings back too much painful memories of grad school.)

My really short, fast opinon:

My inclination is to say that thoughts about food seperated themselves from thoughts about art long before there were sociologists. Even leaving aside the major religious aspects of food and food choice, the classical era writers looked at foods in physical and metaphysical terms: Foods as medicines. Foods to achieve goals like strength or sexual attraction. The Pythagoreans avoiding beans is well known - the reason debated. Detienne (I think) has written about some really bizarro stuff involving lettuces. In short, aside from a handful of conoisseurs who wrote chronicles or travel guides, classical writers almost uniformly considered food on the material plane only.

From classical times to the modern era, food writing falls into two categories: commercial and proscriptive. Commercial writing is the source of food and restaurant criticism as it evolved from simply cataloging yields and transactions to judgements and criticism. (The history of the 1855 Bordeaux classification is a nice example, especially how it has evolved from its commercial roots to pretty much the basis of wine criticism today.) Proscriptive writing is by far the majority - food as medicine compilations, recette books, etc. On the aesthetic level, food exists almost purely in the symbolic realm - Renaissance painting being a great example.

As sociology begain to take form, food was naturally part of it. It would be fairer to say the *lack* of food was part of it. And where food was present, sociologists and cultural anthropologists were more interested in analyzing the role it played in the larger society, especially the symbolic role. Levi-Strauss' 'The Raw and the Cooked' is a perfect example. Sociologists didn't co-opt food later in an academic power grab - it was theirs from the beginning.

Aesthetes and aesthetic criticism had never really embraced food for itself. Some reasons are purely practical as unlike even a play whose words and directions can be written down, the experience of a meal is very hard to communicate. One can write about a progression in Aristophanes plays w/o actually seeing each one. It would impossible to do the same about a chef w/o experiencing personally each dish or meal. Secondly, there is a very strong, almost Manichean split in aesthetic attitudes. Experiences that do not involve direct contact, like viewing painting or sculpture, hearing music, reading words, are given a moral supremacy to experiences in the physical world like food, wine or sex. Christianity is only partly to blame as this attitude is readily apparent in Classical times. In fact, we still have it at least subconciously as we (as a society) equate overweightness with a lack of moral qualities. Lastly, and as an off-shoot to the above, even jaded aesthetes viewed what occurred in the mind as the primary goal. In 'A Rebors,' Huysmann's ultimate aesthete uses food simply as a tool to a mental state - eating rosbif at a Parisian English pub while wearing English clothes to mentally take a trip to England. To answer your question, aesthetes did reject food as real art.

When criticism as an academic discipline really took off, all the factors above were already in place. In addition, these new disciplines were either formed almost entirely out of Marxism or deeply informed by them. A pre-occupation with food and enjoying it would be most bourgeoise and hence rejected. The conservative critics almost universally came from a social background where 'good' food was simply just part of life. Roast beef, stilton and claret, regardless of actual quality as we would perceive it, was part of the expected means of life and only worth comment on the same level as a well-tailored suit. Actually learning about food, which is necessary to properly criticize, would also be condemmed as bourgeoise and arriviste. As aesthetic criticism grew and took more forms under its wing (eg movies), it just left food alone as the territory of the symbolic - what you ate (McDonalds vs cheap, ethnic) as a political choice is far more important than criticizing the food itself. It even goes as far (as I can personally attest) that to call the output of some cheap "Indian" restaurant 'shit on a plate,' makes you politically and morally suspect. That is not an environment to foster serious critical methods. Also, aesthetic criticism is not at all in fashion in academia, even with the fine arts. The type of analysis of the morphological evolution of a dish is considered hopelessly old-fashioned (and smacking of conoisseurship) when applied to the arts.

Along side all this academic/aesthetic writing has always been commercial writing which naturally ranks, rates and criticizes as a tool for making markets work better by providing more information. Historically this is the origin of restaurant and food criticism and, as your lament which started this topic indicates, restaurant reviews display their roots with every sentence.

Before I left academia, I used to get into rousing debates as I would argue that a serious aesthetic approach to food was at least as worthwhile as blathering about the latest moronic, shock-value performance art, mainly since here was an 'art' form taken all-too-seriously by the critical community that was at least as transient and experiential as a restaurant dish or meal. No dice. Or julienne either.

Sorry for the excursion into academic drivel, but I hope it answers your question,

A.

[vengroff]

Look I have just returned from seeing the Richard Avedon exhibit at the Met. And I would like to be able to read (or listen to as it was in this case) somebody speak about the food at Jean-Georges (just an example) from the aspects of aesthetics, sociology, anthoropology, popular culture, style and fashion, etc.

To be fair, many of Avedon's subjects come pre-loaded with so much cultural and political baggage that a reviewer can't possibly neglect it without missing the works entirely. Compare that to food. Yes, it exists in an aesthetic and cultural context which is worth exploring. But can a chef put everything that Andy Warhol or Richard Nixon connotes on a plate? If so, tell me the name of the restaurant and how I can get a reservation!

[GordonCooks]

"Meal"

It's difficult to find a word that can mean so many different things to so many different people. A review can't offer much in the way of empircal statistics - so it's an opinion based on experience, and opinions will always differ

Mine have changed at least 3 times - The greasier, the better - the healthier, the better - and now, the better, the better. I use reviews as a headline to pique my interest in a place. I feel that Food is as broad a subject as Art. It would be a dificult task to find someone who can discuss Gehry's architecture and DaVinci's works with equal authority.

The best review will always be the one you agree with and that's not always for everybody

[Steve Plotnicki]

Baphie - You are blowing my mind. There are so many issues to explore in that spring loaded response of yours I don't know where to begin. But I assume the answer to the riddle of getting food writing and criticism accepted as a serious endeavor is for someone to do it. It is the literary equivelent of tasting the meal isn't it?

Vengroff - Have you seen the exhibit? I thought the best photos were of Bert Lahr and Avedon's father. Lahr because he captured his anguish so well, and his father whose photos he took at a time when he was obviously dying. That Avedon was able to seperate himself from his father's situation so he could capture it as art, while also capturing his father's sadness while he was trying to hold onto his pride through dying, in a way that only a son could do, was one of the most moving things I've seen. And it gave me more of an insite into Avedon himself then any of the other photos did.

[Wilfrid]

Experiences that do not involve direct contact, like viewing painting or sculpture, hearing music, reading words, are given a moral supremacy to experiences in the physical world like food, wine or sex. Christianity is only partly to blame as this attitude is readily apparent in Classical times... In 'A Rebors,' Huysmann's ultimate aesthete uses food simply as a tool to a mental state - eating rosbif at a Parisian English pub while wearing English clothes to mentally take a trip to England. To answer your question, aesthetes did reject food as real art.

I wish I had time to respond in more detail, but thanks for that point which I don't think we've focussed on sufficiently before. The Rabelaisian celebration of food and drink is only one side of the cultural coin. The very important other side is the tradition of asceticism, austerity and self-denial. There is a discourse about food which is very reminiscent of a discourse about sex in its negativity.

Perhaps this can be developed at a later stage, but Huysmans is an excellent example. A writer moving out of spiritual crisis into an ascetic Catholicism, he does pay attention to what his characters eat - and despite (or perhaps because of) their profound love of music, literature and architecture, their dinner is at best a pot-au-feu, at worst something far less appetizing. He does introduce a cheerful gourmand character in 'L'Oblat', but the other characters' reactions to her confections are distinctly conflicted.

[bushey]

I agree 100% about Avedon's photos of his father. And they reminded me of many of my elderly relatives and their friends -- a true reflection of that generation.

They are remarkably poignant. What struck me overall about the exhibit is how so many of the photographs of people I would consider to be geniuses in their fields reflect a certain degree of insecurity and vulnerability, or at least un-self-assuredness.

Just hung the Paris Avedon 2003 calendar that I picked up at the exhibit.

Okay, carry on about the food related stuff....

[Steve Plotnicki]

Well just a bit more, unless someone else has something else to add, when many of those pictures were first published I was a teenager or in my early 20's. Back then, those people seemed so much older to me. Now that I am the same age as many of them were at the time, I see them so differently. People who had such an important and seemingly permanent impact on our lives were in reality temporary historical figures.It's interesting to see whose impact has lasted and whose hasn't.

[Stone]

I'm late. But as a 36 year-old child, I think I'm qualified to say that this thread is, well, childish.

Have at me if you will.

[Wilfrid]

Very helpful. Thanks.

[lxt]

Why isn't the fall menu at Jean-Georges written about from the same perspective as the Richard Avedon show at the Met is written about?

It is interesting to note that photography was in the position of being questioned as to whether it did or did not fall under the category of art not so long ago. The original assumption was based on an impression that art had to be difficult. With its increasing ease and universality, how could photography be an art? Photographers, who conceived their art in the chemists’s laboratory, envied the mystique of the artist’s studio. Bernard Shaw was only one of not many who declared that “if you cannot see at a glance that the old game is up that the camera has hopelessly beaten the pencil and paint-brush as an instrument of artistic representation, then you will never make a true critic: you are only like most critics, a picture fancier…Some day the camera will do all the work of Velasquez and Peter de Hooghe, colour and all.”

It is only when the viewer was ready to accept and notice the complexity achieved by simple tools or shift his attention from the general perception of viewing it as just a useful, convenient and a necessary accessory in life that photography was elevated to the rank of being an art.

Food may be going through the same stage of acceptance from being a necessity to becoming an entertainment and toward a more demanding public looking for a statement in cuisine rather than just a satisfying and comforting meal. When the public is ready, then real critics will be born. Otherwise, it is still at the stage of entertainment.

What struck me overall about the exhibit is how so many of the photographs of people I would consider to be geniuses in their fields reflect a certain degree of insecurity and vulnerability, or at least un-self-assuredness.

I disagree with this statement. When people of tremendous intellectual power lose their ability to control their body to be in sync with their thoughts and soul, when time, though beautifully imprinting the life story of each day in each wrinkle, deprives one of the ability to express his power through simple motion, then the only place the person is still young and alive, is full of hope and that intellectual power is his eyes. It is simply a discrepancy between these eyes and their old, wrinkled, feeble faces that can mislead one into seeing weakness where there always been strength.

Edit: Typo corrected to make jaybee look silly.

Edited January 6, 2003 by lxt (log)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Lxt - The fisrt part of that post was terrific. But your Avedon remarks were second rate . I think that powerfull men are not necessarily taught to be powerful looking all of the time. And that inner self was what Avedon was looking for. Some of them who are above the game of power, like Daniel Moynihan and more notably Bella Abzug, probably because as a women she did not have a legacy of powerful men to live up to, looked quite comfortable with themselves. But other people looked lost, as if they were naked when all that was happening to them was their portrait was taken.

[jaybee]

(LXT) Photographers conceived in a chemists’s laboratory, envied the mystique of the artist’s studio.

How do you know where Avedon's parents did it?

[vengroff]

It was amazing how Avedon was able to expose so many of his subjects so completely. What did he say to these people in the studio? The one that got me the most was the anonymous twisted scarred torso that turns out to be that of Andy Warhol. I mean, this is a guy who wore a giant wig around all day.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Didn't they use that Warhol photo for the cover of a Stones album? No, that was a different zipper.

[bushey]

Lxt, you read my words differently than I had intended. The sense of insecurity I got from the photgraphs was pretty much centered on the eyes and wasn't a factor of the age of the subject. And it's definitely not something I equate with weakness. Quite the contrary. I think it requires great strength to open oneself up to exposure like that.

I think Steve hit it on the head --

But other people looked lost, as if they were naked when all that was happening to them was their portrait was taken.

Maybe when the words or the ideas or the persona come across as so strong or brilliant or sure it's easy to forget that we're all basically lost souls.