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Food as Art


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I agree with ned--practitioners of every practical trade inevitably come up against this question, with the same non-result. I guess tradespeople aren't satisfied just with being good at what they do. It's gotta be 'art'. But making something aesthetically pleasing isn't the same as making art--the product of a craft remains within the practical constraints of the craft, a constraint that doesn't exist for art. Art is pretty much whatever you can get away with. A badly executed craftspiece may be physically dangerous or harmful in a way that bad art is not. In fact, bad art may even be interesting. Whereas the culinary equivalent of this or this might make you sick.

"I think it's a matter of principle that one should always try to avoid eating one's friends."--Doctor Dolittle

blog: The Institute for Impure Science

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It's art if the person making it intends it to be.

I don't think intention has anything to do with it at all. I intend a lot of my things to be a work of art, and I'm not referring to my cooking! However, despite my intentions, I don't think they'll bring in too much at auction. :sad:

I wish I knew how to do the quote thing from several different posts all together. But I don't. So:

"Trust me, when you play Canon in D for the thousandth time, only the most fanatical might call it 'art'. "

Which begs the question: why do people play it for "the thousandth time"?

"I've always enjoyed the painter Ad Reinhardt's take on this problem. It goes as follows:

"The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art-as-art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art." "

I've never seen that quote before, but I think it's great. Perhaps it's as close as one can get to a definition of art.

I can't see cooking or food as art. And I don't think that "denigrates" or "demeans" or "belittles" cooking in any way, shape or form. It is just something other than art. Although I'd think that the creation of a new and unique recipe might (I said MIGHT) come closer to an art form than the execution of that recipe.

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Last weekend, we took a trip up to DIA:Beacon, the new museum dedicated to large scale art. I'm curious who determined that an arrangement of flourescent light bulbs was art. I'm sure discussing the essence of art is an ancient discussion, along with what is truth or beauty.

When I cook, I want balance in texture, color, like a painting; an interplay of flavors that develop much like the plot of a story, the drama of the heat of chili being soothed by the sweetness of an apple. When it all comes together, as I've intended, isn't that art?

After working in the kitchen for many hours, producing 'culinary art' that gets destroyed (eaten) by my guests, I sometimes feel like those Tibetan sand painters. Just at the moment you get it all done, it's gone.

Food is a necessity and pure, raw hunger doesn't require art. I live in a time and place where food is plentiful, so now I have the leisure to create art. I don't have to live with bare walls, or dress in a potato sack, I can't paint or sing, but I can please the eye, the palate, so to me, this is an art.

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For what it's worth, in Eat This New York, Daniel Boulud states that he doesn't think food/cooking is art, but rather a highly tuned craft.

"If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony."

~ Fernand Point

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It's art if the person making it intends it to be.

I don't think intention has anything to do with it at all. I intend a lot of my things to be a work of art, and I'm not referring to my cooking! However, despite my intentions, I don't think they'll bring in too much at auction. :sad:

Just because someone won't pay you a lot of money for it, doesn't mean it isn't art. You meant it to be art, and that makes it art. Getting a lot of money for it is simply a matter of convincing everyone else it's worth a lot of money.

You can call a urinal art:

Duchamp

Or take a pair of handlebars and a bike seat and call that art:

Picasso

Or splatter some paint around:

Pollack

Or paint a canvas half black and half gray:

Rothko

Or just go for broke and paint it all one color and call it art:

Yves Klein

Or you could just paint something exactly as it looks

But that urinal from above would probably get more at auction.

And besides, a camera would be quicker.

Estes

So I guess my argument is that if someone can take an ordinary bike seat and call it art, or paint a canvas all blue and call it art, then it doesn't seem much of a stretch to call a dish of food art. The fact that you can eat it doesn't really matter (or maybe that's just another aspect of the art). Regardless, given enough time, enough wine, and a small hammer you could probably eat a urinal too....and you could call that performance art.

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Coming a little late to this party, I'd like to range myself with Marie-Antoine Carême on this subject. He it was who wrote that the fine arts are five in number, the fifth being architecture, of which pastry is a branch (sorry, that's paraphrased, but it's pretty close). He also called it perilous and heroic - look at his pastry designs and you can't argue.

More generally, though, I think cuisine can be both art and craft, and that the demarcation between the two can vary infinitely according to context. But I think the decisive factor, as in any other art form, is inspiration. You can cook as a job, you can cook by rote, you can cook as a chore; but if you enjoy cooking and have any instinct for the process, for how flavors and textures can come together and harmonize, then you transcend the purely functional and you create something wonderful, something that communicates and resonates with everyone who tastes and smells it, so that they *have* to exclaim about it. That's inspiration; that's art. And it doesn't have to be anything complicated. It can be an elegant soufflé or it can be a humble tomato sandwich. If it strikes the chord - it's art.

Edited by balmagowry (log)
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