Is Food Art?: The Latest Word.

[Robert Brown]

Here's the link from the October 28, 2012 New York Times. I agree. Cooking isn't spiritual (as the author says) and other than some decomposed food used by artists like Dieter Rot and Daniel Spoerri, food isn't the material stuff of art. though it can be the subject of art. As the writer says. "Proust on the madeleine is art; the madeleine itself is not art." (Who among you will say Ferran Adria is a true artist?)

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/how-food-replaced-art-as-high-culture.html

[Sneakeater]

For ease of reference, the last big discussion of this on MF begins approximately here.

 

ETA: And continued here.

[Sneakeater]

Having reread that discussion, I had the following thought:

 

I hope it's not subject to dispute by this point that Marcel Duchamp's Fountain is art.

 

But that doesn't make it any better, as a urinal, than any other urinal.

 

In fact, since it isn't attached to any plumbing, it's considerably worse than other urinals as a urinal.

[Adrian]

Despite Sneakeater's obvious correctness about this discussion, William Deresiewicz. In case you're wondering, Deresiewicz's argument is a poor one.

[Suzanne F]

Having reread that discussion, I had the following thought:

 

I hope it's not subject to dispute by this point that Marcel Duchamp's Fountain is art.

 

But that doesn't make it any better, as a urinal, than any other urinal.

 

In fact, since it isn't attached to any plumbing, it's considerably worse than other urinals as a urinal.

 

If you weren't home last night to listen to Sarah Fishko's Culture Shock 1913, it's available as a podcast.

[Wilfrid]

Despite Sneakeater's obvious correctness about this discussion, William Deresiewicz. In case you're wondering, Deresiewicz's argument is a poor one.

 

Whoa, yes.

 

Arguments about the nature of art are usually pretty pointless, but to a first approximation, I would say that art is necessarily symbolic.

 

So. What does this symbolize?

 

[Wilfrid]

[Food] is not narrative or representational, does not organize and express emotion.

 

Each who yet cares to corrupt anterior traverse

settlement by booking in pairs, by attainder marks

upsets the project alembic, the debate for hate

to make open clause upon renown in folded paper

dirt cheap, split option pudgy cheeked. Costive

profane credit. Flying starts. The likeness in

white was nowhere near exact....

 

J.H. Prynne

 

Anyone who makes these kinds of pronouncements about what is and is not art simply demonstrates that they don't have command of a wide range of examples of art.

 

Food, of course, is not necessarily art. But it's hard to evade the conclusion that art is what artists make, what the art market trades in, and what museums and galleries display. Good luck with coming up with a more precise definition.

[Lex]

I'm feeling Socratic today.

 

Can bad food be good art or does it first have to fulfill it role as food first?

[Wilfrid]

Yes it can.

 

Marinetti's Futurist Cookbook is an obvious example. It's hard to argue that the recipes, if made and exhibited, wouldn't be art works. The recipes are, however, generally off-putting, although most are edible.

 

Red roses, battered and deep-fried.

 

ETA: Actually, your question leads us to the nub. People vex themselves about this issue, I think, because the term "art" is seen as a term of approval. "If food is really, truly great, surely it can be art."

 

This is a complete misunderstanding. There's good and bad food, good and bad art, and whether something is great, merely good, or banal is nothing to do with whether it's art or not.

[Sneakeater]

I'd say the requirements of art and food are so different that, not only does food's quality as food not have anything to do with any possible quality it would have as art, but that food that was good art would probably be more likely to be bad food.

 

(That's what I was trying to say about Fountain a few posts ago. Good art -- but a terrible urinal.)

[Adrian]

I'd say the requirements of art and food are so different that, not only does food's quality as food not have anything to do with any possible quality it would have as art, but that food that was good art would probably be more likely to be bad food.

 

(That's what I was trying to say about Fountain a few posts ago. Good art -- but a terrible urinal.)

 

I totally disagree with that. For a long while, most great art was also "pretty" or at least "beautiful". I agree that the "not good" boundary may be more difficult for food to traverse.

[Wilfrid]

Right. I think two different questions are at stake here.

 

1. Can food be used as material by an artist? Yes. Obviously. There are plenty of examples.

 

2. Does fine cuisine rise to the level of art?

 

The second question is nonsensical, because it assumes art is ipso facto something of surpassing quality. I think the answer is, yes, given the right circumstances a meal can count as an artwork, but it doesn't have to be a good meal.

[Wilfrid]

I totally disagree with that. For a long while, most great art was also "pretty" or at least "beautiful". I agree that the "not good" boundary may be more difficult for food to traverse.

 

Not sure exactly where you disagree with Sneak, but the art=beauty equation began to founder in the eighteenth century (Kant, Lessing).

[Wilfrid]

Footnote

 

I love this subject. Romanticism, innit? Once people started including old ruins, and bones, and vampires, and sadism, and bleak moors, and tragedies in their pictures/poems/books, classing all art as a species of the "beautiful" no longer looked plausible. Kant introduced the "sublime" as a category of art inspiring fear/awe. Once you break the tyranny of "beauty," though, there doesn't seem to be any reason art shouldn't "evoke" anything -- from rapture to terror to boredom.

 

Slippery slope that was, right there.

[Adrian]

I totally disagree with that. For a long while, most great art was also "pretty" or at least "beautiful". I agree that the "not good" boundary may be more difficult for food to traverse.

 

Not sure exactly where you disagree with Sneak, but the art=beauty equation began to founder in the eighteenth century (Kant, Lessing).

 

I disagree in that bad tasting food is more likely to be good art. Sometimes aesthetic pleasure is the gateway to higher artistic meaning. I think he's actually getting at something else (namely that food can only convey a very narrow range of expression while other forms of art operate more broadly).

 

We all agree that whether the food tastes good or not is irrelevant to whether it is art, I think.

 

ETA: my point is that just because food, even art food, is tied up in also being good, doesn't mean that it's not art. Nor, even if food has to be good does it mean that food is not art. Good is beside the point.