Food art
No, not this kind. (Or this kind [nsfw].) We know how Roger Ebert feels (or at least felt) about videogames, that they could never even in principle be art in the sense that a painting or song or film can; in this week's Slate Cultural Gabfest, NPR's Mike Pesca argues, while discussing the recent Atlantic article on "foodie-ism", that food is not art; that "food is akin to a really good massage: it makes you feel good...and a lot of study can go into preparing it, but it doesn't appeal to the same parts of the mind that great art does", namely the "plane of intellect and emotion".
I'm inclined to disagree with this assessment. If molecular gastronomy has achieved anything, it's the intellectual engagement of the diner. And chefs often explicitly attempt (and achieve) the evocation of some particular emotion, even if too often it's a variation on nostalgia or comfort. Food can certainly be funny, which is an important step.
But to be a fully realized art form, cuisine has to free itself from what one might call "the tyranny of deliciousness". Consider musical harmony. As anyone who has studied the history of western music will know, in the middle ages the third was considered a dissonant interval. Fast forward to 1913, when (as Radiolab claims) Stravinsky's unyielding and unrelenting augmented fourth caused riots, but was shortly followed by Schönberg (the irony of whose name I just realized) and all that. But whatever you regard as dissonance, some of it must be present or the music will tend to sound static and undeveloped. Something similar could be said for the visual arts. And something similar happens to the palate over a lifetime in the form of "acquired" tastes (generally bitter ones). But films, paintings and music* are prepared to go beyond wrongness-as-rightness and produce moments of genuine discomfort, disquiet, and even disgust, confronting our preconceptions in an aggressive way. Haute cuisine as a rule has not been prepared to do so, and thus is not yet a fully realized art form.
There are, however, some encouraging signs. Consider this report of a meal at (then) world's top restaurant El Bulli: at course 14 (of 30), just when Stendhal Syndrome appears to be kicking in, we have two courses that are not so tasty, to cleanse the mental palate. (And cf. Peter Sagal's report of his dinner at the slightly lesser Alinea, where no such courtesy was provided and the overload afflicts both him and his wife, ultimately ruining their impression of the experience.) Second, consider my recent experience with the tasting menu at WD-50: the course of of foie gras filled with passionfruit puree exploded with garishly clashing flavors and was really not tasty at all-but I can still remember the sensation exactly in my mind's mouth. It was full of conflict and energy; let's call this Anuszkiewicz painting a rough visual equivalent†. At any rate, it's art.
*I may as well confess to being a giant hypocrite here when it comes to music, insofar as I like my music to be purely beautiful. I ought to listen to more punk rock, death metal, Anton Webern, etc..
†Let's also not discount cognitive dissonance, the endowment effect, etc..
![Or this kind [nsfw].](http://www.asian-sirens.com/blog/images/uploads/cafejapone_037.jpg){kind=link}
I'm inclined to disagree with this assessment. If molecular gastronomy has achieved anything, it's the intellectual engagement of the diner. And chefs often explicitly attempt (and achieve) the evocation of some particular emotion, even if too often it's a variation on nostalgia or comfort. Food can certainly be funny, which is an important step.
But to be a fully realized art form, cuisine has to free itself from what one might call "the tyranny of deliciousness". Consider musical harmony. As anyone who has studied the history of western music will know, in the middle ages the third was considered a dissonant interval. Fast forward to 1913, when (as Radiolab claims) Stravinsky's unyielding and unrelenting augmented fourth caused riots, but was shortly followed by Schönberg (the irony of whose name I just realized) and all that. But whatever you regard as dissonance, some of it must be present or the music will tend to sound static and undeveloped. Something similar could be said for the visual arts. And something similar happens to the palate over a lifetime in the form of "acquired" tastes (generally bitter ones). But films, paintings and music* are prepared to go beyond wrongness-as-rightness and produce moments of genuine discomfort, disquiet, and even disgust, confronting our preconceptions in an aggressive way. Haute cuisine as a rule has not been prepared to do so, and thus is not yet a fully realized art form.
There are, however, some encouraging signs. Consider this report of a meal at (then) world's top restaurant El Bulli: at course 14 (of 30), just when Stendhal Syndrome appears to be kicking in, we have two courses that are not so tasty, to cleanse the mental palate. (And cf. Peter Sagal's report of his dinner at the slightly lesser Alinea, where no such courtesy was provided and the overload afflicts both him and his wife, ultimately ruining their impression of the experience.) Second, consider my recent experience with the tasting menu at WD-50: the course of of foie gras filled with passionfruit puree exploded with garishly clashing flavors and was really not tasty at all-but I can still remember the sensation exactly in my mind's mouth. It was full of conflict and energy; let's call this Anuszkiewicz painting a rough visual equivalent†. At any rate, it's art.
*I may as well confess to being a giant hypocrite here when it comes to music, insofar as I like my music to be purely beautiful. I ought to listen to more punk rock, death metal, Anton Webern, etc..
†Let's also not discount cognitive dissonance, the endowment effect, etc..