I think we have a strange desire to call various things “art” and various people “artists”; to elevate them into a realm of the mystical and significant. Anything that someone else does that involves creativity becomes an “art,” and I suppose it is in one definition, but then we all use artistry in various aspects of our lives. It doesn’t make us artists, though.
I’m a musician. Am I an artist? Well, maybe, I guess. But what I really am is a person who makes music and leads others in the same endeavor. Call it what you want. Making it “art” implies a strange level of awe/respect that I don’t really believe in.
That, and Artists often let their “vision” get in the way of a good dish. Squid, for example, has no place in chili. Period. End of quote. Attention chefs: If you have to make a statement with your food, please make sure the statement isn’t “I’m a pretentious asshole.”
I think you are being shortsighted (no pun intended) and very limiting by ascribing plating as the only artistic representation to the genre of food.
Art is more than just visual and by saying “The Art” of food is only what is consumed by the eye, than there is a number of senses which you are disallowing in the experience of any art.
I wasn’t thinking of plating either. The visual aspects can certainly enhance (or detract from) the food, but the “artistic” element to me is in the artful arrangements and combinations of flavors and textures to please the palate and nose. It’s art for the senses of taste and smell the way music is art for the ear, and painting is art for the eye.
The artistic creation for the chef resides more in the creation of a dish, rather than the repeated production of that dish once created. (In a larger restaurant operation, the chef’s own hand may have little to do with the latter.) The chef’s repetition is more like painters selling prints, rather than painters repeatedly painting the same painting. Or perhaps a better analogy still–potters making many copies (with slight variations) of a shape and glaze that has proven functional and comfortable and is selling.
Art doesn’t necessarily merit awe or respect. There is an awful lot of bad art.
On the other hand, art conveys a message, a vision, and/or an insight. As skilled a chef as you might be, I doubt your paëlla has as intricate layers of meaning as a Joyce novel, or even a Ke$ha song. If one considers anything art solely on its ability to approximate, reach or touch Beauty (whatever that may mean - I’m half drunk, leave me alone), then no problem. Cooking is art. I’ve tasted stuff that’d make God a likely hypothetical.
But on a more hmmmm… meaning- or emotion-centric level, then no, cooking can barely reach a 6 year old’s crayon scribblings. As far as I know, the only messages you can get from a dish are “what the hell is that ?!” and “OMG this is delicious !”.
Art doesn’t have to do those things. Art often (I would say most often) seeks to do nothing more than entertain. What’s the message, vision or insight in the song, “Louis, Louis,” or in Dogs playing Poker?
Cooking can be very complex, with layered flavors and nuances. It doesn’t have an obvious “message,” but then again, neither does free form jazz. Cooking is somewhat of an abstract art.
Well, yes, that’s what I meant with the sentence : “If one considers anything art solely on its ability to approximate, reach or touch Beauty […], then no problem.”, indicating that I don’t, or that it’s a whole highly pedantic debate in and of itself. I probably wouldn’t consider something that’s just meant to be aesthetically pleasing to be art - it’s just decoration.
IMO art’s really defined by its ability to tell you something, make you feel, make you think. Change you or your outlook in some way. Aesthetics, skill or craftsmanship are not enough. They’re a necessary element of art, but they’re not the whole of it.
Then again, some lamb confits have temporarily changed my entire existence, so there’s that
Fair enough. Maybe a distinction could be made in the depth of emotion conveyed, the difference between “oh, that’s nice” and moving you to tears or sending shivers down your spine ? I’m not sure, and It’s really hard for me to formulate this distinction. It’s kinda like porn, OK ? I know it when I see it
As a chef myself, I’m of two minds. There are artists and there are craftsmen. Artists are visionaries like Thomas Keller and Jose Andres who move food in directions no one else has thought of yet. Craftsmen are the ones like Bourdain, Michael Symon and, to a far lesser extent, myself, who master techniques laid down by the artists.
A good head chef should be a combination of them both, but no line chef should ever be other than a craftsman, at least on company time. You have to master the craft before you can create the art.
I think cooking is like painting in that there is a finite pallette to utilize, only so many fruits, vegetables, and meats- there only so many consumables to utilize (Like to get a hold of some prehistoric fruit that has extincted on earth over the, millions/billions and cook with that.) You have to combine them in the right way to make a dazzling coherence that emerges in a picture/painting… Some of the best classic painters also were excellent textile workers making their own paint and tools, they were just as much craftsman in that aspect. It’s also like sculpting and woodcarving as starting with a slab and working it outside of its limits by man conceit knowledge, detail, concept, and idea. It is probably more like Medicine as a craft and art, as the canvas is live and life-giving.
I believe there is also no other art outside of the culinary that evokes so many base concrete feelings and emotions. Visual art can be stimulating but it is not as carnal as taking a bite. It can be high concept but ultimately you will experience the food directly and make it part of you. It’s an interactive art and there are a high number of direct prejudicial divisions in food that can’t be conceptualized… instead they are consumed in the most direct way possible.Touch, sight, smell, and taste… digestion.
Like a form poem, there are certain rules of it. Rhythm, rhyme structure, etc. are rules that must be followed when writing something like a sestina, or like a Shakespearean sonnet. Diligence and hard work must be used when crafting such a work. A Shakespearean sonnet is a work of art. Any schmo with the internet can find the rules for that form and makes something that fits. An artist is someone who takes that form and makes it beautiful.
Like a poem, there are rules and structures to cooking. Proportions, ratios, etc. The rules to the craft of cooking guide it to the art it ends up becoming. A schmo can follow the recipe; a true chef makes the final product an art.
Interestingly, cooking is the only art in that list that almost everybody thinks they (or their mother) can do/know as much about as the professional cook. As a musician, I’ve never had a non-musician tell me how to play my instruments. As a professional cook (and a good one), I’ve never run out of non-cooks trying to tell me my business. “I’m sorry Sir, but this steak isn’t undercooked just because your mother called ‘medium-rare’ what the professional culinary world calls ‘medium’.” Or eggs - I can’t count the number of people who persist in ordering their eggs “over easy” and then sending them back because they’re runny, even after the terminology is explained to them. By their descriptions, what they want is “over medium”, but their mothers always called it “over easy”, so that’s what they’ll order, no matter what we ignorant professionals tell them.
Cooking shares with architecture the fact that incorrectly practicing our arts can put people’s lives or health at risk.
This. As a simple example, some years ago I worked in a small diner with two other cooks. We baked our biscuits out of Krusteaz buttermilk biscuit mix. We all used the same “recipe”, same oven, same oven temperature, same cooking time, and yet my biscuits were consistently lighter, fluffier, and moister than those baked by the other two cooks.
Another example comes from the time I covered a kitchen manager’s shifts while he was on vacation. This meant I had to make (from scratch) the clam chowder on Friday, something Ralph normally did and had been doing for years. I had never made clam chowder before (this was 20 years ago), so I pulled out the recipe and went at it. When it was done, the boss’s wife dished up a bowl and took a taste. “Hmm,” she said, “That’s better than Ralph’s”.
Food is a vocation, necessity, art, and sometimes, a calling. If Spiritual Practition spawned most classical Arts and Sciences of the Pedagog, then the culinary is certainly its predeccessor and to be included. No man was ever born needing to read, all men need to eat.
