BuddyRoadhouse wrote:

Christopher Gordon wrote:What irritates me most whenever "discussions" like these pop up is how lax American education is on aesthetics and the arts. There's no *common* language with which to examine the issues. It's always the re-invention of the wheel. Generalizing here, Art instruction is public education's redheaded stepchild.

Whatever other disagreements we may have on this topic and in this thread, the obscene absence of art education in the American public school system is a point of hardcore agreement.

Thank goodness I grew up in the '60s when funding for education in the humanities was still present.

Buddy

apologies for not adding much, but





totally

I agree on the miserable state of American art education, but you can't blame that alone for a lack of a common for discussing art. Read contemporary art criticism, and you'll find educated opinions, but the common language is that of art history, not of aesthetics. That has to do with the current state of aesthetics in the world of art.

MariaTheresa wrote:I agree on the miserable state of American art education, but you can't blame that alone for a lack of a common for discussing art. Read contemporary art criticism, and you'll find educated opinions, but the common language is that of art history, not of aesthetics. That has to do with the current state of aesthetics in the world of art.

I really enjoyed your earlier addition upthread and...again...I agree (despite aesthetics/esthetics---joking here) with what you offer. I once delivered a paper at a Midwestern photography conference re: The LAC Collection and the frission between teaching pre-digital photographic processes and the reality that many curated artists make work playing with the codifications of a "fine print." The spectator is the fulcrum.

maureencd wrote:

Food is utile; it serves a purpose. True art must serve no other purpose than to exist as art. That's what makes it art. Period.

What about the decorative arts? I'm just thinking about the Victoria & Albert Museum, which is full of "useful" items that also happen to be great works of art.

Thank you!!! The whole time I was reading this thread, I was wondering why no one mentioned the V&A, a museum devoted to celebrating that which is art[istic] and utilitarian. This thread has also provided therapy for me -- now I know why, all these years, I felt guilty about repeatedly going back to the V&A instead of say, the Tate Gallery. It's because I was preferring "fake" art over real! Now that my guilt is assuaged, I am free to enjoy it . . .


While this thread has done nothing to convince me that there is a true definition of "art," I am quite convinced that those booty shakin' songs might be it . . . ask Beyonce or Justin Timberlake.

aschie30 wrote:

maureencd wrote:

Food is utile; it serves a purpose. True art must serve no other purpose than to exist as art. That's what makes it art. Period.

What about the decorative arts? I'm just thinking about the Victoria & Albert Museum, which is full of "useful" items that also happen to be great works of art.

Thank you!!! The whole time I was reading this thread, I was wondering why no one mentioned the V&A, a museum devoted to celebrating that which is art[istic] and utilitarian. This thread has also provided therapy for me -- now I know why, all these years, I felt guilty about repeatedly going back to the V&A instead of say, the Tate Gallery. It's because I was preferring "fake" art over real! Now that my guilt is assuaged, I am free to enjoy it . . .


While this thread has done nothing to convince me that there is a true definition of "art," I am quite convinced that those booty shakin' songs might be it . . . ask Beyonce or Justin Timberlake.

Seriously.

There is no finer mimimalist expression than "to the left! to the left!" Miami Bass while chowing down on a "depression era" burger.

Christopher Gordon wrote:

aschie30 wrote:

maureencd wrote:

Food is utile; it serves a purpose. True art must serve no other purpose than to exist as art. That's what makes it art. Period.

What about the decorative arts? I'm just thinking about the Victoria & Albert Museum, which is full of "useful" items that also happen to be great works of art.

Thank you!!! The whole time I was reading this thread, I was wondering why no one mentioned the V&A, a museum devoted to celebrating that which is art[istic] and utilitarian. This thread has also provided therapy for me -- now I know why, all these years, I felt guilty about repeatedly going back to the V&A instead of say, the Tate Gallery. It's because I was preferring "fake" art over real! Now that my guilt is assuaged, I am free to enjoy it . . .


While this thread has done nothing to convince me that there is a true definition of "art," I am quite convinced that those booty shakin' songs might be it . . . ask Beyonce or Justin Timberlake.

Seriously.

There is no finer mimimalist expression than "to the left! to the left!" Miami Bass while chowing down on a "depression era" burger.

Or utilitarian: "Everything you own in a box to the left."

This lively discussion reminds me of Ebert's postulate that video games can never be art:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... Y/70721001

To keep this connected to food, and amuse at least dmnkly, between Ebert and LTH, can we at least reach a consensus that Burgertime (TM) is art?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgertime

Play Burgertime online and find out:

http://www.addictinggames.com/burgertime.html

I personally feel that both good food and video games can be art, along with other transient forms like sidewalk chalking and sandcastles: I'm with Joe G. that art can be (but does not need to be) anything that sets up an insightful dialogue between the world and moment of its genesis and your own space and time. There is useful truth in Panofsky's concept of iconology; there is communication and transaction between an artful dish's executor and its consumer. This can be liminal and tranportative in the best of circumstances. The interaction between subject matter (ingredients), iconography (representation), and iconology (synthetic perception or reception in the viewer, player, or eater) can be just as fascinating at the table as in the gallery.

Santander wrote:This lively discussion reminds me of Ebert's postulate that video games can never be art:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... Y/70721001

Heh... you know, I almost brought up the Ebert video games kerfuffle a couple of times and finally decided that I'd end up spending more time trying to explain it than using it to actually illustrate anything

But having thought about it a bit already, I think the Ebert debate does raise another aspect of this question that I think is important. It's important to me, anyway. Generally, I like Ebert a lot. But I do think he's really being a narrowminded jackass on this particular subject. I agree that the medium hasn't produced any truly great works of art (there's art here, all right, but the medium still hasn't produced its Citizen Kane, so to speak), but to say that it's incapable of doing so simply shows a lack of vision.

How this ties into the larger food discussion here, specifically regarding whether art is defined as a product or a process, is that there are always those who will say, "pfft... the chicken wrap I had for lunch isn't art", and I'd probably agree. It's been suggested upthread that cooking isn't an art, it's a craft. And I think for most people who cook food, yes, it is just a craft. But because it usually isn't art doesn't mean it can't be, and I reject the notion that some of our most talented, creative chefs are merely skilled craftsmen. There's more happening on my plate than an exceptionally high level of deliciousness.

Oh, and Burgertime rocks.

Though going back to the OP, and I think tacking on to what Djenks said: food brings out a certain elitism that really, really bothers me, and though it's present in other art forms, there's a certain "Emperor's New Clothing" aspect of food in particular that seems to bring out the madding crowd.

I'll give you food as art to some degree, but much of the food that touts itself as art, isn't. Genuine culinary artists are very well aware of what their food is going to be in 24-36 hours, and treat it accordingly.

This debate, by the way, has been going on for some time:

"My ambition was serious. Early on I wanted to raise my profession to the state of art."--Antonin Careme, L'Art de la cuisine francaise (1833)

The pretensions go back even further:

"I asked the steward about his job, and he replied with the discourse on the science of the maw delivered with magisterial gravity and demeanor as if he had been expounding some great point of theology."-Montaigne, Essais (1580)

I've been putting off reading this thread because I suspected it would contain a lot of hot buttons for me. I was right. I'm extremely tempted to chime in on the use of Benjamin in this thread and to come to the defense of architecture, but I know well enough that such comments would lead me far, far afield of food.

So, I'll just say...

Christopher Gordon wrote:

nr706 wrote:Clearly art is subjective. I remember an exhibit a few years ago at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was a stack of about 1,000 sheets of white 11"x14" paper, on t he floor, with a sign above saying "take one." Clearly, a curator there felt it was art that deserved to be shown in a relatively major museum.

That was a Felix Gonzalez-Torres piece. A major AIDS worker/timebased multimedia installation artist, he made work *specifically* addressing the disease's attritional erasures and *universally* consumable as absence, loss, negative space. He died of AIDS in 1996.

obligatory food connection: he created a series of installations(one of which is in the MCA's collection) of piles of shiny, metallic candies...the viewer/participant takes as much as they want, the heap dwindles, and is replenished by the gallery

he's fucking amazing

Christopher Gordon, thank you for your clarification and championing of Gonzalez-Torres's work. On the subject of transience as a quality of food and art in general, the Art Institute's Untitled, Portrait of Ross in LA (1991) by Gonzalez-Torres is an interesting example of the simultaneous transience and permanence of art. As you've said, visitors eat the candy. The pile diminishes. Museum staff add more candy. Food in many regards is finite, but so it seems not the candy of Gonzales-Torres. I'll just add that AIC's candy pile is supposed to be maintained at the very specific weight of 175lbs, the ideal weight of the artist's lover, Ross, who also died of AIDS. Thus, food and the persistence of memory (a type of permanence, if you will) go hand-in-hand in this work.

Food in many regards is finite, but so it seems not the candy of Gonzales-Torres.

Alas, it is. The Peerless Confection Company of Chicago that originally supplied the candy for the sculpture is gone. (Sugar tariffs).

happy_stomach wrote:I've been putting off reading this thread because I suspected it would contain a lot of hot buttons for me. I was right. I'm extremely tempted to chime in on the use of Benjamin in this thread and to come to the defense of architecture, but I know well enough that such comments would lead me far, far afield of food.

So, I'll just say...

Christopher Gordon wrote:

nr706 wrote:Clearly art is subjective. I remember an exhibit a few years ago at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was a stack of about 1,000 sheets of white 11"x14" paper, on t he floor, with a sign above saying "take one." Clearly, a curator there felt it was art that deserved to be shown in a relatively major museum.

That was a Felix Gonzalez-Torres piece. A major AIDS worker/timebased multimedia installation artist, he made work *specifically* addressing the disease's attritional erasures and *universally* consumable as absence, loss, negative space. He died of AIDS in 1996.

obligatory food connection: he created a series of installations(one of which is in the MCA's collection) of piles of shiny, metallic candies...the viewer/participant takes as much as they want, the heap dwindles, and is replenished by the gallery

he's fucking amazing

Christopher Gordon, thank you for your clarification and championing of Gonzalez-Torres's work. On the subject of transience as a quality of food and art in general, the Art Institute's Untitled, Portrait of Ross in LA (1991) by Gonzalez-Torres is an interesting example of the simultaneous transience and permanence of art. As you've said, visitors eat the candy. The pile diminishes. Museum staff add more candy. Food in many regards is finite, but so it seems not the candy of Gonzales-Torres. I'll just add that AIC's candy pile is supposed to be maintained at the very specific weight of 175lbs, the ideal weight of the artist's lover, Ross, who also died of AIDS. Thus, food and the persistence of memory (a type of permanence, if you will) go hand-in-hand in this work.

yep

I'm abusing the parameters of Benjamin's essay in this context...it seemed a great opportunity to deploy it. The same way that I'd love to find an opportunity to offer Bersani's October essay, "Is the Rectum a Grave?" with it's own absences and resonance. (whoops...just did)

Thank you for adding the info re: the weight of the candy pile...I'd forgotten it.

Gonzalez-Torres was a remarkable worker.

---

We could easily(and perhaps should) foster another thread vis a vis artists investigating gastronomy.

I wish I could remember the name of the artist, but there was this one (Kosovo-referencing?) installation in the basement of The Mattress Factory dressed like a bunker replete with oil barrels full of rotting ketchup.

or, there's Yoko Ono's Apple(which a professor of mine once replaced with a pear)

etc.

Rail on,Trudy, Rail on!

Great thread, wonderful and thoughtful posts.

I was drawn into this type of debate a number of years ago while or shortly after attending IIT. I studied engineering, but was drawn more to the design and architecture crowd (it might have been as simple as that they actually seemed to have fun, but it probably was something more). Back then and for a number of years my friends had an ongoing debate about the distinction between artistry and craftsmanship.

As an engineer I definitely had no skin in this game, so I mostly listened. The consensus, or perhaps it was just my conclusion from listening, was that art is in some way heroic and new in a way that craftsmanship was not. But, and equally important, there was a secondary consensus that great craftsmanship is probably effectively indistinguishable from art.

Conclusion 1: there is no definition of art that draws a clear line between art and great craftmanship.

Again, looking at this as an engineer, I had to ask myself then, and now you this question - what purpose does the distinction between art and craftsmanship serve? The answer seems pretty clear to me - it is to exalt the work of some, and degrade the work of others. Nothing in this thread has changed my opinion of this.

Conclusion 2: if someone calls one thing art and another not, their purpose is to put down the thing that is not art because they do not like it.

And I take that to be the intent of the OP. Some chefs and eaters are exalting their work by declaring it to be art, and he wishes to degrade it by denying it that heroic status. Art, after all, has high intrinsic value that other things do not have. Everything else just has value based on its utility and/or its commercial value.

I have been fortunate enough to see and enjoy many beautiful things in my life. Some were naturally created, some were man made. Some were clearly intended to be beautiful, many were not. Many were ephemeral, while others offered at least the illusion of permanence. Some were as utiliatrian as a building, while others were as useless as a snowflake. I am loath to try to rank them in some way, saying that the great burrito I have at La Pasadita is better than the rainbow I saw yesterday afternoon, or that La Grande Jatte is better than the smooth perfection and balance of a well-made knife. That is not to say that the pleasure I get from each is not different, or that the pleasure I get from some is not more intense, or more enduring - of course, I enjoy some of these things more than others.
(In rereading this I note that I have somehow assumed that art is something that is pleasing, which is not necessarily true but I still like the way I worded it so allow me the license and forgive me the erroneous implication, please).

But art is, forgive the trite reference, like pornography - I know it when I see it, but I can't define it. And I know that my subjective judgment on where the line is drawn is nothing more or less than my subjective judgment with no more, or less, validity, than yours. I also understand that declaring something to not be art, or declaring it to be pornography, is to denigrate it, to put it a lower level than other things, declaring it to be a more base thing.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoy the discussion, and think there is much value in thrashing out these things even if the discussion does not have utility, but I do not think there will ever be or needs to be a resolution. And I understand that the intent of much of this is to come up with a justification that excludes the things I, or whoever is working on the definition, do not like.

So my definition is simple - art is whatever I think art is. If I had to characterize it further, I would call it something man made, intense, and highly evocative.

There is no reason food, or a post on LTHForum, cannot be art. Most of it is not of course, and in the culinary world, just as in the rest of the world, most of those who declare themselves artists are hacks looking for prestige and success through self-aggrandizement.

To reply more directly to the OP - food can be art, but most chefs who present themselves or are presented as artists are not. I suppose on some level I believe that the true artist creates because he is compelled to, and he knows and cares not whether what he does is art. The best art is humble, unexpected and offered freely, neither demanding nor expecting attention, praise or status.

You know, the LTH type of place.