Is Food A Minor Art?

That is, food as a minor art form because it can vehicle many kinds of meaning and last for a short time, but not similar to live performances of theater and music, which have long been considered some of the most aesthetically important forms of art.

Yes, food can excite us, appeal to the senses, and give us a feeling of satisfaction, but whether creative or interpretative, the art of food cannot gain the same stature as those of greater permanence and therefore is considered a minor art.

Food is highly developed as a system of sensations, extremely crude as a system of symbols. Proust on the madeleine is art; the madeleine itself is not art.” Elizabeth Telfer, though she concluded that food is a minor art (but indeed art), actually shares similar tastes in arguments with Deresiewicz.

Usually the preparer has some sort of connection to the food when they are preparing it and that is why food can be considered as art in Neely’s perspective. I do agree with Neely’s views on food and art but her views do prove that there are restrictions and standards for what constitutes food as art.

Paintings of food often reveal something else: sometimes they are allegories for certain virtues or values, other times they emphasize eroticism, exoticism, or wealth. Modernist painters like Cezanne used the still life genre to advance ideas about what modern art could look like.

The Fascination with Food in Art History 1 Short History of Food in Western Art. In the fifteen century, artists took increasing inspiration from the culture of antiquity and from the natural world and began depicting a variety 2 Depiction of Food in Modern and Contemporary Art. 3 The Food as Life.

The most famous dinner of all The Last Supper is probably the most frequently depicted meal in all of art history. Although the compositional focus remains Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, depictions of the fateful meal always feature symbolic bread and wine.

Why does Neely conclude that food is considered art?

The food we consume incorporates art because we are able to generate a cultural connection with what we eat. Therefore Neely came to a conclusion stating that food can be considered art by the preparer if the preparer …

The third definition of art was that it gave rise to some sort of aesthetic experience. With all of these definitions it leaves art the freedom to be considered almost anything. With art being explicitly stated as having involvement in emotional responses to sensual experience, we can also provide the idea that art really has no limit.

It is how we survive as humans. It changes from culture to culture to shape each and every community distinctively. Food travels all over the world, exposing one community to another through food and so on.

There are many conflicting ideas on what art is and how food is pictured but that only reinforces my ideas that art is what the mind believes art to be. Yes there are some standards for art to meet such as created, developed, or connected to the human behavior but this is because art would be empty without some sort of standards.

It seems too simple to state that humans have a constant belief because for some people, food could be considered as the greatest for of art there is, for others, food would never be recognized as art. Source: Neely, C. (2007).