THE "CAN FOOD BE ART" QUESTION

Baco "el toron" at Baco Mercat in Los Angeles. Photo by author, December 2012.

In recent years, critics of food and art alike have been asking, can food be art? As a historian of contemporary art who regularly gets--and deeply dreads--questions from students, friends, and relatives about whether or not this or that contemporary practice is really "art," I consider the question a tired beast. The beast keeps getting fed, however, so now I have to respond.

My problem with the question, can food be art, is not just that I'm a culture snob impatient with uninitiated folks who can't see what's obvious to me--namely, that food, or, rather, cuisine, can be art. It's that the arguments inspired by the question rarely get past a certain stalemate.

A recent example of the logjam is the dialogue between Jacquelyn Strycker, in "From Palate to Palette: Can Food Be Art?" (createquity.com, 1-7-13), and William Deresiewicz, in "A Matter of Taste" (nytimes.com, 10-26-12). Deresiewicz sparked the dialogue by claiming that food--while similar to art in the sociological sense that it offers foodies a means of social competition through knowledge, connoisseurship, and conspicuous consumption--can't be art because it doesn't possess art's essential traits. These include, he says, the capacity for narrative or representation, for tapping into emotions precisely, and for rich symbolism.

Challenging this argument, Strycker insists that food indeed is art. Food, after all, does what all of the arts do. It creates sensory experience--if anything, even more richly than the other arts owing to food's engagement of all the senses--and cuisine can be creative, it can express philosophies, evoke narratives, and allude to complex ideas. What's more, food can inspire multiple interpretations.

I'll admit that I'm partial to Strycker's essay. Her criteria really do apply to both food and art, as we know them historically. I am flummoxed by Deresiewicz's claim that food doesn't evoke specific emotions or narratives. Don't we regularly speak of "taste memories" a la James Beard, and hasn't smell, which is approximately 90 percent of taste, been long understood as having memory-evoking (that is, narrative and emotional) powers? The idea that food doesn't have a rich symbolism misses the fact that cuisine, like any human manipulation of materials, has a communicative dimension or that foodstuffs and cooking methods and culinary genres, not to mention the rituals surrounding meals, don't themselves come loaded with symbolism.

But to fixate on the criteria is to get stuck on the very impasse that is the problem with the debate.

Both arguments stake their claims on what aestheticians call "honorific" definitions of art. These classify objects as art based on a fixed set of attributes. They also imply that giving something the title "art" bestows judgment that it is good art.

Honorific definitions won't lead us to much understanding of either food or art. I say this based on my background as an art historian. Artworks testing the limits of prevailing notions of art have driven the story line of art history for nearly a century and a half. It's axiomatic among art historians that the definition of "art" is ever evolving. Honorific definitions don't hold up over time.

Also, they yield little insight into the things that really matter, even to those making honorific definitions. Arguments based on them tend to get passionate. That's because they aren't really motivated, as they pretend to be, by academic concerns about taxonomy. At stake instead is whether or not something deserves to be valued and, therefore, to enjoy all of the recognitions and resources accrued to things so classified. Honorific arguments hide social agendas.

What do we or should we value in food, whether or not we call it "art"? This is the real question.

BITTER

Photo by author of chocolate-bar packaging, front lower portion, October 2012.

Photo by author of chocolate-bar packaging for Fearless brand, back upper portion, October 2012.

I am bitter, perhaps, but so is the chocolate. Could it be that today's chocolate is more bitter the more it's trying to do good? I'm beginning to think so. That's my (admittedly impressionistic) conclusion after (unscientifically) sampling over ten brands, what I roughly guess is just under half, of the chocolate bars lately sold at my local Whole Foods.

An admirer of good package design as much as a lover of indulgent chocolate, I found myself drawn to trying as many brands of bars as I found flavors and visuals to intrigue me. I was also tempted by the eminently Whole Foodsian prospect of reconciling my hedonism with my desire to do good. Save the world by eating the best of it? Win-win.

Almost all of the chocolate brands now available at Whole Foods have some ethical angle. And the angles are gorgeously wrapped. Since nearly all brands print company stories on the verso--a packaging quirk chocolate shares with specialty juice and water drinks--the consumer "experience" of chocolate brands has a literary layer. So much care is taken, as well, with materials that to hold the narrative tablet is as texturally thrilling as a trip to a handmade-paper boutique.

For some of the exquisitely swaddled, it's enough to be organic. However, these bars are starting to seem like dinosaurs in a market where the social causes are multiplying. I see brands that save rainforests and endangered species. Others assure me they are "fair trade." The brand I've pictured above crowdsources for its causes. Organic is merely a baseline.

Still, every such brand that I've tasted is overwhelmingly bitter. Of course, I expect dark chocolate to be more bitter than milk, and I recognize that, in recent decades, there's been a mainstreaming of this more "adult" (read: bitter) taste for dark chocolate. But these facts still beg the question of why so many do-good brands fall into the bitter camp and are intentionally more bitter than commercial brands (e.g., Dove) of dark chocolate.

I associate this bitterness with medicine. I then associate medicine with something that's not pleasant but is supposed to be good for you. Could the bitterness of so much "ethical" chocolate be engaged in a kind of moral-sensory trade off, and could it be that fans of these bars, however few there may be, want their chocolate to taste of piety?

Do the bars have a puritanical streak...on purpose? I'd like to know what do you think.

SIZING UP THE MENU SIZE

JoAnn Stougaard, featured with Jitlada's dishes for article by Betty Hallock, "Food Blogger's Extreme Eating Challenge," Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2011. Photo by Anne Cusack.

From a variety of food media, I gather that the expansive restaurant menu arouses starkly opposing responses.

Admirers of the restaurant Jitlada, arguably the most celebrated Thai place in Los Angeles, gush on at least as much about the astonishing breadth of the menu as they do about the quality of the food it begets. In this case, the long menu is taken as a sign of ambition and skill. More astounding still, this wealth of offerings comes from a kitchen so small that the owners were compelled to put signs up in the restaurant warning diners that their food will take a while. Some, like the always-on-trend blogger JoAnn Stougaard, mylastbite.com, have declared a desire to try everything on Jitlada's menu as if to do so might garner a gourmet prize (see Betty Hallock, "Food Blogger's Extreme Eating Challenge," LA Times, January 27, 2011).

At the same time, short menus are all the rage at trendy restaurants born of creative chefs that the food bloggerati also seem to enjoy. Apart from the separate beer and wine lists at these places, a single page on fine stock presenting a smartly limited list is the preferred solution, giving the suave impression of judicious "focus."

The small menu also gets support from other quarters. Take, for example, Gordon Ramsay's BBC show Kitchen Nightmares. Time after time, Ramsay excoriates the failing restaurateur for clinging to his long menus. Ramsay gives us plenty of justification for his wrath, repeatedly revealing the myriad horrors lurking behind long menus. On his show, they are the most dubious of documents, shields hiding scoundrels--undeservedly proud restaurateurs and cowardly cooks keeping molding herbs in undated containers in back cupboards, trays of long forgotten fish, and other soggy hashes that await their turn to be ordered but never will so long as the menu is...so long. Ramsay invariably rescues these establishments by making over their menus into something a lot more manageable--meaning, brief. 

Based on the above, I'm going to guess that there's no one answer to the question of whether long menus are a good or bad sign. I imagine it might depend on the management skills of the kitchen, including the ability to buy one ingredient and generate at least ten distinct dishes from it. I suspect this kind of smart shopping might be the case with Jitlada. Giang Nan in the San Gabriel Valley is a personal favorite I like to think, based on the delicious results, belongs in this category. Examine the long menus of these establishments and you might notice plenty of repeating ingredients, used in seemingly endless combinations.

But a mystery remains. I appeal to the restaurant-kitchen savvy to answer this: Is there a reliable way for diners to tell (without a full-scale investigation of the back of the house) when a large menu is a good or bad sign?

OF LOFT APARTMENTS AND RESTAURANT OPEN KITCHENS

Andy Warhol in the "Silver Factory" loft, 1964-68. Photo probably by Billy Linich.

Can anyone think of another workspace besides the artist loft and the restaurant open kitchen that, in recent decades, has become so ubiquitous as a chic, upscale commodity?

I will be speaking about the appeal of both spaces as ideal models of "creative-artisanal" labor on the "Food and Arts" panel of the "Global Gateways and Local Connections" food-studies conference. The event is jointly hosted by NYU and The New School this June. Come by if you are in town and have interest in the topic!

ANNOUNCING "SMART CASUAL"

"Philly Cheesesteak" at minibar, Washington, D.C., 6 August 2010. Photo by author.

Dining counter at Saison, San Francisco, 8 September 2010. Photo by author.

Terrific news: The University of Chicago Press will publish SMART CASUAL. It's an ideal read for anyone interested in the history and fashions of restaurants and gourmet dining. There'll be something new to chew on for the seasoned professional and the foodie novice.

SMART CASUAL is an in-depth look at how the fine-dining restaurant in America changed from a hushed scene of chandeliers and closed kitchens, strict dress codes and Continental cuisine, to a clamorous place where diner-style decor and hamburgers are no longer impediments to a Michelin star...or two. It also recognizes the simultaneous rise of new formalities, such as the elaboration of tasting-menu rituals. While they may seem contradictory, I consider these tendencies as part of a cohesive "omnivorous" turn in gourmet taste.  The book uncovers the key dining rooms and trends that mark the rise of "omnivorous" preferences, and considers the changes in taste in light of broader shifts in the definition of elite social status.

The book has academic rigor, but jargon-free prose. It draws on extensive archival research as well as participant-observation and interviews with major players. It considers the cuisine as much as the environments of restaurants. SMART CASUAL picks up in time where Patric Kuh's THE LAST DAYS OF HAUTE CUISINE (2001) leaves off, but, unlike it, puts the focus on visual aesthetics.

I will post updates here and via my Facebook page (The Eye in Dining) and Twitter (theeyeindining) as soon as I have further details to share related to the project and its release. Thank you for your interest.