uziq wrote:
larssen i don't think cooking is 'lesser' because it's not an art. i respect cooking. please don't be so mad at me. cooking creates its worst follies when it pretends to be art. it's when you get terrible restaurants charging obscene money for prix fixe menus, frothing strawberries and serving it with halibut, or presenting abstract expressionist art of jus and syrup on a plate the size of a child's sled. it's stupid. it is plainly pretentious.
yes there is room to be creative and innovative within crafts. but the idea is you are following a template. major departures from that template and you end up with disgusting food -- or a different recipe. again, there is nothing lesser in something being a 'craft' than an 'art'. they are side-by-side activities. i am not denigrating the creativity and excellence that goes into a good restaurant service. but pretending something is an art just leads to fatuous results. and chef's with white-ringed nostrils and very very big egos. chef's are not poets of the root vegetable. they are well-practiced craftsmen. of course any person who master's a craft gets to a level where they then invent their own blueprints, to be copied in turn. that's the nature of craft.
all this talk is making me very hungry. FOR THE AESTHETIC SUBLIME
Literally all of this can be applied to architecture or to furniture design. Anyway, saying food CAN be art doesn't mean paying the same price as you did for your shoes for a halibut with strawberry on top is defensible. There are definitely ways in which a restaurant experience or just contact with totally new foods and cooking can do what you desire from art, to then say 'it can't be art' is a bit nonsensical. But let's be clear that simply the food itself cannot achieve that. If you sit in a dark room eating takeout curry it'll be a little different from eating one in a remote village in india. So too there are art exhibitions that depend on their surroundings to make it click. But hey, I'll leave you to your opinion, it's not going to change anything in my day.
