Yanhua Luo

Food As Art research

AAD250
01/24/2015
Food As Art
In the article Art for Lifes Sake by Dissanayake, I concluded that there are two major
categories of art forms. There are art products such as paintings, sculptures, and jewelry, then
there is human behavior, such as dancing or special activities. The topic for this week, Is food
art? is a profound question without an absolute answer. If the definition of art is just simply a
man-made object, then food is absolutely considered an art form. In the article How Can Food
Be Art? by Glenn Kuehn, Kuehn states that food should be considered a form of art.
The article, How Can Food Be Art? is basically a response to Elizabeth Telfers article,
Food as Art. Kuehns article is divided into four parts: 1. an analysis with comments of Telfers
notion of aesthetic reaction; 2. an analysis with comments on Telfers classification/evaluational
uses of work of art, 3. an evaluation of Telfers conclusion that food is a minor art; and his
response as well as attempt to establish food as a profound aesthetic medium worthy of being
called art (Kuehn, 196). This article contains an extremely large amount of information
regarding Kuehns notions of why he considers food as a form of art, and his disagreement with
Telfers article. Kuehn imports and borrows the works from John Deweys notion of the
transformative aesthetic experience to support his opinion that food is a form of art. First, Kuehn
argues that Telfers notion of aesthetic experience is based on reaction that is troubling. Kuehn
explains Telfer does not mention anything about the aesthetic experience, only the aesthetic

reaction, but aesthetic reaction is built based on the experiment. If people do not experience it,
they wont have the aesthetic reaction. Then, Kuehn is strongly against Telfers opinion of food
as a minor art and the idea food is unable to affect our feelings. Kuehn uses both examples from
Dewey and Telfer to support his opinion in which food should not be considered a form of minor
art. Later, Kuehn uses his own experience to explain how food can move people emotionally. By
the end of the article, Kuehn emphasizes food is a part of aesthetic interaction at a very basic
and accessible it is art(Kuehn, 210).
The question that arises within these two article is should we consider art as a form of
art. Telfer responds that food should be considered a minor form, it can be looked at through an
aesthetic lens, but sometimes it doesnt have any meaning at all. As she mentions in her article
that food does not represent anything else, as most literature and much visual art does. We can
see the representational arts painting and literature as telling us something about the world
and ourselves, and we can see the world and ourselves in the light of ways in which they have
been depicted in the representational arts. But we cannot do either of these things with food
(Telfer, 25). Telfer augers that food more often than not is only used to fulfill the needs of
survival purposes, it does not contain any significant meaning to people. So food is only limited
to the level of minor art. Kuehn responds to Telfers opinion of opposing that food is not only a
minor art, he explains that a rejection of food as being higher up in the art world because it is
transient seems to rely on a narrow view of experience and a neglect of the temporal nature of
living and appreciation (Kuehn, 204) and the appreciation of food brings one to a more direct
and organic experience that is potentially aesthetic(Kuehn, 195). Kuehn argues some people

might not consider food as a form of art because food only lasts for a certain amount of time and
people use time standards to determine whether an object as art or not. Although the timed
existence of food is short, but it still presents a significance that is extremely important to
humans.
These two articles contain different notions about food as art, and it is significantly
impacting and improving my view regarding food as a form of art. In my opinion, there is no
need for an absolute answer to the question of is food as art? because it is highly dependent on
personal preferences. Some people might consider all food as an art form, while some people
might have their own standards to this subject. The definition of art and what should be
considered as art varies from person to person. Humans create art, then they should be able to
label anything as art, there should not be a limitation to only certain types of objects. Art could
be an object that moves someone emotionally, or just something that is pleasing to the eye, or
maybe help to recall some significant memories. If you consider food as a form of art, then it is
art, and its just that simple.

Work Cited
Light, A., & Smith, J. (Eds.). (2005). Aesthetics of Everyday Life. New York, NY, USA:
Columbia University Press. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com.libproxy.uoregon.edu
Telfer, E. (2002). Food as art. In Neill, A. & Ridley, A (Eds.), Arguing About Art: Contemporary
Philosophical Debates (2 ed., pp. 9-27). New York: Routledge.