Food as Art

Gentille, Michelle. “Food for Art’s Sake. New York Times 5 Nov. 2006: 6T

The article “Food for Art’s Sake” highlights the unique styles of three different artists throughout North America. The art they create focuses on views of food most people would never notice. The first artist, Jason Walker, paints still-life portraits of different types of donuts, while Jeff Vespa spends time photographing hamburgers around Los Angeles. Another artist, Liz Hickok, found a new artistic application of Jell-O, forming replicas of architecture around San Francisco.

The food items used by these three artists are--by themselves--rather lame and mundane, but that is only because we fail to see the beauty in everyday objects. This is why this interpretation of these foods is so important. There is a visual aesthetic experience associated with something like a hamburger, but since the experience of a hamburger is focused mainly on taste. From the writings of Elizabeth Telfer, she states, “A second reason for refusing to count food as a work of art in the evaluative sense relates to the physicality of the way we appreciate food. Whereas we can see and hear at a distance, we taste something only if it actually touches the relevant parts of the body.”

Tanguy, Sarah. “Edible Jewelry.” Metalsmith Spring 2005 25.2 (2005): 14-15

The scope of this article is the fusion of food and jewelry into a brand new style of fashion. Highlighting the early history of the food ingredients used to create thiese designs, the article shows how food that was once seen as exclusive and rare hundreds of years ago are displayed in adornments from necklaces to cufflinks, and even rings.

The concept of food as art in this article brought up some interesting issues. People have always loved the look of jewelry and have always loved the taste of food, so the combination of these two would naturally create a synergistic effect. “Jewelry is wornand creates an intimate experience for both wearer and beholder…In this way, a wearable edible suggests a doubling of pleasure, the pleasure of wearing and the pleasure of consuming and a commingling of desire and desirablility.” Another issue that arises is that the ingredients of the food used in the creation of the jewelry help extend personal identity of the wearer. “In the delicate seaweed and radish composition, the frayed and shriveled materials poignantly echo a woman’s changing bodily characteristics.”