If you don’t eat you die. The meaning of food for humans is enormous, for its absence would mean our death. But it’s not just food’s biological importance that makes it so important for us. Since we are the only living creatures who cook, food symbolizes humanity. It’s what sets us apart from the rest. And because eating is almost always a group event, food becomes a focus of symbolic activity.
Since the beginning of mankind we ate to survive, every day man’s goal was to gather food. But our development ensured a stable income and food’s priority faded. Food has become omnipresent. The shear abundance and variety of food in our present day, Western society has decreased its importance as nutrition. It’s not the lack of food that will kill us, but rather its surplus. We no longer have to be scared to die of hunger, and the absence of that fear has made food take on a new meaning. Food’s core purpose as fuel has become detached from its cultural significance. Not only do people eat solely for their survival but also to take part in a trend. Food has become fashionable and the choice to eat, or not eat something determines your social status. Our food choices shape our identity and it has made food into a lifestyle, rather than a precondition for life.
With this change of perception it’s essential to reevaluate the medium. Does the meaning of food change when its utility is no longer present? Has food become a purely empirical, sensory stimulus without meaning? I think it’s therefore necessary to look at food as art, to give it its intrinsic values back. Food itself is so special, its the only medium in the world to stimulate all the human senses, as well as being a strong link to our memory, which makes it ideal to be perceived as art. When food loses its necessity, only its sensory incentives remain, making it even more perfect to be experienced as art.
I’m obsessed with food, I watch cooking shows all day, read cookbooks and spend all my money on food. The more I occupy myself with it, the more I’m amazed that food isn’t being seen as art. Why don’t chefs like Ferran Adrià and Heston Blumental have the same status as Andy Warhol or Picasso? Why is there no such thing as a food museum?
My thesis will look into those questions by investigating taste and how we perceive it, the history of food, historical and modern day examples of food as art, the aesthetics of food and when and why food qualifies as art.
In the end I will explain why food isn’t being seen as an art form, and prove why it should, and by doing so reevaluating food’s cultural significance. All this in an effort to give food its value back, in times of purposeless consumerism and instrumental usage.