Feed thy soul … and stomach?

So is cooking art?

The idea that it is seems to be gaining traction, and not just among foodies. Dinner comes out of contemporary restaurant kitchens these days looking like architecture (or at least a vertical section of sedimentary strata) and featuring exotic combinations of ingredients that turn ordinary menus into what read like excerpts from Dune (and, maybe someday, seafood into winged codpieces….). Cooking shows make the poaching of eggs and the chopping of jicama a drama a la Rambo. The raspberry sauce drizzled around molten chocolate cake resembles an unsigned Pollock.

Iron Chef Michael Symon even shared a 2008 Cleveland Arts Prize for bringing national attention to the city’s culinary creativity.  

 But the question has continued to drift through my head like the dubious aroma of mystery meat as I’ve watched Julie & Julia - the recent movie about famed chef Julia Child and the disciple who tries to make every one of the recipes in Child’s book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking – and subsequently read Child’s memoir, My Life in France.

Clearly, kitchen geniuses such as Symon and Child have many things in common with artists. Their creativity leads them to experiment with new and surprising combinations of elements. They possess an eye for presentation that’s pleasing in color, form, texture and composition. Their rigorous attention to craft ensures the highest and most consistent quality of execution and result. And on top of all that, they’ve worked hard to gain a thorough knowledge of, and expertise with, all the tools of their discipline, from foodstuffs to pastry bags. I suspect that Rembrandt did not know more about light and paint and canvas than Child knew about heat and meats and pans.

And if someone argued that food can’t be art because it disappears by the end of dinner, I’d have to point out that many works, such as avant-garde performance pieces, are intentionally ephemeral and are no less art because of it.  

But I would agree that food – and cooking – are not art. And here’s why: Art is about content, about an emotional or intellectual message of some sort that the artist is trying to impart to his audience. And food and cooking don’t have any.

Food can create a mood. Heavy and dark? Light and frothy? Comforting? Challenging? Yes. But you won’t find what’s on your plate deliberately leading you to evaluate human relationships, feel loss, ponder the effects of technology or consider death. (I mean, if it did, would you want to eat that?) Like most art, well-prepared food does delight the senses, but it doesn’t inform and enrich the mind. Instead it nourishes the body.

That’s not art. But I think you could call it love.

(Photo, top, from Sweet Mary)