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The Art in Gastronomy: a Modernist Perspective

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The Art in Gastronomy: a Modernist Perspective 7KH$UWLQ*DVWURQRP\$0RGHUQLVW3HUVSHFWLYH $XWKRU V QDWKDQP\KUYROG 5HYLHZHGZRUN V 6RXUFH*DVWURQRPLFD7KH-RXUQDORI)RRGDQG&XOWXUH9RO1R 6SULQJ SS 3XEOLVKHGE\University of California Press 6WDEOH85/http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/gfc.2011.11.1.13 . $FFHVVHG Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Thu, 7 Mar 2013 10:21:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions taste | nathan myhrvold The Art in Gastronomy A Modernist Perspective Throughout history people have made things that and novelists—grew up in and interacted with this frame- transcend their primary utilitarian purpose and engage work. Chefs have been strangely absent. our minds in profoundly intellectual and emotional ways. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a move- We call such things “art,” and we have a highly developed ment called Modernism shook the foundations of Western notion of the difference between High Art (with a capital A) art, architecture, and literature. The French Impressionists and the lesser categories of decorative arts or “mere” craft are among the most famous of the early Modernists, and produced by artisans rather than artists. Understanding this they helped establish Modernist thought in painting. They distinction and how it has shifted over the years is important viewed themselves as an avant-garde—a French term for for resolving the question of whether cooking qualifies as an a military group that scouts ahead of a main force. Their art, or craft, or something else entirely. This question, posed pointedly by the most recent developments in cuisine, is one of the great intellectual questions for gastronomy in the twenty-first century. Food serves an obvious utilitarian purpose: to refuel our William Morris sought to bring the bodies for the task of life. We need to eat, and toward that world of artisanal craft into modern end we devote large amounts of both professional and ama- practice; Walter Gropius created the teur effort toward food preparation. Much of that effort goes beyond what is needed for nutrition, because food is also Bauhaus to remake architecture, a source of great pleasure. It can engage our emotions and graphic arts, typography, ceramics, our minds just as much as images or words can, which begs the question: Can food be art? and other aspects of design. Nobody Food can engage our senses, our minds, and our in that era created a Bauhaus of food. emotions just as profoundly as carefully chosen words or brush strokes. Arguably, our relation with food is even 2011 more intimate because we consume it directly. So there is NG PRI no fundamental reason that food cannot be art—it has all S the right prerequisites. exhibitions in the 1870s caused shock and scandal, as well 13 On the other hand, traditional ideas about food—held as a deep revision in how we think about painting. by cooks, critics, and consumers—are at their foundation Longstanding aesthetic standards and theories of paint- OMICA based on food as an artisanal craft product, not an art. The ing, sculpture, architecture, and literature were assailed, N focus is on the process of manufacture, or on the food itself, ransacked, and renovated by a succession of Modernist TRO S with less emphasis on the thoughts and emotions triggered movements that each brought its own take on the nature of A G by the food. Food is deeply constrained by rules and traditions. aesthetic dialogue. The very notion of a shocking, artistic Today we view the history of art through the lens of a avant-garde is a Modernist invention, an idea explored by sophisticated intellectual framework built by generations many art historians and literary critics, including Renato of art critics and historians. Our concept of what is art, and Poggioli in his landmark book The Theory of the Avant- what is not, is informed by this corpus. Artists in every disci- Garde. The actions of a controversial avant-garde became pline—painters, photographers, architects, musicians, poets, the standard approach to revising artistic thought. Poggioli gastronomica: the journal of food and culture, vol.11, no.1, pp.13–23, issn 1529-3262. © 2011 by the regents of the university of california. all rights reserved. please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the university of california press’s rights and permissions web site, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. doi: 10.1525/gfc.2011.11.1.13. This content downloaded on Thu, 7 Mar 2013 10:21:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions concludes: “With terms borrowed from medical science, Above: Sea urchins from Île-aux-Moines in Brittany with saffron but here used neutrally and applied—so to speak—to the and nasturtium velouté sauce. courtesy of arpège physiology rather than the pathology of culture, we can say that avant-gardism has now become the typical chronic con- diet but, as Cecilia Novero observes in Antidiets of the dition of contemporary art.”1 Avant-Garde, “No one could miss the fact that the pro- Modernism touched nearly every aspect of human cre- posed diet and then the staged banquets were nutritionally ativity. Yet somehow cuisine was immune. The very people impractical, even when supposedly scientifically grounded. who were renovating art, architecture, design, and literature It was evident that the diets and the banquets were con- sat down to discuss their radical theory over very conven- ceived literarily and were theatrically staged, as many tional meals. William Morris sought to bring the world of reviewers remarked.”3 artisanal craft into modern practice; Walter Gropius created Rather than being a genuine attempt to create a the Bauhaus to remake architecture, graphic arts, typography, Modernist gastronomy-as-art, Marinetti used food as a 2011 ceramics, and other aspects of design. Nobody in that era medium for his broader Futurist ideology. The goal was not NG created a Bauhaus of food. to make gastronomy into an art form of its own; rather, it PRI S The only major foray into gastronomy by proponents of was part of a program to bring all aspects of life (including 14 Modernism occurred among the Italian Futurists, who took food) into the Futurist agenda. The most telling point is up food as a tool in their overall aesthetic program. Public that Marinetti’s rhetoric is not about the aesthetics of food banquets and events served bizarre foods designed to shock as such; his theoretical rationalizations for Futurist cuisine OMICA N people. Pasta was attacked in manifestos as “an absurd were instead founded on ideals that lay outside the realm of TRO Italian gastronomic religion,” which they wanted to ban in gastronomy. If nutrition is the primary ideal related to food, S A favor of the “ideal” Italian diet based on “scientific prin- Marinetti’s nutritional thinking was transparently a fraud. G ciples,” as documented in the Futurist Cookbook published Ultimately, the Futurist adventure with food was no more by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1932.2 about gastronomy than eating live goldfish at a fraternity Superficially, Marinetti’s book may appear to be a hazing; both stem from the shock value of violating culinary Modernist take on food, but closer examination reveals it conventions. This posturing succeeded in attracting atten- as the proverbial exception that proves the rule. Marinetti’s tion but failed to create a genuine gastronomic aesthetic. purported goal was the scientific renovation of the Italian Indeed, the striking lack of a Modernist revolution in food This content downloaded on Thu, 7 Mar 2013 10:21:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions could be taken as Exhibit A in the argument that gastron- the Henry Ford of the professional kitchen. He established omy, at least of that era, was not an art, and people did not the brigade system to manage production and keep uniform really think to treat it like one. standards. He did something similar for organizing service Among European countries France has long been con- in the front of the house, a system that has been the founda- sidered to have the greatest national interest in cuisine, so tion of kitchen organization in high-end restaurants for the it is a logical place to look for culinary evolution and revo- last century. His masterwork was fundamentally motivated lution. The haute cuisine of France was subject to many by gastronomy as a manufacturing process rather than as an revisions and innovations over the years, as evidenced by art. It was Carême for cruise ships. At the same time that the evolution of the nation’s cookbooks. These books both Modernist movements were busy attacking the rules of the documented and standardized the culinary practices of old order and remaking art, architecture, and literature, their eras. La Varenne, along with other cookbook authors Escoffier was setting up a new culinary dogma that empha- including Nicolas de Bonnefons and François Massialot, sized production and management as a means to quality. He recorded the development of a new French cuisine that was an artisan striving to run a factory rather than be an artist.
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