Food vs. Art

Reader Jim_3655 e-mailed me the following question:

"mr. silverthorne, how can you say we should start up a discussion about art writing? isn't it just like food writing? whatever the writer thinks?"

It would be worthwhile to look into this question since it ultimately leads to the greater question: Is there something like truth in art, or is it all just a matter of taste? Let's take a look at an excerpt from a recent New York Times review of Cafe' d'Alsace in Manhattan written by Frank Bruni. The first line refers to an appetizer:

"The tender cubes of potato and melted cheese formed an ideal partnership, with or without the fervent orange and fugitive clove in the brew beside them. And this terrific dish kept company with many other winners: a goat cheese tart as sumptuous on the inside and flaky on the outside as you could wish it to be; a plump, moist wedge of fresh salmon smoked to order and surrounded by dark lentils…"

Now let's compare it to an excerpt from Joseph R. Wolin's Time Out New York write-up for an Eva Hesse exhibit:'

"Sans II hangs on the wall in five parts, reassembled from museum collections around the world. The35-foot-long piece must once have once caught the light effervescently, but now its resin and fiberglass surface appears clouded with age; its individual units range in color from light beer to caramel, according to their histories of storage and display. The long, double row of boxes comes straight from Donald Judd, but Hesse’s boxes defy uniformity. Their edges crumple like pastry crusts and their sagging forms embody vulnerability. Hesse disrupted the impersonal, serial repetition of Minimalism by invoking randomness and chance. In doing so, she helped topple the dominance of Minimalism in the art world of her day…"

There are in fact some similarities. Both describe the sensory qualities of the experience and both aim to use evocative language. However, the food review stops there. As for the art write-up, we hear more strongly evaluative language. The boxes "defy uniformity". Their forms "embody vulnerability". The artist "disrupted the impersonal, social repetition of Minimalism". The implication is that whereas the food merely provides pleasure, the artwork somehow acts. That appetizer sounds appealing, but once you've finished it, all you have are your memories of the experience. Eva Hesse's sculptures, on the other hand, "changed the shape of contemporary art," or so the subtitle of the article tells us.

Let's compare the respective descriptions of the chef and the artist. Bruni explains that Cafe' d'Alsace is "the creation of Simon Oren, who knows a thing or two about successful brasseries. Refusing to cede the city to gnocchi and gnudi, Mr. Oren has made a career of colonizing needy neighborhoods with the likes of steak frites and crème brûlee." The chef does show a certain kind of defiance, and doubtless the existence of his restaurants add to the choices for Manhattan diners. But we never hear anything along the lines of Wolin's final reflection on Hesse:

"It is tempting to cast Hesse in the role of feminist artist, softening the sharp edges of masculine Minimalism, tempering it with handcrafted technique and lived experience. But this denies the rigor of her investigation and the authority of her results. Ultimately, Hesse interests us for the very reasons her story might not translate to Hollywood: Her work remains complicated, profound and provocative in ways that resist resolution."

Hesse's "investigation" and authoritative results are described as profound and provocative. Clearly, Wolin means to imply that she has investigated more than the superficial sensory qualities of sculpture (in a way analagous to what we would find in the creation of food). Rather, these qualities serve a greater purpose, the transformation of the audience through its experience of the work.

Wolin tells us these things, but why should we take his word for it? This brings us to a final interesting comparison. Food writing such as Bruni's serves to describe the sensations experienced in eating a certain dish, but does not necessarily alter our own experience when we get around to trying it for ourselves. We will either like the tastes described or not, regardless of Bruni's palate. Wolin's article, on the other hand, could well serve to shape the evaluative aspect of our experience of the artwork described. After reading his article, we go in with the idea that we are experiencing something influential, profound, and provocative. Whether we find the work beautiful or not, we might see it as meaningful, and articles such as Wolin's could create or at least reinforce this assumption.

Finally, there is the more or less factual issue of Hesse's influence on contemporary art. We must note that before we have accepted that art is intrinscially valuable, it wouldn't interest us in the least how someone such as Hesse might have changed its shape. We must be careful to distinguish claims that someone has subverted such-and-such-ism and radically rethought this-other-ism from claims that this same person's work is profound. Something analogous to the former is true of anything, from water's "defiant reorganization" of fire to a kid's "subversion" of the expression "cool" through the use of, say, "bombastic". Everything affects its context, of course, but sometimes it seems, when people are speaking of art, that this in itself is supposed to represent something profound, and profound certainly implies some connection with truth.