Idea Essay #2 Cooking

Cooking

There are many answers to the infamous question, what is considered art? Is it something obvious like architecture, paintings, and sculptures? Or could it be something more abstract like gourmet cooking? One of the important purposes of art is to evoke emotions from the audience. Whether those emotions are pleasant or not, is up to the artist, and how the audience perceives the work of art. According to the article in the link above, art is something made or transformed by man that functions aesthetically in man’s experience. If cooking consists of a man transforming and making food to evoke emotions from him and whomever he is cooking for, then cooking is considered an art form.

The article goes on to describe how cooking could potentially be the most powerful art form because of its effect on the senses. A painting appeals to one sense (seeing), and performance of live music appeals to two senses (hearing and seeing), but cooking impacts all five (hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling). Because cooking impacts all five, theoretically it has a greater impact on the audience, thus making it a greater form of art. I do not necessarily agree with this argument point, but I can understand where the writer is coming from. Anyways, the narrator in the article goes on to describe how his father made biscuits on Saturday mornings. He explains how his father touches the ingredients and uses his hands to knead the bread. He describes how he could smell and hear of the crackling of the bacon. The narrator dramatically describes this in the article, “It is a smell that brings tears to your eyes and saliva to your mouth; a smell that haunts your memory and lingers in your soul. It is a smell for all of time.” The narrator would watch with admiration as his father cooked, and finally, the narrator and his father would be able to finally eat the food together. The article demonstrates how something as simple as making breakfast for the family on the weekends can provoke emotions and create memories that will never be forgotten. Because of the actions of taking simple things and putting them together in a sort of a way, and then being able to pull out emotions from the “audience” cooking is considered art.

Another example of why cooking is considered art comes from the movie Ratatouille. The basic concept is about a man who needs money, so decides to become a chef. At first, he knows nothing about cooking and is terrible, but then he comes across a mouse. (For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, it is an animation.) The mouse loves to cook and quickly becomes friends with the man. The man realizes that the mouse can help him become great in the kitchen, so he hides the mouse under his chef hat. The mouse pulls the man’s hair as a way of giving directions, and soon the man is great at cooking. The restaurant that the man works at is about to be criticized by a very mean and harsh critic, and it is the man who needs to make a meal for him. He decides to make a dish from home called ratatouille. As the critic eats it, he quickly has flashbacks of his home life and fond memories of his mother. The point that I am trying to make is that the dish that the man made was able to unlock those memories from the harsh critic and was able to soften him up. At the end of the movie, the critic wrote an excellent review and the restaurant got top ratings.

For me, personally, I love to cook. I may not be as old as the narrator of the article or the critic in the movie, but cooking reminds me of being with my mom in the kitchen. When I was little, she used to show me little tricks to make something taste better, or when she baked a cake, she always let me lick the bowl. It was her ability to take different ingredients and assemble them together, place them on the table, all in all creating a family dinner, and give me memories to keep forever.

I am not arguing that cooking is the greatest form of art, but I believe that if the chef is enjoying himself, putting his own little twist on a meal, and serving the meal with passion, then his creating (cooking) should be considered art. However, it is interesting to me how a hobby as abstract as cooking can evoke the same emotions out of people as a painting or a live performance of art. Overall, I feel as though cooking should be something that everyone experiences, in order to be able to relive valuable memories later in life.

http://www.ravenchronicles.org/FoodCulture/cookingasanartform.html