Food as Art Research

Van der Veen, M. (2003, Feb.). When is Food a Luxury? World Archaeology 34(3): 405-427. [On-line Journal]. Retrieved April 25, 2009 from JSTOR database.

Marijke van der Veen wrote “When is Food a Luxury?” with social stratification and the institutionalization of social ranking in mind as influential factors concerning the development of food as a luxury worthy of classification or “refinement in texture, [or] taste” (Veen, p.405). He initially breaks down his definition of “luxury” as “’objects of desire’, which give physical or bodily satisfactions, and are usually associated with physical or sensory enjoyment” (Veen, p.406). Marijke van der Veen argues sometimes food is meant for religious offerings, which gives food a sentimental and symbolic value. When hunger is no longer a basic need or a part of human survival and when there is abundance, the demand of so many has to be determined in some fashion. Veen also argues the luxury quality of food changes in status over time according to demand, social hierarchies, and the social symbolism of certain food.

This article is very articulate in elucidating social functions of food as a luxury, and I think this most closely relates to the articles of food as art because of the consequent refinement of food. The refinement of food is a conscious social effort to make the qualitative value of food rise in the society. Carolyn Korsmeyer’s article “The Meaning of Taste and the Taste of Meaning” is most closely related to the social significance food can carry. Her argument about “exemplification” is meant to get at the layered quality of food: first, the taste and temporal interaction of the senses, second, the human behavior of eating practices. She makes a structuralist argument that eating is representative of larger “social patterns” as code for class, economic status, and I would argue, even gender relations (Korsmeyer, 32-35). Veen and Korsmeyer support arguments that food is socio-cultural in symbolism and requires the refinement of food, a result of surplus.

Shuman, A. (Autumn, 2000). Food Gifts: Ritual Exchange and the Production of Excess Meaning. The Journal of American Folklore 113( 450):495-508 (On-line Journal). Retrieved April 26, 2009 from JSTOR database.

Amy Shuman argues in “Food Gifts: Ritual Exchange and the Production of Excess” that the Jewish practice of food exchanges create “spaces for maintain or renegotiating social relationship” and implicit in this argument is the cultural and social meaning given to food and the ritual of exchange. The material culture of food in ritual exchanges is influences by the intense depth of social relationships, rules, meanings, and “social obligations” (Shuman, p.495). Her argument is these deep social interactions create too much meaning or an “excess of meaning [which] converts material goods into symbolic goods” and that this spatial environment of performance provided an arena for the renegotiation. Specifically, food during a festival or celebration exchange represents an inversion of social values because when food is normally restrained or controlled because of economic status outside performance, it is then inverted to be about consumptions and a symbolic lack of control (Shuman, p.485).

Shuman’s examination of food at the Jewish holiday Purim is closely related to Carolyn Korsmeyer’s analysis of the “cognitive significance of food” in the environment of performance. The event is wrapped with codes of social behavior, taboos, events, and culturally specific meaning. Korsmeyer’s argument, however, makes the argument that food in a ritual context may not fully qualify if the food is not meant for eating, but she maintains that there are certain other qualifying features which do make “these sorts of displays as art” (Korsmeyer, p.32). I think her argument is meant to convey the importance of the traditional interaction between man and food, but Shuman offers a different perspective which I find convincing. Is food a part of a ceremony because the ceremony is significant, or is the ceremony given significance by the food? Food becomes a part of the difficult interaction of confliction restraints, such as social, religious, or familial restraints (Shuman, p. 498-98). Food becomes less objective and has more agency.