Page 30 - Studio International - September 1974

He would of course have read about Kava compare with other food arts in other cultures. presentation of food are similar to those which
ceremonial in Tonga and tea ceremonial in It can be assumed that food is taken partly prevail in the other applied arts in that culture.
Japan. Their complexity of ritual would pale because it serves a biological function, In other words, is food just treated as another
into insignificance compared with the nourishment. It shares its part-instrumental medium in which the same patterns are worked
ceremonial surrounding the cutting and part-aesthetic place in the range of all art forms out? For example, I once had the pleasure of
distribution of the wedding cake. At military with clothing, architecture and utensil design. attending the Dublin cattle show. There was a
weddings he would see the bride try to cut the With these it belongs to the group of applied big tent with cake stalls and stalls for other
cake with a sword, unable to succeed without the arts which is instantly distinguishable from the handcrafts on sale. The latter included those
help of her spouse. He would see in photographs pure, or fine arts such as music, sculpture or thick creamy-looking Arran sweaters, with
the bride standing near the cake about to cut it. visual arts. Therefore the questions which are cable-pattern knitting and regularly spaced
He would observe the bride's mother in tears, suitable to address to the applied arts should knots and twirls on a very bold and chunky scale.
the cake being parcelled into minute portions to also be addressed to food. In most of the applied Turning to the crochet, embroideries and
be distributed around the room; a large section arts there is a tension between the requirements tea-cosies and hot water bottle covers I noticed
of the cake being distributed even more of function and the requirements of design; one that these too conformed in style to similar rules
elaborately in small postal packets to be eaten by can find the utensil or building badly adapted to although carried out in a different material.
absent friends. Asking about the mythology of its function in the interests of design but one Turning further to the cake stall, the Arran
the cake, he would hear that those young does not normally expect to find these things sweater cable-stitch was replicated in icing sugar
maidens who receive a portion should sleep with created with no intention of serving any function and cream. A well-trained Martian
it under their pillow and dream of their future at all. However, this is not quite true of food. ethnographer would have gone out to the
husband, and also that the top portion of this Curiously, there is no difficulty in thinking of churches and graveyards and found similar
towering three-tier confection should be put examples of food that is produced entirely for plaited twirls carved in Celtic style in the stone
aside and kept for the Christening ceremony of display, so that food can be separated from its monuments of the region. But I forebore to
the first child, etc., etc. Taking an old fashioned nourishing function and be associated with the pursue my research. The Irish cake is an apt
diffusionist approach, he could trace this cake decorative arts, flower arrangements and illustration of common rules being shared
through the history and geography of weddings painting. This line of enquiry suggests that one between several media. It will serve to illustrate
in Europe. He would conclude that he had seen might ask how much its adaptation to the the range between complete autonomy and
the apotheosis of the cake form, something as biological function is deformed by its structuring complete permeation between the different
worthy of study as the American Indians' sun into an art form. For example, there might be a media. But it is a thoroughly bad example of
dance. He would have no difficulty in getting direct correlation across cultures, the more structural analysis because it takes one item of
pictorial records of the cake for he would find developed the aesthetic the more the biological food, the cream cake, one item of clothing, one
that no bakery that produces wedding cakes is function may be subordinated and ill-served. tea-cosy and one hot water bottle cover. The
without its album of photographs of famous This is one of the questions that we shall raise, arbitrary selection is inexcusable. It would be
cakes that it has made. If he had Marxist but be unable to answer. Quite conceivably the less arbitrary to compare food to a medium
leanings he might be worried to see the correlation could go in the opposite sense: the which had a sequential development over time,
extraordinary uniformity of the wedding cake more developed the aesthetic side, the better music or poetry, because food has an important
formula across the class structure. Although calculated to make the digestive juices flow and temporal dimension. Even among the applied
there will be many discernible differences in the better nutritional needs would tend to be arts it is not the only one which develops its rules
quality and price between one cake and another, served. I would like to know what systematic over the course of a day. Clothing also has a
for any guest standing at the other end of the work has been done to resolve these issues which range from night to morning to afternoon to
room it is hard to see the difference; the wedding are obviously of supreme importance for the mid-day to evening, as well as seasonal rules.
cake seems to be relatively classless — perhaps a current concern with the feeding of our planet. But food can develop its sequence and display
symptom of the embourgeoisement of the Obviously there is scope for argument in the its structure over time more quickly than can
European worker or perhaps the reverse identification of the aesthetic elements in food. clothing. Like the fruit fly which is so useful in
process. When he had completed filling in the My own preferred approach would be to take genetics because of the speed of its reproductory
diffusionist and sociological background of the the aesthetic as distinct from the nutritional processes, food is very well adapted to this kind
cake ceremony the researcher would embark aspect of food to be that part which is subject to of analysis. This introduces another set of
upon the structural analysis which I shall not pattern-making rules, like the rules of poetry, dimensions which can be proposed for
describe in detail. Essentially this technique of music or dance. The explanation of any one comparison between applied arts.
study would require him never to consider the such rule will only be found in its contribution
cake as a genre, still less the wedding cake alone to the pattern which it helps to create. The temporal dimension
apart from the food system in which it appears. Consequently rules which are explained with Does the food system unfold the rules which
The food system would be seen as a series of reference to pathogenic dangers such as make its patterns in a short or long time? How
events using a defined medium combined indigestibility, bacterial transmission, toxic quickly does the pattern repeat itself? Is it more
according to clearly understood rules. He would elements, etc., would be counted as rules like a poem consisting entirely of rhymed
have to set all the cake forms that he could concerned with nutrition and not with the couplets with a fixed metre? Or does it develop
record into the context of all other food forms aesthetic side. It is an arbitrary and difficult like a great epic poem, with galloping rhymed
habitually used by the people under study. This separation to maintain but essential for this kind couplets when the narrative is jolly, blank verse
approach allows a very different set of questions of investigation. If it can be accepted that there when the theme deepens, and all the chapters
to be posed, neither diffusionist nor sociological. is a field of behaviour which consists in making symmetrically concluded with sonnets in the
If food is to be considered as an art form it patterns which are in themselves the only strict ab, ba form? Although food is capable of
would be necessary first to choose questions justification of the elements which go into them, developing all its patterns in the course of a
which could be asked equally well of other art then this approach to the aesthetic aspects of day (as we shall see from the example to be
forms and then to identify an area of problems food suggests various dimensions which can discussed) it need not necessarily do so. Indeed
which are specific to the food medium. Having apply to food and the other applied arts. the real sequence of patterning is only concluded
first distinguished what kind of art form food is at the end of the life-cycle when we have moved
amongst the others in that culture, it would then The dimension of autonomy from the Christening cake, to the wedding cake,
be right to ask how does the local food art One can ask whether the rules which govern the to the funeral baked meats. This potentially

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