By: Ghazala Fatima
An art that can be felt, touched, smelled and even tasted. Yes, it is food art and it is very common form of art that we see in our daily life. In our home we see our mother making efforts on making salads beautiful or the chef making a flower out of tomato peels and decorating it on salad plate. Sometimes even making smileys of ketchup on sandwiches and making heart of cream in coffees are all the ways to create art through the medium of food.
Food art, although a common form of art was not actually an officially declared form of art until an Italian artist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, one of the founders of avant-garde Futurist movement, thought of the preparation and consumption of food as art. He thought cooking and dining associated to everyone’s day-to-day lives can have an aesthetic approach to it . As the futurists embraced the industrial age and all mechanical things — from automobiles and planes to manufacturing methods and city planning, so according to them food art should also be central to everyone’svisionary and avant-garde ideals.
Food art is a type of art that depicts food, drinks or edible objects as the medium or subject matter of an artistic work to create an attractive visual display or provide social critique. It can be presented in two-dimensional or three-dimensional format, like painting or sculpture. “The Futurist Cookbook” published by Marinetti in 1932, was not merely a set of recipes but it is a kind of manifesto. He cast food preparation and consumption as part of a new worldview, in which entertaining became avant-garde performance.
There are many types of food art that artists use today to represent their art best out of their medium –
SKETCH FOOD ART
Sketch food art includes use of raw noodles, mushrooms, bread crumbs, cucumber,strawberriesor any other food item along with the pencil or coloured sketches. But unlike other food art it is not eatable, artists use edible food only for display in their artwork. The works of Armenian artist, Edgar Artis are very fine examples of sketch food art.He creates magical designs by matching his sketches perfectly with food.
FUNNY FOOD ART
The artists use edible food items to create funny artworks to attract the eaters or perceivers. Sometimes instead of biting into the food, you just want to stare at it lovingly. Bill Wurtzel is a visual artist who uses healthy food items as his medium to create his funny artworks.
THREE-DIMENSIONAL FOOD ART
Now food art is not restricted to a two-dimensional plane. La gourmandise, French Chef and Caterer isspecialising in creating three-dimensional sugar sculptures that one simply cannot stop staring at.
KETCHUP ART
In this type of food art, artists use ketchup as the main ingredient to make sketches. Sometimes they use other food items along with ketchup as supporting ingredients to make their art more beautiful and attractive. Mostly artists use this type of art for making portraits.
LATTE ART
Latte art is a method of preparing coffee created by pouring micro foam into a shot of espresso and resulting in a pattern or design on the surface of the latte. It can also be created or embellished by simply “drawing” in the top layer of foam.The term “Latte Art” is not limited to latte coffee but also applies to other beverages containing milk foam, such as cappuccino and hot chocolate. There are two main types of latte art i.e., free pouring:which is created during the pour, etching:that needs a tool to create a pattern after the pour.
FRUIT CARVING
Fruit carving is the art of carving fruit, a very common technique in Europe and Asian countries, and particularly popular in Thailand, China and Japan. There are many fruits that can be used in this process; the most popular one that artists use are watermelons, apples, strawberries, pineapples, and cantaloupes.The art of fruit carving uses many different tools like, pen to draw carving design, then knife for giving the carving shape, peel zester to create strips and grooves, melon baller to add ball shaped fruit carvings to the display, U – shaped and V – shaped garnish tools are used for detailed works.
CULINARY ARTS
Culinary arts are the cuisine arts of food preparation, cooking, and presentation of food, usually in the form of meals.An integral part of the culinary arts are the tools, known as cooking or kitchen utensils, that are used by both professional chefs and home cooks alike. Professionals in the culinary arts often call these utensils by the French term “batterie de cuisine”.Within the realm of the culinary arts, there is a wide array of different cooking techniques that originate from various cultures and continue to develop over time as these techniques are shared between cultures and progress with new technology.
EDIBLE ART
Edible art refers to food created to be art. It is distinguished from Edible Arrangements (which predominantly consist of fruit) because it is usually more elaborate dessert food. A common form of edible art is designing different types of cakes. Cakes made into art include birthday cakes, cakes for baby showers, for graduation celebrations, and many other types of events.Each piece looks unique, even if created for the same event, because each creator has their own idea in mind when creating their food art. Such pieces of art can be created using a cake base onto which the decorations are placed on, or they can be made purely out of fondant or sugar, while edible, is not created with consumption intended, such as Mexican Calavera.
