Food can be artistic - but it can never be art, The Guardian

Ferran Adria, chef-proprietor of the celebrated restaurant El Bulli, has been invited to participate in the Documenta art show. But is he an artist? If canned shit can be art, why can't gourmet food be similarly elevated? Actually, there is a reason why, but it's not as obvious as Spanish art critics appear to think. The critic of El Pais choked on his morning churros at the news that Ferran Adria, chef-proprietor of the celebrated Catalan restaurant El Bulli, has been invited to participate in the Documenta art show in Kassel, Germany, this summer. He must have spent decades with his head in a bowl of Guernica stew (an entirely black mixture of beans and meat - never order a dish because it sounds like a painting) to find this in any way surprising.

Gilbert and George once sat down to a meal served by Lord Snowdon's butler as an artwork, the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija cooks and serves food ... I could go on. What is more relevant is that in 1930, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, leader of the futurist movement, proposed a revolution in cuisine that anticipated today's avant-garde chefs. Marinetti's Futurist Cookbook applies modern art aesthetics to cooking, with such recipes as salami in a bath of perfumed black coffee. By all accounts, El Bulli makes food very much in this tradition, such as mini-parmesan ice-cream sandwiches. Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck is similarly experimental. These chefs are artists - almost.

They are not true artists because even the most modern food cannot disgust people beyond a certain point, or El Bulli would have no customers. The only really radical restaurant was Peter Cook's imaginary establishment the Frog and Peach, which served various combinations of peach and frog. In reality, even a genius among chefs is obliged to please the customer (and cook to order), which means no chef can claim the freedom of mind that artists won in the Renaissance.

Caravaggio could paint fruit that looked good enough to eat but he also painted tortures to turn your stomach; that's art. Until people go to a restaurant to think about death, cooking won't be art. On the other hand, I'm still wondering if Guernica stew is food.