Tag Archives: Art

Sensory Double Standards

14 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by in Philosophy of Food and Wine

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kandinskyMany philosophers reject the idea that food and wine can be art. But there seems to be nothing but prejudice standing behind this view.

One reason we enjoy art and hold art in high esteem is that it helps us understand our world and our place in it. Painting, sculpture, and literature present objects, events, or scenes to us so we might view them from the artist’s distinctive point of view. And we come away from that experience with an understanding of how the world might be viewed from that unique perspective.

Another reason we enjoy art is because works of art sometimes generate emotional responses in us. And we explore those emotional responses in order to gain insight into how we are situated in the world and how we are related to the objects toward which our emotional responses are directed. Music, poetry, and some paintings are especially effective at generating these emotional responses.

Understanding and emotional response are fundamental human capacities which art helps us to imaginatively explore. We deem an object beautiful because of the intensity and originality of the exploration they make available.

But perception  is also a fundamental human capacity that enables us to grasp the nature of reality. Some paintings and other visual art objects help us explore the nature of vision independently of any rational thought process they might engender. And some music explores the nature of audition independently of any emotional response we might have to the music. These objects or events can also be beautiful and awe-inspiring because of the intensity and originality of that sensory exploration. Think of the patterns and colors of textile art or the soundscapes of ambient music. These also inspire contemplation about our place in the world even though nothing is represented or expressed. And such works are also sometimes beautiful and awe-inspiring if they are sufficiently powerful and original.

Thought and feeling are important but so is perception. The intricacies of perception and how it builds a world are as worthy of exploration as reason and emotion. And so many works of art are devoted to exploring how perception works.

But if visual and auditory experiences are capable of beauty because of the intensity and originality of the  sensory exploration they make available, why not taste?

Food and wine enable the exploration of taste. There is in fact no other way to explore it. The exploration of food, wine, and other beverages directs our attention to the nature of reality and our place in the world.

So why are food and wine not considered fine arts? And why don’t we talk about beautiful food or beautiful wine? Why the double standard?

If sensory experience is worth exploring, there is no reason to limit such an exploration to vision and hearing.

Wine and Politics Are Drinking Buddies

10 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in Art and Wine, Contemporary Food Culture, Wine Culture

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wine and politics A tweet over the holidays unearthed some residual controversy over wine writer Jon Bonné’s article from last summer on the occasion of Anthony Bourdain’s death. Essentially, Jon Bonné’s point was that wine writing is in danger of becoming “fanboy literature”, ignoring the seamy side of the wine industry, and we need more Bourdain-type journalists who expose the truth.

Amber Lebeau at Spitbucket has a nice summary of the recent tweetstorm controversy which pitted Bonné against one Maureen Downey who was insisting wine and politics should seldom mix.

My initial reaction when the piece on Bourdain was published was supportive but conflicted. There should be more investigation of the political dimensions of wine but I hesitated over Bonne’s claim that we should judge the “moral condition” of the winemakers whose product we consume, if only because in most cases I know little about a winemaker’s “moral condition”.

But the original article implicitly raises a general question that is nicely framed by Amber—”are wine and politics strange bedfellows or drinking buddies?”

It’s important to emphasize that it’s beyond ridiculous to assert that wine writers shouldn’t write about political issues germane to the wine industry. That includes diversity in the wine business, the status of immigration and the treatment of immigrant labor, labor abuses including sexual harassment, climate change, the use of chemicals in the vineyard, and the closeting of great wines available only to the super rich. It goes without saying that writers who discuss politically –charged issues should be competent and well informed.

But I want to focus on the contrary argument alluded to in Bonné’s original article

It is an industry that, because it’s viewed by outsiders as a nice little escapist haven from the real world, has a nearly pathological aversion to its less-than-perfect side.

Many of the tweets, as well as Amber’s post, expressed a desire for wine to be that safe haven that Bonne dismisses as escapist.

Is wine a safe space, an arena of aesthetic pleasure and conviviality which will be inevitably compromised by the conflicts and tensions of politics?

There is no doubt that the wine industry is selling romance. Wine is a symbol of the sweet life, a life of ease, pleasure and conviviality. I don’t think we can fault the industry for selling that because wine quite naturally lends itself to that image. (It is more than that as well, but I will leave that discussion for another day.)Thus, it isn’t surprising that many people see wine as a safe space, a place where the tribulations of the world can be suspended if only for a moment, and we can put aside differences and rejoice in the pleasures of life.

But that portrayal of wine is inherently political.

The enjoyment of wine (and food when enjoyment is the point of consumption) puts our lives outside the time frame of our obsession with the hamster wheel of production and consumption that drives the frantic pace of modern life. Wine prescribes a different use of our time—the time to savor the tissue of moment to moment satisfactions that sustain life’s meaning. With its emphasis on conviviality and good cheer, the wine life puts out of joint the authoritarian production paradigm that pits one person against another in a competitive space with a strict hierarchy in which sharing goes in one direction, toward the top of the organization. By contrast, wine and food occupy the space of hospitality where there is a hierarchy, the carer and the cared for, but relations of reciprocity and interchange are at its essence

The enjoyment of wine is not merely of the sensory properties of wine but the idealized meaning of a way of life. The mythology, the romance, is precisely the point.

But there is a political point to this that cannot be wished away in our zeal to preserve inner peace.

As French philosopher Jacques Rancière writes: “Politics is primarily conflict over the existence of a common stage and over the existence and status of those present on it.” And  Rancière thinks aesthetic objects, such as art but I would guess also wine, play a crucial role in politics so defined. Art defines ways of being together or being apart and changes our assumptions about who or what belongs in the same space. (Think of paintings or films that put people or objects in a shared space quite different from their juxtaposition in ordinary life.)

Rancière calls this the “partition of the sensible”. Aesthetic practice takes part in the “partition of the sensible” insofar as it suspends the ordinary coordinates of sensory experience and reframes the network of relationships we engage in by situating them in a different space and time, and by revising our perceptions of what is common and what is singular.

Wine defines a common stage, a particular way of being together outside the time and space of the production paradigm. But as such it then cannot turn around and ignore questions about who gets to be on the stage and what their relationships are. Or to put the point differently, the romance of wine precludes judgments like “I don’t have time for you” or “my pleasure depends on your pain”.

If wine is about pleasure and hospitality, we can’t forget about the hospitality side of the equation—the question of whose pleasure and how it is being served is just part of the territory.

Difficult Beauty

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by in General Aesthetics, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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exploding wineThroughout much of the history of aesthetics beauty has been the term of highest aesthetic praise, referring to objects that exhibit perfect symmetry, proportion and harmony, and often associated with the divine. But terms that refer to more ordinary aesthetic experiences—pretty, pleasant, charming, nice, lovely, etc.—receive almost no attention. This is odd to say the least because the vast majority of aesthetic experiences in ordinary life are best described as pretty, pleasant or nice.

This is surely true of wine. Most of us don’t drink the most impressive wines on a regular basis. Everyday wines of quality can best be described as pleasant, nice, scrumptious or some other adjective denoting a common experience. To describe a wine as pretty is a term of praise. Our lives are suffused with these more modest experiences. Without things that are pretty or pleasant our lives would be much poorer. Our experiences of things that are pretty or nice are genuine aesthetic experiences despite being ignored by people who should know better.

However, what I find even more odd about traditional aesthetics is that when I think about harmony, symmetry and related concepts, it’s pretty or pleasant objects that exhibit them. Pretty pictures have all their elements working together with balanced colors and graceful lines, nothing jagged or garish. They have unity and feel complete. Pleasant wines are well balanced with round, prominent fruit set off by plenty of acidity to keep the wine fresh, a conventional aroma profile with just enough complexity to be interesting but nothing confusing or off-putting, and if the wine is red, sufficient tannins to give the wine some length and intensity. In short, pretty, nice, pleasant things have nothing of difficulty about them. They effortlessly enter our lives producing no conflict and providing many moments of modest joy precisely because they exhibit harmony, symmetry and balance.

Beauty by contrast is something less comforting. Objects become beautiful when some difficulty is introduced, something that disrupts harmony and makes us think or react. The intensity of beauty comes from contrast not symmetry. A symmetrical face is pretty; it becomes beautiful when animated by the complexities of a personality that hints at something tumultuous just below the surface. Musical passages are beautiful when they contain sufficient tension to elicit powerful emotions. The great composers are masters at building tension that never fully resolves. What makes a painting such as Monet’s Water Lilies beautiful, and not merely pretty, is that it draws us into a maelstrom of swirling color that has no border so we feel on the edge of the infinite.

Similarly, great wines are paradoxical, marrying incompatible features such as power and finesse or complexity and simplicity that leave us with a sense of wonder and mystery about how it all works. They are hard to understand, can feel overwhelming in their intensity and may exhibit features that are unusual and distinctive. Great wines have balance but they feel like they’re pushing the limits of balance striving to keep the various intensities under control.

My point is that beauty is best viewed as unity and good form subtly disrupted by contrasts and intensities that the work struggles to accommodate. The aesthetic tradition is mistaken in conceptualizing beauty as perfect proportion and harmony.

Are Fine Wine and Creative Cooking Arts or Crafts?

26 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in 3 Quarks Daily Column, General Aesthetics, Philosophy of Food and Wine

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The explosion of interest in the aesthetics of food and beverages over the past several decades inevitably raises the question whether certain culinary preparations or wines can be considered works of art. I consider how we should distinguish a craft from an art in the context of wine and food in my Three Quarks Daily column this month.

Winemaker Interview: James Frey of Trisaetum Winery

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Art and Wine, Wine Culture

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trisaetum gallery

Art Gallery at Trisaetum

James Frey, winemaker and owner of Trisaetum Winery in Willamette Valley, Oregon has a very impressive resume in my estimation. In addition to producing several high-scoring cuvees of Riesling and Pinot Noir each vintage, including the first domestic Riesling that really knocked me out, he is also an accomplished painter, displaying his vineyard-inspired artwork in a gallery adjacent to the tasting room. So James was a natural choice to provide some insight for my book project on the art of winemaking.

I am grateful to James for taking the time to respond to my questions about the creative aspects of winemaking.

1. Describe your “aha” moment when you first fell in love with wine.

Wine wasn’t around my family table growing up, so I came to wine in my twenties…and fell in love with it when my honeymoon took a detour (on a whim) through Napa.

2. What motivated you to get into winemaking?

Passion.

3. What did you do before you got into the business of making wine?

I worked in Corporate America for two different Fortune 500 companies as the head of Brand and Advertising at both of them. While I loved the challenge and the people I worked with, it was never truly a passion of mine. My passions were what I did on the weekend: be with my family, make wine in my backyard and paint. So I decided at the ripe old age of 39 to leave corporate America behind and devote my full energies to those things I was most passionate about.

4. How does that background help you make wine?

My corporate career did very little to help me make wine. A strong background in business certainly helped make a winery…which is actually a rather complicated business.

5. You are also an established artist. How does that background help you make wine?

You need science to make a good wine. You need to understand botany and chemistry and physics; wine doesn’t just make itself. There’s this romantic notion that you throw a cluster of grapes into a bucket and come back in 12 months and it’s a beautiful bottle of wine…it just doesn’t happen like that. So you need science to make a good wine…but you need art to make a great wine. Great wines cannot be manufactured in a lab; they come from your palate. They come from years and years and years of tasting…and years of blending…and years of experimenting.

6. How is winemaking similar to painting in terms of the creative process?

You start with an idea of want you hope to create…but then it morphs and changes as mother nature does her thing…and so you have to go with it. My best paintings grow organically; same with wine. The more you try to control and manufacture either, the more staid and simple the painting or the wine becomes.

7. Do you have a philosophy of winemaking—a style that you’re aiming for? How would you describe that?

I don’t really. I have wines that I like (those with life and energy and balance)…but each of those descriptors are based on what my own palate perceives. So my philosophy ends up being making the wines I like that are true to the vintage and true to the varietal.

8. At what point in the winemaking process do you decide on what you’re aiming at regarding style?

You taste, taste, taste…and make small tweaks in your approach depending upon what mother nature gives you in a particular vintage. It would be a shame to overly manipulate the wine.

9. Does your goal, the profile you’re aiming at when you set out to make a wine, change during the winemaking process? If so, how?

Yes, I always make small tweaks in technique based on the characteristics of the vintage. Oregon has great vintage variation, so you have to both embrace that every vintage is going to be different, and not get too wedded to some formula for winemaking.

10. Do you think of wine as expressing something? If so, what?

Wines express both a short-term and long-term memory. The short-term memory is what happened during the vintage (hot, cold, wet, dry, early, late, etc…). The long-term memory is what happened millions of years ago when the site and the soil were created. My grapevine’s roots grow through millions of years and layers and layers of soil…and that root system’s job is to bring aspects of that site into the wine.

11. Do aesthetic concepts such as elegance, harmony, character or finesse play a role in your decision-making process?

I think those are all important words for wine.

12. How does knowledge of winemaking help recognize aesthetic properties (e.g. beauty, elegance, etc.) in a wine? Perhaps a different way of putting this question is “what does a winemaker taste that an ordinary consumer would miss?”

I’m not sure we taste anything different…we just do it more often so may be quicker to form our opinions on a wine

13. Do you consider winemaking an art? (I know definitions of art are controversial but don’t worry about having a precise definition, unless you want to give one)

Absolutely. See my answer to question 5. You can’t make great wine in a laboratory…you different wine than me.make it in the vineyard and with the palate of the winemaker. It’s why a different winemaker using the exact same grapes I use would end up making a completely

14. To what degree do the conscious decisions you make in the vineyard and winery produce the intended result. Or in other words what role do chance and luck play in winemaking?

Mother Nature will always have the potential of changing your intended result and you have to live with that. Given a “typical” vintage, the conscious decisions in the vineyard and winery have an enormous impact; there are a vast number of different wines you can make from a single vineyard…especially with Pinot Noir and Riesling.

15. Could you comment generally on the sorts of things that winemakers have little control over?

The weather.

16. In what sense is making wine a creative activity?

There are scores of decisions your make during a vintage that can produce a different result—in the vineyard: when you prune, organic versus conventional, leaf pulling, fruit thinning, when you pick, etc… in the winery: whole cluster or destem, stainless steel or oak, native or cultured yeast, cold soak or extended maceration, enzyme or natural, new barrel or neutral, what forest for your oak, time in barrel, filter or not, fining or not, etc…

17. At what point does imagination come into play with regard to winemaking?

The best winemakers in the world have incredible imaginations.

18. How important is originality to you. Is it important that you make a wine with your distinctive stamp on it.

Yes, it’s important that I’m making my own wine and not trying to replicate someone else’s wine.

19. In typical cases, how close does the finished product come to your original vision, and how do you balance the desire to let the grapes speak for themselves with achieving your intended style?

That’s very vintage dependent.

20. Terroir has become a buzz word. How important is terroir to you?

In making Pinot Noir and Riesling, the site is tremendously important. In my opinion, no other two grapes in the world do a better job of taking what’s in the soil and what’s at the site, and putting in into the glass. We celebrate the fact that our three vineyards produce three incredibly different wines…even though we farm them the same way, ferment them the same way and age them the same way.

21. How important is tasting to the winemaking process?

It is the single most important thing we do.

22. Does the sort of tasting you do in the winemaking process require imagination?

Absolutely…because in most cases you’re imaging what the wine will be…not what it is right now.

23. What must a wine be like to be beautiful?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.