John Dewey and the Artful Life

Culinary aesthetics: World-traveling with culinary arts

“…Instead of merely applying Dewey's theory, I was "thinking with theory" (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013), abductively putting several Deweyan conceptions to the test by questioning the appropriateness of each theoretical component and its interchange with the subject matter. To support to my conceptualization, I also consulted several post-Deweyan thinkers with similar food, art, and aesthetic interests (Kuehn, 2005(Kuehn, , 2012Koczanowicz, 2016;Leddy, 2012Leddy, , 2021Lee et al, 2020;Lee, 2021;Stroud, 2010Stroud, , 2011Stroud, , 2014.…”

“…Dewey's premise is built against the idea of separating art from experience, contending that when art is segmented and locked away (such as in museums), the natural order of human and art relations diminishes. Instead, Dewey argues that the aesthetic occurs when one interacts in unity with art in experience, not from a distance, allowing one to immerse in qualitative immediacy and contemporaneous fluidity (Leddy, 2021;Stroud, 2011). In the coming paragraphs, I elaborate on Dewey's thinking, which begins with, among many things, two core principles: interaction and continuity (Dewey, 1997(Dewey, /1916(Dewey, , 2005(Dewey, /1934(Dewey, , 2007(Dewey, /1938.…”

“…More particularly, Dewey posits that the aesthetic primarily belongs to the consumer's standpoint, not the producer/creator, which he offers a fitting culinary analogy: "as with cooking, overt skillful action is on the side of the cook who prepares, while taste is on the side of the consumer" who appreciates, perceives, enjoys, and assigns value to the cook's product (p. 49). To have an aesthetic experience is to have an experience with objects to which one perceives as art: be it with nature, poetry, painting, architecture, or food (Kuehn, 2005(Kuehn, , 2012Stroud, 2011Stroud, , 2014.…”

“…In overlooking the everyday cook, one inadvertently insinuates a dichotomy that separates high art from low art, imposing an elitist/non-elitist dualism in understanding the role of art in the tourism workforce. Such bifurcating stances can be highly restrictive to our understanding of culinary aesthetics, especially given that art and aesthetics are not privileged products accessible only to a selected few, but something foregrounded in all human experiences-to engage with art and aesthetics is a gift all human beings possess (Dewey, 2005(Dewey, /1934Leddy, 2012;Stroud, 2011Stroud, , 2014.…”

“…In doing so, one dangerously splits the intimate link between the creator from his/her creations while also disconnecting the creator from his/her audience, scattering the creator/creation/audience relations into isolated segments and domains. Aesthetic scholars persistently caution against such views (Kuehn, 2005;Leddy, 2021;Stroud, 2011), as the separation of the creator/creation/audience risks sterilizing the aesthetic phenomenon into rigid classifications and separations, segregating the organic fluidity each entity (i.e., creator/creation/audience) brings to the aesthetic whole.…”