Food as Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Food as Culture - Essay Example Whether on the basis of taste, price or nutrition, people are driven by the values they place on food as well as by individual social standing, or current events or social conditions (xi-xii). The food industry through the media makes use of these factors to popularize a certain food. Take for instance the cover images of popular food magazines Gourmet, Good Food, and Cooking Light. A 2009 starter edition of the now-defunct Gourmet, which was part of the year-end collection, sported an image of a less Italianized spaghetti and meatballs. The edition included other Italian-style recipes as a tribute to American Italians. Good Food’s issue this Christmas Season promotes â€Å"Festive Cooking† with a matching picture of a roasted chicken soaked in spices and garnished with what looked like potatoes around the sidelines. Cooking Light, was all for the sweet tooth this Holidays and showed an image of a glass vessel full of various sweets. Though the magazines considered the Holiday Season, summer vacations, and American Italians, they all promoted recipes that do not necessarily sustain life. Not only do they appear complicated to regular persons, these recipes take time to prepare, and are not practical to eat in day-to-day meals. Desserts, for example, have high sugar content and too much intake of sugar could raise blood sugar levels, a condition called hyperglycemia which could lead to kidney failure or other health problems. Judging from the headings, these magazines have not emphasized on nutrition but on how quickly the recipes are prepared and how they appear to the consumers. Gourmet focused speed and being economical as evidence by one of its article entitled â€Å"Ten-Minute Mains,† which listed down all fast-cooking affordable foods like hamburgers (Knauer 52). Good Food was more on the aesthetic aspect of the food, which has to be as â€Å"festive† as Christmas like the thoroughly garnished roasted chicken. The heading â€Å"So Easy, So Elegant: Secret Shortcuts for Spectacular Desserts† suggests that Cooking Light compromised fast preparation and food appearance.

Definition of Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Definition of Art - Essay Example It communicates not only the artist ideas but also its emotion. It is largely based and facilitated more by intuition than reason as the receiver is more dependent on the experience and feeling evoked by the art. While art can be interpreted by logical reasoning as what was impressed to the spectator, the experience, however, is still subjective and relative to the interpretation of the receiver. Such, while the intellectual faculty is stimulated by the impression of a particular art form, it still appeals largely on emotion. And unlike the Scientific subject, art is generally organized in accordance with the technique or medium rather than the specialization of knowledge. Artistic technique refers to the degree of fluency of the artist in rendering the art through a medium. For example, with regard to its classification according to the medium, art can be categorized as the performing arts or literature. With regard to other media such as the material or component in rendering the a rtistic by-product, it can also be classified as â€Å"painting† in reference to the medium of paint of rendering the artistic impression. Art also requires a loftier sense of ability or mastery of its medium. It can be the well-versed articulation and adept use of a language to impart meaning and substance that moves the readers. That mastery of the language, whether it be the creative style or the originality of the approach of rendering the thoughts, or a combination of the two, has been best exemplified by the works of William Shakespeare as it enables the reader to grasp his meaning while regurgitating the manner it was conveyed with words. The fluency of technical execution can also be construed as art and even a requirement as manifested in Leonardo da Vinci’s works. For art is subjective and relative to the experience of its viewers, making the judgment about its value can be difficult. The quality or value of art is difficult to determine for the criteria of w hat makes good or bad art is also relative; whether it is the technical fluency of the artist or the intent and impact of the art to its receiver determines a good or bad art is difficult to say. Perception differs from one person to another. But regardless of its subjectivity, it is commonly agreed that what is not aesthetically satisfying cannot be considered as an art. Aesthetic satisfaction is not only confined to beauty, however; gory and horrible images that are intended for social or thought-provoking intention can also be considered as art although its prime motivation is not the aesthetic pursuit. The classic example to this would be Pablo Picasso’s Guemica (1937) In the twentieth century,  where he utilized arresting cubist  techniques and unembellished  monochromatic oils, to portray the dreadful result of a contemporary bombing of a small, ancient Basque town. Even blasphemous rendering can still be considered as an art as exampled by   Andres Serrano's  Piss Christ  (1989) where a photograph of a cross which is considered holy to the Christian religion, depicted  Christ's sacrifice and final suffering in a manner that is immersed in the artist’s own urine.  Ã‚