David Hammond wrote: … it seems to me that the trend of the past few years to create higher-end versions of lower-end food is an example of the survival of irony and even a kind of Warholian commentary on the artistry of the everyday.
An ingenious observation, David. Irony is postmodernism's first impulse, and often, sadly, its only one.
Let us not overlook pop art's pandering (which is to say, commercial) appeal. A foie gras burger, like a painting of a soup can, flatters a plebeian audience that its humble, readily manipulated tastes deserve honor.
It is a flattery by which many are seduced. A yokel stares at one of Mark Rothko's luminous, ecstatic panels of color, and is not only mystified, but humiliated by his mystification. Similarly, a yokel presented with connoisseur's food – beautifully fresh sea urchin, say, or smelly cheese, or pig's feet – will be likewise dissatisfied at heart.
But then, back at the gallery, the yokel turns to an array of a thousand silkscreened Marilyn Monroes or Elvis Presleys or Campbells soups … and is pleased and grateful that he understands what he sees … and smiles at the very least in the recollection of
Some Like It Hot or "Hound Dog" or Old Fashioned Vegetable Soup. (And if he's a yokel with a little bit of education, he can additionally envelop himself in the smug delight of his recognition of Warhol's ironic pulverization of art into commerce.)
And similarly again, the yokel sighs with grateful, delighted satisfaction, when faced with fancy, expensive
haute cuisine … that turns out to be a hamburger! (Or a Twinkie … or a potato that looks like ice cream … or ice cream that looks like a potato …. )
Oh, how the yokels will pony up for flattery that seductive, that devious, that clever. And thus does the talentless Warhol become an honored millionaire, while an uncompromising (therefore, broke) genius like Rothko commits suicide.
Of course, the taste for a hamburger
does deserve honor – which it receives, honestly and honorably, at homely establishments like Top Notch Beefburger and Meier's Tavern, made by craftsmen-not-artists, cooks-not-chefs who will never puzzle foodies from the cover of
Food and Wine.
But the pandering flattery of a foie gras burger satirizes rather than honors that taste (for a $40 upcharge). A satire that the yokels are unable to detect, needless to say.
I suppose
haute cuisine's current fad for hyperbolic food mimicry originates with Adrià at El Bulli, who, it is said, intends to provoke sensual discontinuity and a confounding of expectation.
And maybe he does. But I fear that his imitators – those who ape the aper – seek merely to achieve the irony the original post described so well.
Which is one of the most juvenile and distasteful fads ever to afflict cuisine, in my view – a horde of
Brady Bunch Gen-Xers for whom postmodernist irony is the only artistry they can imagine. It has made me unable even to stomach the thought of dining at someplace like Alinea.
Yet I've had trouble putting my finger on exactly why I have detested this fad so. Your post, Mr. Hammond, has helped me to do this – to realize that food is one place I have zero tolerance for the discontinuities of surrealism and irony. I am too simple and pleasure-loving for that.
Thanks.
Harry V.