“Aesthetic Dining: The Art Restaurant Around the World” with Christina Makris
AWITA Online Book Club
By Anya Nikolaeva
Christina Makris led our second book club on Aesthetic Dining: The Art Restaurant Around the World. This is the first time a book has been written on this topic of identifying the tradition of the art restaurant. Christina traces the stories, details the art highlights, and meets artists, restaurateurs and chefs including Vik Muniz, Julian Schnabel and Tracy Emin. With a doctorate in philosophy, she has been involved with the arts as a collector, philanthropist and trustee, and with restaurants as an investor, consultant and sybarite.
1. Background | Building communities through eating
Christina started the conversation with emphasising how important eating is in building communities. She highlighted how some cultures use food in rituals and the cross-examination of contexts in which food appears in our lives is essential in understanding its importance. Taking food from one context and placing it into another allows us to see many of the parallels food has with art. She invited everyone to explore their understanding of ways food intersects with the arts.
“I wanted to identify different typologies of an ‘art restaurant’. And then there’s a subplot to that, in elevating a restaurant to a place of cultural output - it can be as important and as special as the arts.”
2. Dining is an important part of the art world
Christina went on to discussing how dining experiences are an integral part of the art world. Post-private view and gallery openings’ dinners play a major role in business making in the market. The relationship building that happens though a shared dining experience plays a key role in many art businesses. Christina also highlighted how the art world is an incredibly social space, in comparison to many other industries where professionals are often confined in solitary spaces and do not have the need for shared experiences to do their jobs (the example she discussed was writers).
The conversation then went onto drawing parallels with food being an aesthetic experience is a similar way artworks on the walls are, on which more was discussed later in the talk.
3. Is food art?
The conversation continued with drawing parallels between chefs and artists. Christina highlighted that many chefs she has spoken to do not identify themselves as artists, even though many artists disagree, and consider chefs artists. Many agreed that contemporary chefs are often engaged in a similar way with food as artists are with their art, the subversion of traditional recipes to create an innovative dish is a similar practice to many contemporary artists’ understanding of art.
One member noted how identification with food through nationality and culture happens on the same level as it does with art; that view was shared among the participants of the discussion.
Another member pointed out whether or not food as art is an economic, social or political discussion. Seeing as food is predominantly done at home by women, many would not associate that with art. This is opposed to the food-making at a restaurant by a chef which many consider an art form.
4. Performance art parallels with dining
One member has pointed out how the dining experiences have strong parallels with performance art. Christina agreed that in her findings the ritualistic element of performance art has very compelling parallels with dining. Many restaurant experiences, specially those that have art in them, become places of connection and community, closely resembling a rutual-esque experiences.
“There is something beautiful and eternal in that transitory moment of just sitting and dining with people.”
Christina’s research and much of the restaurant recommendations can be found in her book Aesthetic Dining: The Art Restaurant Around the World available on ACC Art Books website and Amazon.