/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>8109363
>>8109054
Art history student procrastinating here.
Modernism, in art, politics, and philosophy is essentially an extension of the Enlightenment. Modernists believe that through reason and experimentation it is possible to reach a perfect truth, but that traditional modes of thinking hinder that progress. In art, this lead artists to strip away any detail that seemed unnecessary until all they had left was color and abstract form. Outside of the arts a good example of modernism is the theory of special relativity (proposed 1905, two years before Picasso rejected traditional forms with Les Demoiselles}; it is strange, makes no sense in terms of everyday experience, but is absolutely true and an improvement on classical physics.

Postmodernism developed following the horrors of World Wars I and II. Postmodernists saw the wars as the absurd result of conflicting ideologies that were each certain they had the perfect truth. Postmodernism is thus the belief that there is no objective truth. A major theme in postmodern art and analysis is the development of meaning from context. In this mode of thinking an artist's intentions do not solely define the meaning of a work. Individual viewers create their own interpretations which are equally valid. This lack of singular truth leads to a destructive cynicism which creates by deconstructing and rearranging old ideas, rather than creating new ones as the modernists did.

Modernist chefs take novel approaches to make old food better or create new food without precedent. Alinea and their taffy balloon is a good example.

Postmodernist chefs take old dishes and deconstruct and rearrange them into something different that is only recognizable through taste. This is what Massimo Bottura does.

Personally, I hate postmodernism. I'm totally fine with modernist things like gels and spherification, but stuff like Massimo's lemon tart just seem stupid to me.