AESTHETICS SERIES No. 1 / P&R HOME PAGE / THE PLATE
To think about:
Culinary and Cinematic Parallels:
Both food and film’s functionality shapes culture and constructs identity.
Consider the parallels:
The Chef & The Director: Crafting the vision.
The Ingredients & The Narrative: Building the structure.
Nutrition & Entertainment: Meeting our basic needs.
Cultural traditions & social perspectives: Constructing identity
Food and Film Aesthetics: While it is obvious that both chefs and filmmakers have created their masterpieces by starting with a vision and crafting them with the best of ingredients and a solid structure and of course filling our basic needs, ultimately, the most important parallel between food and film lies in their aesthetics. Both film and food aesthetics tap into our desire for emotional and sensory enrichment and our inherent quest for beauty.
P&R defines aesthetics as rooted in the classical definition of beauty and art forms, including symmetry, proportion, balance, simplicity, harmony, restraint, attitude, principles, idealization of the human body, sensory stimulation, and beauty as good.
On our website home page, P&R introduces the role of the plate as representing culture, self-identity, traditions, history, heritage, and food aesthetics.
A plate has its own artistic value and function. It can be an art object by itself or the server of our well-being. Consider what effect lovely dinnerware sitting amongst the silver, crystal, flowers, and linens has on our sense of beauty. It draws our interest and sets the attitude for the evening. Its artistic function renders the table as something more important than just a place where we eat. The artistic arrangement of details invites us into a visually striking space where intriguing conversations turn into memorable friendships. In short, the plate serves us food and is a container of life’s stories. Its aesthetic appeal and daily function bring balance to our lives.
On the Home page of The Plate and The Reel, we introduce the P&R concepts of aesthetics with three different PLATE slides.
Plate #1: A Lazy Susan handcrafted in Ravello, Italy; two Murano cordial glasses from the island of Murano; and a Giorgio Armani small, red bag. The lazy Susan holds a lemon pastry and connects to the aesthetic of food art. This collection represents the love for travel and design.
Plate #2: an antique candy dish, a copper bowl with the Greek Key design, and a tomato. The candy dish was a wedding present to my grandmother who, in turn, gave it to my mother who passed it on to me. The tomato in the dish represents fields of tomatoes produced by our family farm. The copper bowl reminds me of Utah’s famous copper mine which brought our ancestors to Utah for work at the turn of the 20th century, and the Greek key design speaks of Greek culture.
Plate #3: a selection of Homer’s Iliad, a silver bowl with Greek inscriptions on it sitting in the middle of a china dinner plate with the Greek key and a red poppy. The Illiad excerpt represents nearly 2800 years of the literary tradition in Greek culture, and the silver bowl is a testament to art and architecture in our history. Their designs speak of ancient Greece and the development of aesthetics as a philosophy over 2500 years ago. Both of these objects were gifts from the Greek contingency presented to us at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. The china plate’s Greek Key connects to the enduring identity of Greek design. The red poppy reminds me of spring in Greece.
Together, these plates contain representations of meaningful objects telling what is important in a lifestyle of aesthetics. All shown through mementoes, history, literature, design, and travel, these curated objects embody the belief that life is better when you surround yourself with beautiful things. The sum total of these hand-selected items convey a specific lifestyle of aesthetic value, and we might say, adds up to a personal signature as current design aesthetes call it.
Welcome to my personal signature.