A Brief Culinary Art History of the Western Chef Avante-Guarde Through the Late 20th Century examines Western cuisine as an art form. The book takes the vantage point of the Chef vanguard from second century AD Rome through the Italian and French Renaissances, modernism, and the emergence of global cuisine in the West during the last half of the twentieth century. The Book also compares cuisine to the other artistic movements with more recognized media during each given time period. The history also defines a cuisine and the difference between a personal Chef’s cuisine and ethnic foods or popularly recognized national dishes. Tony Baran, as both a Chef and historian, offers a unique insight to view Chef’s and their work in a culinary context from the vantage point of a culinarian and the nuances involved in culinary composition or how Chefs create new dishes and how cooking is elevated to an art form. The twentieth century was a celebration of the art of the immediate: cinema, photography, pop music, and cuisine. During this period, Chefs and their cuisines began to share the media limelight and prestige of other artists. Baran identifies this transformation of the unique recognition of Chefs as authors of their own bodies of culinary work and their influence on Western culture. The history also traces the evolution of the Chef-mentor relationship. The book describes this changing dynamic in European and, later, American history and its impact to Chefs and the critique of diners during their own times and how this impacted the successive generations of emerging culinarians.
