Barceló's sobrassada

One day at the end of the eighties, Juli Soler contacted Francesc Guillamet to orderly photograph the new dishes - creations, versions or innovations - of Ferran Adrià. The highest goal was to generate a catalog of that work that seemed unpublished and infinite. Infinite because at the time the cook, born in 1962, was approaching his thirties. Unpublished because each dish, each set of dishes, each collection, each menu, surprised everyone with results never seen anywhere else. Combinations of techniques, technologies, flavors, colors, products, aromas, dishes, glasses, cutlery, hands, tongs, fingers. The dish was good and beautiful and the combinations were not nonsense.

Francesc Guillamet i Ferran, son of agrocers from Figueres, came from artistic and not commercial photography. From Leica, Ilford, Mamiya and on a motorcycle to be able to stop when he felt called by the light.

Photography and dishes

Perhaps for this reason, Guillamet decided to photograph the dishes as if they were landscapes. He also decided to photograph the dishes as if they were landscapes because it was the cheapest way and the one that required the least equipment. And to top it all off, the light it casts on the table on El Bulli's little terrace is monumental. In El Bulli he used Kodak slides, the best option to go to the printer at that time, when, as still now, the only thing that worked digitally was the camera shutter.

Defining art is complicated, but we would agree that it is when the work innovates and expresses sensitivity, emotion and surprise, and, above all, when there is an intention to produce emotions. The artist has no limit and his work can be unpleasant and provocative. On the other hand, even if it is not good for health, cooking should be pleasant.

Pastilla gelada de sangria, Francesc Guillamet (2001)

Is cooking art?

That said, is cooking art? It may be, but no, cooking is not art per se. Francesc Guillamet is clear that the 1,846 dishes at El Bulli are works of art. For this reason, each of those plates, enlarged and properly framed, functions autonomously as an aesthetic material. At the time, Ferran Adrià envied the time artists had to research and create a new work. She worked under pressure because he was her gallery owner who demanded new material from her every spring. Why did Ferran Adrià leave the kitchen? Why did he stop being a romantic explorer? Is the artist always creating and researching new ideas and new techniques? Are people in the art world perpetually eager to do new things?

Artistic compliment

Francesc Guillamet has made art because he has photographed the catalog of the restaurant that has changed the classic idea of cuisine, Juli Soler knew that it was necessary to catalog the work of his gallery in Cala Montjoi. Ferran Adrià was cooking up an idea. Miquel Barceló makes a delicious sobrasada, one of the best any human will ever taste. And that's why we should believe that this sobrasada is art?