Edible Art and the Aesthetics of Fun

Art you can eat. What could be more Zen-like in its delicious ephemerality? Brought to us by the Institute of Official Cheer, the Dayalets collection of food art images was created as an advertising campaign for these vitamins, still available from Abbott Labs. Whatever the motivation (The Institute of Official Cheer attributes darker purposes), the result is a collection of images that are perhaps not appetite-inducing, unless your appetite is for fun.

There's something cleary inspiring about corn-cob lips, spaghetti hair and a bread-slice shirt. The artist has gone to such great lengths to make the images look "real" that we find ourselves needing to deconstruct the image, to puzzle out how each aspect was created. So we get invited into the fun of it, and as we delve more deeply, we become ever more appreciative of the art of it.

The same can be said of many of my favorite fun things - puzzles, toys, games, arts. Fanciful works of play, created with such skill and conviction that you almost believe them to be not really what they are.