Art-making, Demi Glace and Mr Allen

With apologies - in advance - to any vegetarians.

I'd been thinking about distillation in regards to the process of art making and have since found the 'right' analogy in form of the Demi Glace.

Essentially you take a bag of seemingly inert bones and cook them in a variety of ways until any and all meat, marrow and fat falls from the bone.

Throughout this process various ingredients are 'feed' to the concoction but they are ultimately just notes in a single entity rather than being a discernable 'taste'.

The stock is then distilled and refined with any impurities that might appear being skimmed off.

After this extensive process - which can take days - the resultant product is then separated into portions and often frozen for later use.

The Demi Glace is used as a note in various dishes... that bit 'extra' to push a dish from mediocrity to 'specialness'.

Another food analogy from Mr Allen this weekend in the Weekend Australian:

We often assume that aesthetic value is measured on a scale of, say, zero to 10. In reality, though, that value can be negative as well as positive. Bad art, in other words, is not simply lacking in virtues, but actively bad: it is rather like food, which is not neutral, but either good or bad for us, healthy or unhealthy.

Good art contributes to the sharpening of our perceptions and the refinement of our sensibility. Bad art encourages our tendency to grossness and stupidity.