I have never eaten a Velázquez. Or a Picasso, come to that. But I have eaten an Adrià. And it was pretty tasty.

Never heard of the Spanish artist Ferran Adrià? He’s based in Roses, on the Costa Brava. And the reason you might not have heard of him is that he’s usually described as a chef. Not just a chef, mind, but the chef: last month his restaurant, El Bulli, was voted the best in the world by Restaurant magazine. Other chefs refer to him as the greatest.

Next month Adrià will break new ground even for him: he has been invited to exhibit his food at the five-yearly Documenta art show in Kassel, Germany – one of the biggest events in the world of contemporary art. The invitation has, predictably, caused uproar in the art world. José de la Sota, art critic of El PaÍs, put it this way: “Adrià is not Picasso. Picasso did not know how to cook but he was better than Adrià [at art]. What is art now? Is it something or nothing?”

He might indeed ask: many of us have been wondering for quite a while, when we see elephant dung, protest banners and piles of bricks winning art prizes. Clement Greenberg, the most influential critic of modern art, defined it as “the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticise the discipline itself”. That seems to me as good a definition of Adrià’s style of food as any I have read. El Bulli is the home of what has been called “molecular gastronomy”. It opens for six months a year. In the six winter months when it is shut, Adrià and his fellow chefs work in their laboratory in Barcelona, deconstructing and then reassembling food and combinations in all sorts of experimental ways.

The point of Adrià’s food (the same holds for Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck in Berkshire) is to remain true to the essence of an ingredient but to let us see it and taste it in a new light. Our expectations are confounded and we see what we are eating in a new way. That is a truly artistic experience. Adrià’s technical skills are unsurpassed and he puts most traditional chefs to shame in his mastery of their techniques. With that as his foundation, he then goes back to the essentials and starts again.

Take the margarita I was offered when I arrived at El Bulli. The “glass” was a square block of ice with a hole in the centre: on top was a foam of olives, with shards of margarita ice underneath. The canapés looked like four biscuits. The Oreo chocolate cream was two pieces of olive biscuit with a yogurt cream, the marshmallow was not coconut but parmesan, and the crunchy rice crispy biscuit was made of quinoa with almonds. Then there was a popcorn foam – literally, foam that tasted of popcorn – accompanied by a tiny ball of caramelised liquid pumpkin dusted with gold leaf. The box of caviar turned out to be intense, tiny balls of jellified melon . . . and on it goes, unexpected dish after logic-questioning dish.

Adrià reacts to the criticism from the Spanish art establishment thus: “True, I am no Picasso, but what is art in times like these? Many people act as if I should apologise for participating. I am not going to. I understand there might be people who are annoyed. It’s tough to see a cook get invited to this. But what is art? If they want to call what I do art, fine. If not, that’s fine too.”

Spot on. In an art world where anything seems to go, I can’t for the life of me see why Ferran Adrià’s food, which fulfils every criterion of modern art, should not take its place alongside the likes of Tracey Emin.

Come to think of it, shouldn’t it be the woman whose contribution to art is an unmade bed whose place in the exhibition should be in question? Why is that art, but Adrià’s not? The food at El Bulli is certainly a lot more elevating to look at.

There is nothing soothing about being bullied by your pudding

I have not had the privilege of Ferran Adrià’s particular brand of “molecular gastronomy”, but I have sampled that of his British counterpart, Heston Blumenthal. As a culinary technician, Blumenthal is a genius. The food he creates is exciting, challenging, stimulating. Sadly, dinner at the Fat Duck was a dismal affair. Blumenthal may understand the chemistry of flavour, but the formula for an enjoyable supper thoroughly eludes him.

Maybe it is a male/female thing. The cooking of Blumenthal and Adrià is an exercise in culinary intellectualism, but for me eating has never been an intellectual pursuit. It is a fundamentally visceral, emotive activity: it encompasses family, friends, life in general. Food should be nourishing, welcoming, soothing: there is nothing soothing about being bullied by your pudding, however clever the bacon-and-egg flavouring is. For me this kind of cuisine lacks one vital ingredient: soul.

I feel broadly the same about art. The reason so much contemporary art leaves me cold is that it values “concepts” above beauty and grace. In many ways, then, it is thoroughly appropriate that Adrià has been invited to exhibit at Documenta – an event that inevitably encourages an excess of navel-gazing. He will be right at home if his “Synthesis of El Bulli Cuisine” is anything to go by: “Cooking is a language through which all the following properties may be expressed: harmony, creativity, happiness, beauty, poetry, complexity, magic, humour, provocation and culture.” He adds, cryptically: “The technique-concept search is the apex of the creative pyramid.” No chance of a steak, medium-rare, then?

SARAH VINE

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