Taste

de gustibus quidem est disputandum

This is a summary of my views on taste, which are:

1. There is no such thing as ‘good taste’, nor is there universal ‘goodness’ in art

2. That said, works of art can be more or less good in specific ways

3. There is no such thing as good taste, but there is taste and absence of it: taste is one’s conscious, intentional, and deep engagement with the world around them

4. People should care less about signalling good taste, and more about cultivating their personal sense of style

Semantic games, or taste as Ethical Appeal

Most of the big debates in the culture wars are impossible to settle because at their core we find fuzzy concepts that our language cannot properly capture. Who’s right on abortion? It depends on how we define ‘life’ and ‘consciousness’. Who’s right on trans issues? It depends on how we define ‘gender’ and ‘sex’. Both sides on these issues are playing semantic games, and because semantics are arbitrary, neither side can ever conclusively prove its case.

‘Taste’ is like this. There can be no definite answer to what does it mean to have good taste, because everyone uses the word differently. The fact that countless philosophers and aesthetes disagree with each other with no way to even begin resolving their different views is proof that the quest for a theory on taste is futile.

Some people have tried to argue there must be objectively good taste because there exists objectively good art. But many artists who are now considered great were ridiculed in their lifetime, and conversely, authors and composers who were hailed as visionary have long been forgotten. One can only conclude that the perceived quality of an artwork is a function of the context of the beholder.

A common counterargument to this line of reasoning is that scientists have reevaluated models of the world just as much as art critics and the public have reevaluated works of art, yet no-one (outside the post-modernists) disputes that there exists an objective reality. But there are crucial differences: first, changes in consensus on what models best-describe reality are in response to new data (or theories that better fit existing data), whereas changes in our definition of artistic quality are… nebulous, hard to explain, or justify by pointing to a specific breakthrough in our understanding. Second, when scientists disagree, they can (or at any rate should!) be able to explain what evidence would cause them to re-evaluate their theories. I imagine that an art critic who panned Van Gogh back in the day would be hard-pressed to explain under what conditions he’d change his verdict to ‘this man is a genius’.

And so, in the absence of an objective foundation for defining quality, people who proclaim their taste to be good are not making a rational case, but an ethical appeal: they’re basically telling you ‘trust me, I know better [because I’m an expert / have thought deeply about the matter / &c]’.

Even if I’m wrong about all this, even if there is some objective standard for good art and hence good taste, no-one has succeeded in defining it (and certainly not to the satisfaction of a solid majority of the population). Taste is a shorthand for conformity to the preferences of some group (be that experts, rebels, contrarians, the avant-garde visionaries, or whatever). Certainly when I accuse someone of having bad taste, what I mean is that their behaviour and preferences do not conform to those I’ve been taught to consider ‘good’. I openly acknowledge that my definition of ‘good’ is arbitrary: there’s nothing objectively wrong with wearing a red tie at a funeral (I’m sure that there must be cultures where red is the appropriate colour for mourning); nor with a guest wearing a white dress at a wedding; nor with burping during a meal, nor with spitting nor with making crude jokes. If I say these behaviours are in bad taste, I mean that in the context of my social milieu.

Frameworks

The fact that we cannot agree on an objective gauge of whether some art deserves to be called ‘good’ in some universal sense does not mean we cannot evaluate works of art across specific dimensions. Two that jump to mind are skill and intention.

As with sports, some artworks are harder to pull off, and therefore doing so can be sublime: they can inspire, motivate, and amaze the consumers of those artworks. Others are easier to pull off; they can still be appreciated on other grounds, and they are therefore not necessarily inferior. But it’s a distinction worth noticing.

Humorous use of language is harder than squeezing laughter out of fart jokes and so P.G. Wodehouse’s prose is more admirable and inspiring than Family Guy. Representational painting is harder than some modern artworks, for some of which the main skill the artist displays isn’t so much their work with a brush and canvas, but their dialectic, and their ability to break into the art world. So when evaluated with respect to technique, paintings by Old Masters are probably more notable than their modern counterparts.

I also think the artist’s intention, and the extent to which they met their goal, matters. If you’re trying to paint a snake that has swallowed an elephant, but your drawing ends up looking like a hat, you’re bad at sketching, and it’s not the lack of imagination of your audience that’s to blame.

Using this lens, good taste is having the knowledge to determine how much skill was involved in producing a work of art, and appreciating it accordingly. So, someone who appreciates the humour in Evelyn Waugh or Kafka has more taste than someone who only laughs when watching The Other Guys.

Yet another way to define and judge taste is one’s ability to evaluate ‘difficult’ works of art. Some things require more effort, patience, and focus to appreciate properly — for example, poetry is arguably harder to appreciate than other forms of literature, because it requires more conscious engagement (you can read a novel sort of on auto-pilot; granted, you won’t make the most of it if you do that, but you can still enjoy it. Harder to do that with a poem (though not with all poems.))

Taste as mindfulness

There is no such thing as darkness: there is only absence of light. Similarly, there is no such thing as bad taste, but there is absence of taste altogether: what distinguishes an aesthete from a philistine is that the former puts thought into their preferences, down to minute details (tie knots; sentence construction; film use; composition; fabric weave; &c). This is reinforced by a deep sense of curiosity: a desire to learn more, and draw inspiration from different fields. I find that curiosity is like a muscle: it’s easy to let it become flabby with disuse. When this happens, we stop noticing the world around us. We see, but we do not observe, as Sherlock Holmes puts it.

When we begin paying attention to the world, we also start interrogating our preferences. Why do we like the things we like? Doing this, we may begin to realise that many of the things we like are because they appeal to some ignoble instinct. For example: do you find yourself enjoying a witty negative review of a film or book or series? Why is that? You may notice you like snark, you like mean-spirited takedowns: they can be fun — but are they good?

Or think about the latest thing you read or watched. Do you remember it? Did you retain anything from it? Did you engage with it, and did it lend itself to deep engagement? If all your media consumption is mindless, if it doesn’t challenge you in any way, consider whether you’re letting your critical faculties atrophy. If the books you read never give you cause to consult a dictionary, consider whether you might want to expand your reading list.

Your taste should express your personality

It sometimes feels like people spend too much time obsessing over signalling ‘good taste’ instead of finding things they actually like. It brings to mind Lydia Davis’s advice (my emphasis):

If you want to be original, don’t labor to be original. Rather, work on yourself, your mind, and then say what you think. This was Stendhal’s advice. Actually, he said: “If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.” […]

But I prefer my adaptation of his advice: If you want to be original, cultivate yourself, enrich your mind, develop your empathy, your understanding of other human beings, and then, when you come to write, say what you think and feel, what you are moved to say.

[…]

This is what I mean about your character and work: your nature, your character, your whole being will produce the kind of writing you do. (That is why we hate cliches so much : they don’t reflect your own, very individual person: they are borrowed ideas, in outworn language.)

Lydia Davis is giving writing advice, but her reasoning applies to taste in general: how people dress, how they decorate their houses, or what art they (profess to) like. When I visit some people’s houses, I’m often struck at how tasteful but bland they are: everything seems to have been picked from the latest made.com clone, a museum or design gallery’s giftshop, or Etsy. Pleasant, functional, but devoid of personality.

The same is true with restaurants, bars, and cafes. Even the best-designed amongst them (e.g. the WatchHouse cafes in London) seem sterile: there’s nothing there to hint to the owners’ or managers’ characters. Contrast that to Wiltons’ or Jeremy King’s restaurants in London, or the Kronenhalle in Zurich, where owners (present and past) have personally chosen the paintings that hang on the walls. These places feel cosy and welcoming and authentic because they reflect someone’s character.

So, if you want my advice (not that anyone has asked for it), stop worrying too much about whether your choices reflect ‘good’ taste, and start thinking more about whether and why you actually like them (your choices, that is). For instance: many friends have told me that they’d like it if people dressed up more often. I always respond by asking why they don’t dress up more — what’s preventing them from wearing a suit to the office, or suggesting a dress code when having friends over for dinner? My friends then say ‘no-one else does it’ or ‘it’d be too stuffy to ask my friends to dress up when I invite them’. But so what? If you like dressing up, then dress up (and for the record, I’ve often asked people to dress up for parties, and it’s always gone down well). Same thing with films, music, series, video games, books, hobbies… stop worrying about whether your source of entertainment is high-brow or refined or cool. Your first question should be ‘do I really like this, or am I just pretending to like it’.

(This is why I find this FT piece on connoisseur collectors being a dying breed so sad: it suggests people care more about signalling status than finding things they enjoy themselves. A true aesthete enjoys the hunt and the learning, not just the acquisition.)

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