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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   31385 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Contra Scott on Taste

Recently, Scott posted an exploration of various conceptions of artistic taste on ACX:

Recently we’ve gotten into discussions about artistic taste (see comments on AI Art Turing Test and From Bauhaus To Our House).

This is a bit mysterious. Many (most?) uneducated people like certain art which seems “obviously” pretty. But a small group of people who have studied the issue in depth say that in some deep sense, that art is actually bad (“kitsch”), and other art which normal people don’t appreciate is better. They can usually point to criteria which the “sophisticated” art follows and the “kitsch” art doesn’t, but to normal people these just seem like lists of pointless rules.

But most of the critics aren’t Platonists - they don’t believe that aesthetics are an objective good determined by God. So what does it mean to say that someone else is wrong?

We've discussed some of Scott's other recent posts on art here previously, but we've yet to discuss this one in particular.

Most of the possible conceptions of taste (taste as an arbitrary system of religious rituals, taste as fashion, taste as linguistic grammar) outlined in the post rely on the implicit assumption that the principle goal of "taste" is to sort artistic works into two buckets: those that pass the test, and those that don't. It is assumed that what distinguishes the man of good taste, if there is such a thing, is his ability to discern the genuine masterpieces from the kitschy frauds. My goal here is to challenge this assumption.

Scott dismisses a Platonist account of aesthetic quality due to concerns about the observed variance in aesthetic preferences across individuals. But I would go further and suggest that, independent of concerns about its coherence, strict Platonism is not even a desirable model for aesthetic quality; it is not something that I wish to be true. I'm not in the business of policing what works others are allowed to enjoy or appreciate, and I don't think that such business is proper to the faculty of taste. I'm reminded of the following passage, excerpted from a discussion about the feasibility of an account of reality that includes fundamentally, ontologically distinct levels of emergence:

We indeed claim that if the world were fundamentally disunified, then discovery of this would be tantamount to discovering that there is no metaphysical work to be done: objective inquiry would start and stop with the separate investigations of the mutually unconnected special sciences. By ‘fundamentally disunified’ we refer to the idea that there is no overarching understanding of the world to be had; the best account of reality we could establish would include regions or parts to which no generalizations applied. Pressed by Lipton (2001), Cartwright (2002) seems to endorse this. However, she admits that she does so (in preference to non-fundamental disunity) not because ‘the evidence is … compelling either way’ (2002, 273) but for the sake of aesthetic considerations which find expression in the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins. Like Hopkins, Cartwright is a lover of ‘all things counter, original, spare, strange’ (ibid). That is a striking motivation to be sure, but it is clearly not a naturalistic one. Similarly, although Dupré’s arguments are sometimes naturalistic, at least as often they are in service of domestication. He frequently defends specific disunity hypotheses on the grounds that they are politically or ethically preferable to unifying (‘imperialistic’) ones. (See especially Dupré 2001, and Ross 2005, chs. 1 and 9.

That is indeed the exact word I would use! It feels "imperious" to think that we could ever draw up a table of all the good and bad works of art, once and for all. I too am a lover of all things "counter, original, spare, and strange". Let a thousand flowers bloom, and see what grows.

In spite of all this, the concept of superior and inferior works remains indispensable. We must ultimately pass judgement on a work, by means of reference to specific properties of the work. But these judgements are always held in indefinite suspension; they are part of the patchwork of an ongoing emerging narrative that we author, and are not intended to be "the last word".

To Scott's list of models for taste in his original post, I would add "Taste Is Like A Method": a method of thoughtfully and critically engaging with a work. Or, more poetically, "Taste Is Like An Invitation": an invitation to feel a certain way, to perceive things in a certain way, to be a certain type of person.

To give a paradigmatic example of the exercise of the faculty of taste as I conceive of it, this passage from Barthes' Mythologies does nicely:

Current toys are made of a graceless material, the product of chemistry, not of nature. Many are now moulded from complicated mixtures; the plastic material of which they are made has an appearance at once gross and hygienic, it destroys all the pleasure, the sweetness, the humanity of touch. A sign which fills one with consternation is the gradual disappearance of wood, in spite of its being an ideal material because of its firmness and its softness, and the natural warmth of its touch. Wood removes, from all the forms which it supports, the wounding quality of angles which are too sharp, the chemical coldness of metal. When the child handles it and knocks it, it neither vibrates nor grates, it has a sound at once muffled and sharp. It is a familiar and poetic substance, which does not sever the child from close contact with the tree, the table, the floor. Wood does not wound or break down; it does not shatter, it wears out, it can last a long time, live with the child, alter little by little the relations between the object and the hand. If it dies, it is in dwindling, not in swelling out like those mechanical toys which disappear behind the hernia of a broken spring. Wood makes essential objects, objects for all time.

What makes this an act of tasteful discernment is not the particular judgement that was rendered; there is no "law of taste" that says that one must prefer wood to metal. Rather, the "taste" here consists in the process of perception and reflection itself; the ability to take an object that would normally be overlooked in the course of "sensible" work and draw qualities out of it that were previously unperceived.

You're allowed to like anything you want... if you can tell a good story about it (and I suppose we would need meta-taste in order to evaluate someone else's tasteful appreciations; and meta-meta-taste, and so on. This leads to either circularity or infinite regress, but so be it. There is no knowledge anyway without at least one of circularity, infinite regress, or the bald assertion of truth). If you like a Kinkade because it "looks pretty", then obviously you haven't put in much effort. There's no indication of an authentic aesthetic experience there; we are right to demand more of you. But equally, you have to tell a good story before you condemn something as well. The sophomoric art student who dismisses Kinkade because it's "plebeian kitsch" is just as unthinking and mired in unexamined prejudice as the philistines he criticizes. Taste, if it is anything, is a cultivated habit of mind; not a list of correct answers.

In light of my preferred conception of taste, most of Scott's discussion of the alternative conceptions is obviated. However, I wanted to additionally respond to a few points made near the end of the post:

Taste seems to constantly change. In 1930, all the sophisticated people said that Beaux-Arts architecture was very tasteful. In 1950, they’d laugh at you if you built Beaux-Arts; everyone with good taste was into International Style. This is very suspicious! Human universals don’t change that fast! Rules about what is vs. isn’t “jarring” don’t change that fast! Only fashion changes that fast!

Certainly taste does vary across time and place, although I think the degree to which it varies is at least somewhat exaggerated. People still like Mozart, and Shakespeare, and da Vinci, despite us being separated from them by hundreds of years.

When we see how the sausage gets made, it often involves politics or power struggles. For example, the principles of modern architecture were decided by socialists arguing about whose style seemed more “bourgeois”. Now capitalists who normally wouldn’t dream of caring what socialists thought call the winners of those fights “tasteful” and the losers “kitsch”, and claim to feel this viscerally in their bones.

There is truth to this, but it's not entirely a bad thing. Art is intimately bound up with politics, and that is as it should be. Art is a domain where we should be exploring messy human problems that don't have clear, universal answers.

The few scientific experiments we have - hoaxes, blind tests, etc - are not very kind to taste as a concept. Consider eg the Ern Malley hoax, my article about wine appreciation, and the AI Art Turing Test.

This is certainly correct. But once you accept a conception of taste that isn't predicated upon being able to distinguish "genuine" from "kitschy" works, then the relevance of these experiments is lessened.

I'm going to return a theory of Fashion I've forwarded before, which I formed about clothing but is generally applicable to almost anything.

What we normally label as aesthetics is actually two entirely different things. One half is Appearances, the other half is Associations. Appearances are the actual physical appearance of the garments on your body. This is the realm of geometry, color theory, trump l'oeil. "Skinny jeans make your legs appear longer because they have a streamlined silhouette." Appearances are what you look like. Associations are the opposite, who you look like. Associations are about how a garment codes socially, who else is wearing it. Skinny jeans make you look like a fag, or an emo kid, or a trendy guy in the city, or a lame-o millenial dad, or nowadays in some quarters a conservative. Associations vary, depending on the viewer.

The trouble is that most people don't make those distinctions in fashion, they mix them together. Fashion writers put them all together at once. Generally where they talk about the associations, they treat them as universal results of the appearances. Skinny jeans will ALWAYS be classic and masculine, because of the way they drape on the body. Or vice versa, skinny jeans will ALWAYS be faggy and effeminate.

A lot of things make more sense when you frame them in this way. Taste for art is better when framed this way. Taste for architecture is better when framed this way. Taste for ideas is mostly better when framed this way.

Part of distaste for McMansions is about their architecture, but much of it is based in what kind of person lives there. Part of people liking art is about the actual art, and part of it is liking the kind of art that the person you want to be would like.

This extends into taste for ideas, taste for political positions. I saw so many Pro-Russian takes throughout the Ukrainian war in which it was clear that they started with an aesthetic of being a hard nosed realist, and tried to imagine what the hard nosed realist would say, and then reasoned from there. And the result often had little to do with reality.

Yes I agree with this, I normally think of it as authentic and cerebral preferences. For example, I like oatmeal, because it is simple, and I like the aesthetics of simple living and simple things. I also like steak, because when I bite into a good piece of steak the fatty juices that wash over my tongue make my brain explode.

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