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Is there such a thing as good taste?

paulgraham.com

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Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#111

Post by orangepurple »

dagw wrote: post #54
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that definition the worst movies should be more novel. There are definitely movies that exist in which the reaction of everyone is that how can anyone produce movie this bad. If you think there is no such thing as universally bad, search for worst song in youtube. Also theoretically a random static is the most novel thing that could be present.

random static is the most novel thing that could be present. Unstructured noise music was novel for while, but by now that has also been done.

Not true. I'm still listening to Merzbow.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#112

Post by andrewzah »

etrautmann wrote: post #85
beaconstudios wrote: post #74

nice to see the comment section is criticising PG for an extremely amateur take on sociology, aesthetics and art. I don't know why, but there's a fairly strong association between being in STEM and thinking that the humanities are easy and obvious and people study them just because they don't understand STEM. Thus we get blog posts like this, about how a reductio ad absurdum thought experiment is enough to resolve a…

This is overly dismissive - why not attack the ideas directly? I find these ideas overly reductive since the essay presupposes that art should be judged in a vacuum outside of it's societal context, as if that's somehow more objective. The emotional impact of the art (PG's stated objective function to maximize) cannot be pulled out of its context. Said differently, the emotional impact of a piece of art often leans h…

I think the actual issue is anything posted by PG on HN gets upvoted to the front page, regardless if the content is actually good.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#113

Post by watwut »

lr4444lr wrote: post #68
dagw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

might validly prefer some abstract dot on a white canvas No one prefers a random dot on a random piece of canvas. They prefer a very particular dot on a very particular canvas made by a very particular person at a very particular point in history. Remove any one one those and it loses all meaning and value. And even the most ardent fan of that work would never argue that that artist was a greater painter or even arti…

But it doesn't hold up the other way when you remove one piece. I'd wager most people would select a Michaelangelo replica even if they were directly told it was a replica than the dot on the canvas if told it was a replica of whatever artist made it.

Select for what? Art students nowdays can create Michealengelo like art. Not just reproduction, but own pieces with same style. They are not admired nor anything like that.

Also, I would not picked any of those for living room. Might pick dot for background screen. And this choice have nothing to do with actual value of either.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#114

Post by nickelpro »

rp1 wrote: post #107
jccalhoun wrote: post #84

As others have mentioned, Bourdieu would like a word with him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_(book) Graham seems to be conflating skill with taste. The artists he mentions are skilled at art and he states that he is not. Distinguishing between skilled and unskilled work may be "good taste" but what is considered good art is more than just skill.

What other considerations are there other than skill? Isn’t everything a skill? Graham lists a few other extraneous concerns that people judge art by. He asserts these are unrelated to the art itself, like which museum the art is hanging in. I agree with Graham’s premise. My theory is that people don’t believe good taste exists because most people have bad taste and that’s too big of a pill to swallow. Would you rath…

The conflation of skill with taste demonstrates exactly why Graham is wrong. There's many widely recognized works of art, by critics of similarly recognized taste, that are far less skillful than what a competent art student can put out today and yet held in higher acclaim.

Post-modernism, Dada, and surrealism drove the stake through this point, The Treachery of Images or Fountain (Duchamp) aren't extremely skillful, but they're world class art from a certain point of view.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#116

Post by beaconstudios »

rp1 wrote: post #107
jccalhoun wrote: post #84

As others have mentioned, Bourdieu would like a word with him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_(book) Graham seems to be conflating skill with taste. The artists he mentions are skilled at art and he states that he is not. Distinguishing between skilled and unskilled work may be "good taste" but what is considered good art is more than just skill.

What other considerations are there other than skill? Isn’t everything a skill? Graham lists a few other extraneous concerns that people judge art by. He asserts these are unrelated to the art itself, like which museum the art is hanging in. I agree with Graham’s premise. My theory is that people don’t believe good taste exists because most people have bad taste and that’s too big of a pill to swallow. Would you rath…

Skill is used to produce, but the product of skill isn't necessarily good if it doesn't fulfil a useful purpose. Good taste beyond pure aesthetic appreciation is related to interpretation/analysis, understanding what the artist accomplished and what can be read from the work. Good art says something new. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images is a good example - it has very little aesthetic value but a lot of meaning, especially for the era is was made in. Compare that to e.g. Vermeer (one of my favourite artists), whose work is full of skill and aesthetic beauty but doesn't have anything to say because it's a figurative work.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#117

Post by arketyp »

>There is definitely not a total order either of works or of people's ability to judge them, but there is equally definitely a partial order of both. So while it's not possible to have perfect taste, it is possible to have good taste.

The tl;dr at the very end. If the partial order is sufficiently unlike a total order then his father was basically correct because good taste tells you very little.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#118

Post by slibhb »

I had the opposite conversation with my father. I claimed "there's no accounting for taste" and my father said "that's not true, you can claim Shakespeare isn't good but you're wrong".

For judgements of taste, no one is better than Kant. I recommend this essay: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-judgment/

In Kantian aesthetics, judgements of taste are subjective (because they differ between people) but are normative in that they claim universal validity (when we judge art to be good, we will all others to agree). Kant calls this "subjective universality". This explains why people disagree about art and why we can argue about it. It bothers us when people disagree with our judgements of taste. When we claim it doesn't bother us ("there's no accounting for taste"), we're either lying or not making judgements of taste.

Compare this to judgements about flavor (which Kant calls judgments of the agreeable). We don't argue about whether vanilla is better than chocolate or, if we do, we consider the argument trivial and subjective with no right answer. This is not the case when we argue about art.

The heart of the matter is whether beauty is objective or if it is merely relative to something. PG's essay argues that it is relative to being human, Kant similarly argues that it is relative to being a rational being (a somewhat broader category). This contrasts with the common argument that beauty is relative to some socio-cultural standard.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#119

Post by dwmbt »

beaconstudios wrote: post #109
motohagiography wrote: post #103

Wrote professionally about taste in a previous life. It is related more closely than we expect to techne or competence from physical knowledge. When we think of poor taste, we tend to think of symbols that are separated from their function and meaning, where instead of representing that, "I do this thing," something gaudy says, "I have this thing!" That's what crassness is, and it comes down to our relative apprehens…

Thanks for your contribution - this is similar to the impression I get about taste, not having studied aesthetics but having a passing familiarity with postmodern philosophy. Do you have any book or philosopher suggestions I could check out? I'm generally interested in epistemology and this sounds like a good angle for further reading.

i'm not a philosophy nut or anything, but consider looking into empiricism versus rationalism and looking at Paul's writing, or conversations about the objectivity/subjectivity of aesthetics through that lens. Paul lives up to his rational roots here.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#120

Post by rp1 »

nickelpro wrote: post #114
rp1 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other considerations are there other than skill? Isn’t everything a skill? Graham lists a few other extraneous concerns that people judge art by. He asserts these are unrelated to the art itself, like which museum the art is hanging in. I agree with Graham’s premise. My theory is that people don’t believe good taste exists because most people have bad taste and that’s too big of a pill to swallow. Would you rath…

The conflation of skill with taste demonstrates exactly why Graham is wrong. There's many widely recognized works of art, by critics of similarly recognized taste, that are far less skillful than what a competent art student can put out today and yet held in higher acclaim. Post-modernism, Dada, and surrealism drove the stake through this point, The Treachery of Images or Fountain (Duchamp) aren't extremely skillful,…

I think you’re taking too narrow a definition of skill. True, drawing a straight line is a skill, but the vision to draw a particular line in an innovative way is also a skill.
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