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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?

#411

Post by deviantfero »

newbamboo wrote: post #365
cwmoore wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Summarizing my comments with the conclusion that "some art is better" and you, Paul, or anyone else can reliably judge which it is, does not come anywhere close to my meaning. I have to conclude that we are not in disagreement, because we are not even communicating.

Sorry if I didn’t grasp your point. I am trying to. Maybe a simple set of questions would help: You don’t feel some art is better or special? Or you don’t feel a person can discern between art that is better or worse, even in the most extreme cases? Or is it something else? If you yourself are an artist, or own art, then surely you find some works better than others? Museums make these decisions about what to own. Do…

> Maybe a simple set of questions would help: You don’t feel some art is better or special? Or you don’t feel a person can discern between art that is better or worse, even in the most extreme cases? Or is it something else?

Yes, but that is the point I think, subjectivity. You also feel that way for different reasons, and who's to judge which of us is objectively right?

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#412

Post by ahartmetz »

dools wrote: post #409

His reasoning is circular because artists create art to suit the tastes of their audience.

Partially, I guess? The celebrated ones tend to be the ones to suit a taste the audience didn't know they had - especially today when we've seen incredible virtuosos of just about anything, so "different" is the only thing people haven't seen before. But surely there are artists who are more or less successful with more conventional work.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#413

Post by hardwaregeek »

anm89 wrote: post #402
hardwaregeek wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nuances and an art to pop though. Take Ocean's Eleven. It's fundamentally a crowd pleaser movie with a star studded cast, a conventional genre and a happy ending. But it's executed perfectly. Soderbergh has a mastery of the form that shows even when he's making pop. You see this with The Beach Boys or The Beatles or even Ed Sheeran, where the music is superficially enjoyable but there's a depth to it nonethel…

I feel personally attacked that you are lumping Ed Sheeran in with the Beatles or Beach Boys.

I'm not a huge Ed Sheeran fan but I do think there's some interesting ideas in his songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpMNJbt3QDE

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#414

Post by teunispeters »

There's a level of "craft" to many things - quality of work that increases the more one practices at it. Not arbitrary "I taste food anyway" more like "I learn to identify the flavours and cooking techniques".

In visual presentation, there's also the human preferences - movement (eg Van Gogh and his inspirations including traditional Chinese and Japanese brush art and its attentions on wind and wave), symmetry (almost all cultures, and rebels against such as Picasso), detailed representation, and difficulty to craft.

But I know little of art, other than I like going to galleries from time to time. In code, there's cleanliness, efficiency, symmetry with documentation and effects and - the end result. All of these take craft, and - it can show. The more consistent and reliable, the better the craft, as well. Oh one can get into aesthetic tastes as well - how well a particular medium is for use to be effective, the different art and craft in all the sources and contexts. Not everyone will see the craft in the construction of paper, or the laying of a foundation, but those who know the craft - may. And it can matter to those who wish do to work they value, even if never seen by another.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#415

Post by handrous »

jacquesm wrote: post #388
handrous wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what crassness is, and it comes down to our relative apprehension of the real vs. the represented, where typically, something real is powerful independent of who is observing it, and the representation is not. > That difference between effect and affect is one of the sneakiest bits of the english language and perhaps even the culture's most cunningly set trap. Do not underestimate the value of good taste, it…

This nicely explains overpriced T shirts with the name of some designer on it. It's a T shirt! But it screams 'I could afford to pay too much for this T shirt'.

Social-signaling games explain lots of weird fashion shit. See also: recent-model-year obviously-expensive trucks; expensive rims and other mostly-cosmetic car mods; "legible" clothing generally. Lots of it's about externalizing "identity" to ensure the observer can easily tell "who you are"—lots more is simply about conspicuous consumption, literally showing you have money to burn (except that if you just burned it, that wouldn't leave you anything to show people that you'd burnt it—you have money to burn, but not enough to burn without making sure people know you did so, which is the domain of the actually-rich, for whom having tons of money is assumed such that overt attempts to demonstrate it just look desperate and raise questions)

It even happens within counter-culture groups or those who claim that fashion doesn't matter, over time—they develop clothing-related signals and in-group markers. Consider the tech bro in the $140 hoodie and $120 rock-climbing-oriented "tech pants" and $300 hipster throwback work-boots telling you very seriously that they immediately dismiss anyone who comes to an interview in a suit, as a poseur.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#416

Post by treatmesubj »

Such thing as 'good' taste (in art)? *Is there 'good' art? Are there 'good' artists?

Graham says: If no such thing as 'good' taste >>> no such thing as 'good' art >>> no such thing as being 'good' at making art You could still have popular art, but not 'good' art. In a vaccum, on the whole, people would generally say Davinci's art was better than a 4-year-old's *probably because it seems more impressive or skillful

*Art-skill is the effectiveness of conveying a concept to the observer or illiciting a desired response from the observer

---- someone basically commented: You can be extrememly skilled at making some obscure art that no one else could make, but almost no one likes, but if the target niche receives it well, you made good art.

You can make popular art with virtually no effort, that literally anyone else could've made.

somone responded: > and there are many productions which take virtually no effort which people love It only takes a quick trip to reddit to see this in action. In a thread where people were talking about the jails and the overall penal system, someone said "heh...penal" and it had several Golds and thousands of points. ----

someone basically commented: People who like Pop music are regarded as having horrible taste, yet Pop music is wildly popular.

*Are the people who make Pop music 'good' at making music? Yes, they effectively make music designed to be consumed by the masses

*Then, why do the people who like Pop music have bad taste? Well, you'd assume that if they're choosing to listen to widely consumable music of their own volition, rather than using their time appreciating more sophisticated music, that takes more knowledge to appreciate, they probably don't have good taste.

*Taste is the ability to recognize _power_ in art. If you can recognize power in art without it already being widely appreciated, but you expect it to down the line, and it does become popular down the line, you have good taste.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#417

Post by slibhb »

cgrealy wrote: post #364
slibhb wrote: post #118

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…

>my father said "that's not true, you can claim Shakespeare isn't good but you're wrong". Could not disagree more. Your father can claim Shakespeare is good, but that doesn't make him right. I think Shakespeare is good, but that's a subjective opinion and holds no more weight than someone who thinks Dan Brown is a better writer /shudder.

The essay I linked has a good response to what you wrote:

> It is true that some people sometimes express the view that no judgments of taste are really better than others. They say, “There is no right and wrong about matters of taste”. Others will express the same thought by saying that beauty is “relative” to individual judgment or preference, or that it is “socially relative”. Such relativism is part of the intellectual air in in certain parts of the humanities. In particular, many intellectuals have expressed dislike of the idea that judgments of taste really have any normative claim, as if that would be uncouth or oppressive. However, if we are describing our thought as it is, not how it ought to be, then there is no getting away from the fact that normativity is a necessary condition of judgments of taste or beauty.

If you actually believed what you wrote, you wouldn't have included a "/shudder" at the end. In fact, you believe that Shakespeare is better than Dan Brown to the point that disagreement makes you uncomfortable. That's a judgement of taste. How you ground that belief (if at all) is a separate question.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#418

Post by tomnipotent »

handrous wrote: post #415
jacquesm wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This nicely explains overpriced T shirts with the name of some designer on it. It's a T shirt! But it screams 'I could afford to pay too much for this T shirt'.

Social-signaling games explain lots of weird fashion shit. See also: recent-model-year obviously-expensive trucks; expensive rims and other mostly-cosmetic car mods; "legible" clothing generally. Lots of it's about externalizing "identity" to ensure the observer can easily tell "who you are"—lots more is simply about conspicuous consumption, literally showing you have money to burn (except that if you just burned it,…

> Social-signaling games explain lots of weird fashion shit

For example, not wearing white after labor day to tell apart nouveau riche from old family money circles.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#419

Post by aidenn0 »

guerrilla wrote: post #342
circlefavshape wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pop music ... it's all low effort shit What? You clearly know very little about how pop music is produced. If you think the stuff people like Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa (and their teams of writers and producers) put out is low-effort then you're just another clueless snob

For every two of those, there are thousands of counterexamples.

I'd like to invoke Sturgeon's law[1] here. Basically it's not useful to claim that the overwhelming majority of pop-music is "low-effort shit" because that's true of nearly all genres.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#420

Post by GoblinSlayer »

keiferski wrote: post #328
rhines wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I'm not sure this necessarily follows. Just because we may not be able to concretely define what makes art "good", does not mean we can not discuss why we like it. If one person enjoys a piece because they appreciate the technical mastery of the brushwork, another enjoys it for how accurately it mimics reality, and another finds it special for the feelings evoked by the composition, each of those people can arti…

It’s not that we can’t define it, but that we are not in the habit of doing so. Because it’s become culturally preferable to just be agreeable about others’ preferences. Since we aren’t in the habit of discussing the topic, our ability to formulate a firm position on it atrophies. Consequently we don’t actually have a good reason why we think X is better than Y and so we just revert to “everyone’s opinion is subjecti…

If there was a reason to argue about taste, then people would do it, but such reason is unheard of.
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