14 June 2010

Taste is first and foremost the distaste of the tastes of others.

12 comments:

micro said...

It doesn't have to be.

micro said...

Wait a second! Distaste for taste? I read that wrong the first time.

Lorne Roberts said...

i like this quote.

what is taste, after all, other than the ability to discern the inferior?

because even in recognizing something as superior (taste-wise), you immediately and by necessity, exclude X-number of other things as being lesser or inferior.

i remember when i first started writing for the Free Press, and within the first couple of months i was met with so much hostility-- people telling me in person, by email, over the phone, or through other people, about my inability to discern taste.

one person said i was "no art historian" and therefore should never try to write about art history. someone else said i was "a waste of skin" (and no, i'm not joking...).

all because, through not much fault of my own, i had been declared by someone else as a professional arbiter of "taste".


the argument of the detractors was that i didn't have the education, the experience, or the "taste" to be writing about art.



and they were right.

i barely knew fuck all about art.


anyway, i like schubert and therefore i look with utter disdain upon those who listen to shania twain.

jc said...

yes, great quote. 'waste of skin', fuck is that mean. this conversation makes me think of food, if you're a finicky eater does that make you a conasewer?(totally the wrong spelling)

When I write for the Uniter I try really hard to taste everything, and give little info as to whether I like the taste or not....I can describe the flavour, but I don't want to be the guy who doesn't like green eggs and ham.

plishk said...

nicely said D.W.!

micro said...

I kind of thought it meant, if you want to have real taste, don't worry about what other people think/like, (have a mind of your own)...not... discerning inferior.

Who is DW? the quote is by this person?

Lorne Roberts said...

if you look up the quote and its context, you'll see that our man DW isn't advocating art reinforcement, and that he is in fact referring quite directly to "taste" as being a construct that almost inevitably (and by definition) places itself in judgment or derision of the tastes of others.

jc said...

Oh, I think DW is actually referring to a children's book character is finicky who doesn't like spinach.

word verif: duckeru

micro said...

Oh, well in that case I disagree. There is a taste to nature. Nature has taste. The universe likes pretty, patterned things, like golden ratio spirals, triangles, fractals and waves. It like motion and direction and interaction. I think it also likes spinach!

Taste having to be about derision is just cynical grumpy narrow mindedness. I think I have taste, but it is just what I like, not in opposition to anything. I don't like to eat bitter melon, but I don't think less of people who do. I still understand it's food, even if I don't care for it.

Lorne Roberts said...

thank you. you have proved his point quite nicely.

micro said...

I did?

micro said...

Geez, that really bothers me. I can't say I like something without detracting from somewhere else? Man that sucks, now even when I'm being positive about something: "I like your airplane drawing Timmy", I am automatically being negative?!

That seems ridiculous. I like Sally's train picture too, how does this all work?

What if I like all of it? Then maybe it's not called taste? I could live with that, but what do I call it? Acceptance? Indifference? I think something's getting jumbled in the language and this is not the whole story about how preferences work.

Richter says style is violence, Bobby McFarren says he ain't got no style.