AGAINST GOOD TASTE

PART II

"all the good things"

by John Sanilac

My first thread against good taste was amusing, but also rather desultory and unclear, and many otherwise quick-witted readers were left puzzled at what I meant by praising bad taste in such an admittedly literate fashion.

Perhaps, after all, I was only a boor with a thesaurus?

And so now I shall attempt to explain what I meant, knowing that the lengthy nature of the true explanation will close many ears to my words, but gratified that I might be able to speak some thoughts that my dear readers have never yet heard.

To start, I will admit that there are two ways of understanding what "good taste" is. The first, legitimate one, has to do with the refinement that comes from experience, and also what I call mental resolution; the second is a form of status-signalling snobbery.

Unfortunately these two meanings of good taste are closely linked in actual practice.

"Mental resolution" is like having clear vision.

Just as someone with poor eyesight is unable to register details in the visible world around him, someone who is cranially challenged is unable to notice the details that make an aesthetic object more beautiful or more ugly.

Consequently, the man of diminutive mental faculties enjoys examples of beauty that, while pleasant in their general outlines, are underwhelming or even ugly on a finer level of detail that he is unable to register.

Those who can notice these details infer his stupidity.

Sheer stupidity isn't the only cause of low mental resolution in matters of beauty: those whose brains are lopsidedly trained toward a narrow range of expertise, and those who have devoted insufficient time to the contemplation of the beautiful tend to have a similar handicap.

Young people as well. Their minds are just starting to grapple with the perception of beauty, and so their initial preferences lack refinement. In childhood, even the most perceptive people are often drawn to music of surface prettiness but low quality.

And now we see how easily the first meaning of "good taste"--high mental resolution in matters of beauty, an admirable trait suggestive of above average cranial capacity--becomes connected in actual practice to the second, the dreadful snobbery signalling game.

As we all recognize that possessing detailed and precise perceptions in matters of beauty is a sign of quality, it becomes beneficial to ACT OUT that possession, something that we often do quite unconsciously in a social setting--and also as part of a genuine maturation process.

The quintessential example of "good taste" snobbery is a New York art critic claiming that some meaningless jumble of lines on a canvas is in fact the pinnacle of beauty and meaning. YOU can't see it--but that only proves that his perception has a higher resolution than yours!

Indeed, the best way to win the game of "good taste" one-upmanship is to praise something incomprehensibly far from a peasant's taste, even opposed to it; and better still, something meaningless--like a poem in a language no one understands.

If the critic who does this puts on a sufficiently impressive front, he gives the impression of being so much smarter than everyone else, on such a higher plane of aesthetic perception, that hoi polloi (like you) are incapable of grasping the beauties he praises.

This doesn't normally happen on an individual level. Art critics have a kind of herd intelligence that allows them to agree on which ugly and meaningless things to praise; and by offering a collective story, they succeed in creating a powerful illusion of perceptive superiority.

Critics are just an extreme example of a general trend.

In social settings where "good taste" is valued as a class indicator, many people play the game, taking the opinion of critics, or similar opinion-creators, as their pole star, and feigning aesthetic preferences they can't really feel.

The most socially capable actually DO manage to feel something. For their sense of status runs so deep that they begin to believe the opinions they feign are their own.

Aesthetic preferences that opinion leaders once conjured out of thin air become imprinted on their brains.

But there is a more positive reason that we engage in this feigning and grasping after cultivated taste.

As a child grows into a man, he mimics the mannerisms of adults, sometimes before he can fully understand them--and this helps him to become a genuine adult more quickly.

So a natural part of the development of a young aesthete is to turn against the simple, primary tastes of his childhood and explore instead the aesthetic objects and preferences that society presents to him as cultivated and mature.

At the peak of this turning motion, our developing aesthete may reject anything resembling the simple tastes of his childhood, and indulge in art that is ugly and unwelcoming, but rewards his growing brain with hidden complexities that would have been beyond his younger self.

Thus the natural developmental process of a cranially gifted youth brings him dangerously close to lying art critics--who become his next temptation.

Let us suppose, unlikely as it may be, that our young man is immune to status games; that he resists the temptation to jump headfirst into the jacuzzi of socially advantageous lies.

Has he yet arrived at the truth? Indeed he has not!

For at this impressive stage of development, his perceptions are still being determined by the REJECTION of his childhood intuitions.

This rejection is artificial: it was a method that helped him to grow beyond his original simplicity, NOT a genuine component of beauty.

So there is another, further stage of development he must pass through--which many people never DO pass through--to reclaim the enjoyment of the simple beauties that he knew in his early youth; and to reclaim the enjoyment of obvious, superficial beauty in general.

Socialites, superficial and status-obsessed from the beginning, never come close to passing through this stage; art critics know it would spell their doom and so do their utmost to bar the way.

And so if our young aesthete is to succeed, he must pay the toll of lower status!

In cultivated circles, the most common way of reclaiming enjoyment of both the simple, obvious beauties, and the subtle, refined beauties--all the good things--is to show one face to society, but put on another at home. That way, you take no hit to your high class reputation.

My ex-girlfriend house-sat for a professor at a famous university. Downstairs, his shelves were filled with respectable books: Proust, philosophers, academic publications. Upstairs, where guests never go: wall-to-wall pulp novels--romance, mystery, thriller, in great quantity.

To sum it up with an example inspired by Gregory the Great: if you want to look classy, pretend to like sushi.

A child says his favorite foods are pizza and ice cream; a socially ambitious young man says his favorite food is sushi; a mature, clear-sighted adult--says his favorite foods are pizza and ice cream!?

Well, certainly sushi is a good palate cleanser if you don't mind food poisoning. (Many of my readers will now write in to defend it--I choose this example to amuse.)

I can't even eat pizza--it makes me sick--but let's be honest, it tastes a lot better than sushi.

Now, a man of refined taste will turn up his nose at a cheap frozen pizza; true enough. And he will embarrass himself in gourmet circles if he admits pizza is his favorite food. But perhaps, if he is honest with himself, a really good pizza actually does taste pretty awesome...

Many of my dear readers have looked at the odalisques that I've posted and praised on this account and thought: is he joking--is he perhaps just a clever teenager?

Surely these women are too attractive in too obvious a way to be legitimate objects of cultivated praise.

But you see, it's really just the same story.

At the genuine summit of aesthetic cultivation--a summit hidden to status seekers by a thick layer of clouds--we can embrace enjoyment of both the obvious and the subtle, surface sexiness and refined detail:

"all the good things."

And with this story in mind I sometimes polemicize, as Harold Budd polemicized when he wrote music "for topless choir."

His purpose wasn't to have his music actually performed by a topless choir, but to be pretty to a point that offends the "cultivated." https://twitter.com/JohnSanilac/status/1252343186879442947

I had a good laugh when I posted this centerfold: I knew many would think "she's in bad taste, she's too obviously sexy, and sexy for reasons that are too obvious"--but be unable to justify their discomfort--for no detail in the photo lacks refinement! https://twitter.com/JohnSanilac/status/1241430874031140865

In conclusion, let me suggest that you intentionally, for a moment, embrace bad taste. Give yourself permission to enjoy the painting at the head of this thread. You can thereby complete your development, throw off the shackles of status, and enjoy at last

"all the good things."

You can read the original thread

AGAINST GOOD TASTE, PART I

here: https://twitter.com/JohnSanilac/status/1248459785592160256