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These matters of taste are subjective, and the more someone believes in the righteousness of a given aesthetic opinion, the less you should listen to them regar

These matters of taste are subjective, and the more someone believes in the righteousness of a given aesthetic opinion, the less you should listen to them regarding matters of culture. Controversy is difficult to quantify. But millions of people cheerfully photograph themselves together with the pyramid each year, which leads me to believe that those who smile seeing this building far outnumber those who scoff and yearn for the "striking beauty" of the brutal, decadent monarchy that built the original Louvre palaces in order to project dominance. We live after the end of aesthetic teleology. There is no more objectively defensible aesthetic criteria. There is only a morass of yawning subjectivity, and hopefully a critical perspective regarding the ways and reasons that power utilizes the sort of rhetoric you perform here.

tlb 7y ago
> There is no more objectively defensible aesthetic criteria Oh, come now. There are lots of designs everyone would agree are objectively ugly. But they rarely get built these days. So if it seems like everything is subjective, it's because everything we see has passed the not-objectively-ugly filter.
- ForrestN 7y ago
  There are entire schools of designers devoted to producing work that contradicts popular taste, and cultural consensus around design changes super fast. There is also a huge gap between the taste of elite practitioners and the general public. Comme des Garçons is one of the most ubiquitously respected fashion houses, and the legendary designer who heads it had a show at The Met recently. Here is a look from their couture runway this year: https://images.app.goo.gl/iWJXmpQDg5tQZSUz8 https://images.app.goo.gl/iWJXmpQDg5tQZSUz8 You could poll 20 HN readers and ask “is this objectively ugly?” And you might find total consensus. But almost everyone who devotes their life to the field of fashion design would at least grant that this look is typical of the style that made Comme so important, and would certainly deny any kind of “objective” characterization of it as ugly. Many, many brilliant, highly educated people would say it is beautiful. There is no fact of the matter. People liking IM Pei’s pyramid doesn’t prove it’s beautiful any more than people hating certain critically respected brutalist buildings proves they’re ugly. There are no intrinsically ugly buildings.
mc32 7y ago
With just about anything, with time you get used to it: be it eyesore, noise pollution, bad relationship. You let it be, after a while. With regards to photos, it’s neither here nor there. People will take photos of anything. If it were a big pile of cow dung in the middle there, people would still photograph it. I’m indifferent to it, personally. De mortis nil nisi bonum.

tlb 7y ago

> There is no more objectively defensible aesthetic criteria Oh, come now. There are lots of designs everyone would agree are objectively ugly. But they rarely get built these days. So if it seems like everything is subjective, it's because everything we see has passed the not-objectively-ugly filter.

ForrestN 7y ago
There are entire schools of designers devoted to producing work that contradicts popular taste, and cultural consensus around design changes super fast. There is also a huge gap between the taste of elite practitioners and the general public. Comme des Garçons is one of the most ubiquitously respected fashion houses, and the legendary designer who heads it had a show at The Met recently. Here is a look from their couture runway this year: https://images.app.goo.gl/iWJXmpQDg5tQZSUz8 https://images.app.goo.gl/iWJXmpQDg5tQZSUz8 You could poll 20 HN readers and ask “is this objectively ugly?” And you might find total consensus. But almost everyone who devotes their life to the field of fashion design would at least grant that this look is typical of the style that made Comme so important, and would certainly deny any kind of “objective” characterization of it as ugly. Many, many brilliant, highly educated people would say it is beautiful. There is no fact of the matter. People liking IM Pei’s pyramid doesn’t prove it’s beautiful any more than people hating certain critically respected brutalist buildings proves they’re ugly. There are no intrinsically ugly buildings.

mc32 7y ago

With just about anything, with time you get used to it: be it eyesore, noise pollution, bad relationship. You let it be, after a while. With regards to photos, it’s neither here nor there. People will take photos of anything. If it were a big pile of cow dung in the middle there, people would still photograph it. I’m indifferent to it, personally. De mortis nil nisi bonum.