> I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at

> I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. This doesn’t hold up for me. We’re comparing PGs painting ability to two renaissance artists who painted in fairly similar ways. When you go and try to paint in a style, I can 100% agree that you can execute better or worse than another person. I don’t doubt that PGs paintings are not as good as famous renaissance paintings. I don’t think that’s what people mean when they talk about good taste. PG uses a narrow definition of taste, so let’s make sure we’re using that: > There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense… I don’t know that comparing art to Renaissance greats is actually engaging in aesthetic judgements. Maybe others look at each piece of art as if it has no cultural significance, and see each thing as if divorced from all of history. I cannot, despite my best efforts, imagine viewing each piece of art like that. I can certainly tell when a style of art I am familiar with is executed well. That is what I think PG is talking about here. For me, taste is when I decide whether I like a style of art. Style, here, can be as broad as an era, or extremely specific. My ‘taste’ is how much I enjoy a particular category, be it an era or a very specific thing. I really am not a fan of Renaissance paintings despite how many times I’ve walked through art galleries. I _can_ pretty clearly point out which are more or less successful. But almost none are too my taste. And that’s the difference, to me. The taste is orthogonal to execution. But this argument for there being good taste relies on the belief that people who say there’s no such thing as good taste also meaning that one cannot execute well. The differences between execution and taste become murkier for nascent art forms, where it’s possible to get into a position where it’s hard to tell if you have a taste for the style execution is not yet there. But that’s not really the point here.