6 ms·

Go to guy on this is Bourdieu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu#Theory_of_capital_and_class_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourd

Go to guy on this is Bourdieu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu#Theory_of_capital_and_class_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu#Theory_of_capi... PG may say that his father pushed him in a different direction. But I suspect - like me - PG grew up with the cultural direction of the BBC and its mission to "inform, educate, and entertain." So if you were a bright curious kid your parents wouldn't necessarily be the ultimate authorities on culture and taste. There were other authorities. If you were interested. I was genuinely shocked a few years ago when I realised how much my cultural interests had been shaped by that kind of social programming. I still enjoy art and music, but I'm little more circumspect about them now. The point: cultural taste is an aspirational social marker. It correlates loosely with some observable features in various kinds of art. But the real goal of "having taste" is to convince yourself and others you're a certain class of person, and also to reassure yourself and others you're not a certain other class of person.

fsloth 5y ago
So if you disagree with "taste-as-a-measure-of-quality-within-a-genre" do you disagree with the concept works of art can be better than other works of art (within a genre) or do you just disagree this non-numerical measure is called 'taste'? What would you call it instead?
- pyrale 5y ago
  I believe Bourdieu's point is that this ability to rank art within a genre is an attribute of belonging to a cultural group. As such, this cultural knowledge you have will be valued depending on the social importance of that group. Some groups will speak highly of a genre while other will despise it. Cultural knowledge will be a more useful capital if it is associated with a more prominent group. Within the group, the extent of your knowledge will help you distinguish from others. The point is that the way this taste (but also the artist's skill) is acquired is highly correlated with social belonging: your appreciation of a specific piece of work is informed by your past experience within your social environment. Even though you may produce an autonomous opinion on a specific piece of art, this opinion is formed using knowledge that is socially acquired. To expand a bit with examples: * if the genre you're into pays a lot attention to technical skill, you will probably need, and focus on distinguishing the technicality of the art piece. People unable to tell the difference will be seen as uneducated. * if it focuses more on the relevance of the art piece in its time context, what others would consider a crude piece will be seen as a clever way to remind the spectator of the zeitgeist and how subtly references are made to other work. People who think too much about the technical details will be seen as unrefined.
  - fsloth 5y ago
    Please, we can discuss art theory without political dimension. Hackers like to build and respect people who build cool things without getting political. Similarly classical art can be appreciated from the point of view of pure craftmanship. Is Doom more impressive piece of software than a Javascript "Hello world"? I claim it is. Similar claims can be applied to specific art genres without political dimension if you know the genre. I find Bourdeaus analysis to be - frankly - a form of navel gazing that has nothing of merit to give to politics, or art. Yes, everything people do have a political dimension. But one should be able to discuss art theory without confusing it with class warfare. While everything can and will be weaponized as an instrument of oppression, I don't see the added value of starting from the point of view. It's like a silly action movie trope, only applied to a political context. I.e. in a fancy restaurant - that's a nice steak knife you have there - it would work really well in a combat setting. Really?
    - etage3 5y ago
      >Please, we can discuss art theory without political dimension. Bourdieu discusses this very point in the Preface of The Rules of Art. "(...) countless are those who forbid sociology any profaning contact with the work of art. (...) I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why they are so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational, understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the 'work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence." A scientific understanding of art doesn't or negate or lower it. On the contrary : "(...) scientific analysis, when it is able to uncover what makes the work of art necessary, that is to say, its informing formula, its generative principle, its raison d'être, also furnishes artistic experience, and the pleasure which accompanies it with its best justification, its richest nourishment. Through it, sensible love of the work can fulfill itself in a sort of amor intellectualis rei the assimilation of the object to the subject and the immersion of the subject in the object, the active surrender to the singular necessity of the literary object (which, more often than not, is itself the product of a similar submission)." It's a short but dense 5 page read.
andi999 5y ago
Next thing you want to tell me is that wine doesn't really taste good? (the high quality wine of course)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sombremesa 5y ago
  Who determines that the wine is high quality? You’ve already established taste there, regardless of the wine’s taste.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    At least ones that give you headaches could arguably be placed in the lower quality bucket? Or the ones that taste like vinnegar? But once the low hanging fruit is done with it becomes a subjective experience and the price becomes the differentiator.
    - i_love_limes 5y ago
      I think by your definition, the best wine is grape juice, which is never vinegary and never gives you a headache.
      - tartoran 5y ago
        We were talking about wines, weren’t we? I don’t have a definition pinned down but do drink wine from time to time and I subjectively prefer some to others. What Im quite sure of is that nobody regards wines as high quality if they’re headache inducing or taste like vinnegar.
        simiones 5y ago
        There are many people for whom the most important characteristics of wine (and other alcoholic beverages) is "how cheap is it and how likely am I to get drunk from it before I get sick?" Also, some of the most appreciated wines by wine connoisseurs are nigh-undrinkable to the uninitiated, and this tends to happen with most foods. Just sticking with wines, some greatly appreciate wines high in tannin, while I personally feel like I'm chewing cotton when drinking one of those wines: give me a decent vinnegar over those any day of the week. You'll find similar acquired tastes in every food culture (stinky cheeses, fermented teas, ultra-hot peppers, acidic coffees, etc.). The same actually happens with most art: most abstract art is completely meaningless to the vast majority of people - whether they're looking at a Pollock or generic art at Ikea, they wouldn't prefer either. Minimal music, such as Steve Reich's Four Organs, are profoundly distasteful to much of the population, while being adored by some in the music scene. Art films are routinely incomprehensible to general audiences, while winning critical acclaim.
watwut 5y ago
> I was genuinely shocked a few years ago when I realised how much my cultural interests had been shaped by that kind of social programming. I still enjoy art and music, but I'm little more circumspect about them now. I had similar realization, but it did not made me more circumspect about art, music etc. It made me to be more willing to try stuff I assumed I wont like. More likely to look at the context at which something odd to me appeared and then more likely to understand/like it. > cultural taste is an aspirational social marker. I agree. It is also identity. It also explains why aesthetic culture wars appears. It is not so much about what it is or liking or disliking it. It is about who is assumed to like the thing and performative acceptance/rejection.
- jrumbut 5y ago
  Like you, I had a similar realization but I think it was a pretty good idea. It was some instructions for a nice way to enjoy life. Fine art, classical music and dance, etc. are all relatively wholesome things that you can absorb as much interest as you can muster.
ambrozk 5y ago
What you say is true, but there's something missing, which is that a working-class person who was extremely fashionable by the standards of their own class would, if transplanted into the world of penthousees in SOHO, figure out quite quickly how to tastefully decorate their house, how to dress to impress, and so on. And the same would be true of the penhouse asthete if transplanted into a working-class milieu. Some people are just better than other people at figuring out aesethic systems.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
> But the real goal of "having taste" is to convince yourself and others you're a certain class of person, and also to reassure yourself and others you're not a certain other class of person. Of course someone with no taste would say this. :) I'm kidding. Your statement reads like a punitive judgement, constructed to paint anyone who pursues enlightenment as entirely performative for external validation. Am I wrong? What makes you so certain it is correct? In your world does no one pursue enlightenment for its own ends?
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
> cultural taste is an aspirational social marker. "Aspirational" means "you don't have it". So all cultural taste is people trying to fake being in a better class than they are? Baloney. There are plenty of people who like things because they like those things, not because they think liking those things will make them look more upper class. "Aspirational" taste is exactly what you get when people don't have taste, but want to look like they do. They copy someone else's taste (or a group average). And because they're aspirational, they try really hard to pretend that they do in fact have taste. But they just wind up cluttering up the discussion, because they don't actually know anything. But there are people who actually do know some things about taste, and what is worthwhile, and value. They exist. They just get lost in the noise of a bunch of people who are trying to look like they know, even though they don't...
Aidevah 5y ago
It may well be that taste is initially acquired through feigning, but it can develop into something more personal down the line. Charles Rosen mentioned it at the end of his Critical Entertainments: "It is not at all natural to want to listen to classical music. Learning to appreciate it is like Pascal's wager: you pretend to be religious, and suddenly you have faith. You pretend to love Beethoven-or Stravinsky-because you think that will make you appear educated and cultured and intelligent, because that kind of music is prestigious in professional circles, and suddenly you really love it, you have become a fanatic, you go to concerts and buy records and experience true ecstasy when you hear a good performance (or even when you hear a mediocre one if you have little judgment)."
- RogerL 5y ago
  None of what Rosen writes there resonates with me. This almost reads like the insufferable reddit comments where people claim you don't like Moby Dick or Shakespeare, that you are just parroting opinions you were told to hold in school. I read and listened widely, often discursively, and ended up liking stuff that none of my peers even knew about for the most part. And no, I wasn't trying to be an iconoclast, the endless teasing was oppressive, but what can you do, you like what you like. Like I started with Bach because my mom showed me how to read music, then let me loose on the piano. I had a songbook, and it had Bach's (actually Petzold's) Minuet in G major&minor. That grabbed me in a way nothing else in the book did (kid's book, so stuff like silent night, camptown races, etc). No one 'told' me to like it, or even play it, and there was certainly no social pressure to do so, quite the opposite. It was entirely internal, and contrary to everything happening around me (pop, C&W, think rural uneducated population with a disdain for learning and the arts). I'm not arguing that people can't develop appreciation via faking, but I find it a rather dismissive and cynical way to look at it in general. I would say it takes a bit of openness if you are approaching something that you didn't consume naturally in social situations, but not too much, except perhaps for very abstract things, or complex things far removed from your experience (Chinese opera for an American, for example, which fascinates yet eludes me at some level).
  - nextaccountic 5y ago

fsloth 5y ago

So if you disagree with "taste-as-a-measure-of-quality-within-a-genre" do you disagree with the concept works of art can be better than other works of art (within a genre) or do you just disagree this non-numerical measure is called 'taste'? What would you call it instead?

pyrale 5y ago
I believe Bourdieu's point is that this ability to rank art within a genre is an attribute of belonging to a cultural group. As such, this cultural knowledge you have will be valued depending on the social importance of that group. Some groups will speak highly of a genre while other will despise it. Cultural knowledge will be a more useful capital if it is associated with a more prominent group. Within the group, the extent of your knowledge will help you distinguish from others. The point is that the way this taste (but also the artist's skill) is acquired is highly correlated with social belonging: your appreciation of a specific piece of work is informed by your past experience within your social environment. Even though you may produce an autonomous opinion on a specific piece of art, this opinion is formed using knowledge that is socially acquired. To expand a bit with examples: * if the genre you're into pays a lot attention to technical skill, you will probably need, and focus on distinguishing the technicality of the art piece. People unable to tell the difference will be seen as uneducated. * if it focuses more on the relevance of the art piece in its time context, what others would consider a crude piece will be seen as a clever way to remind the spectator of the zeitgeist and how subtly references are made to other work. People who think too much about the technical details will be seen as unrefined.
- fsloth 5y ago
  Please, we can discuss art theory without political dimension. Hackers like to build and respect people who build cool things without getting political. Similarly classical art can be appreciated from the point of view of pure craftmanship. Is Doom more impressive piece of software than a Javascript "Hello world"? I claim it is. Similar claims can be applied to specific art genres without political dimension if you know the genre. I find Bourdeaus analysis to be - frankly - a form of navel gazing that has nothing of merit to give to politics, or art. Yes, everything people do have a political dimension. But one should be able to discuss art theory without confusing it with class warfare. While everything can and will be weaponized as an instrument of oppression, I don't see the added value of starting from the point of view. It's like a silly action movie trope, only applied to a political context. I.e. in a fancy restaurant - that's a nice steak knife you have there - it would work really well in a combat setting. Really?
  - etage3 5y ago
    >Please, we can discuss art theory without political dimension. Bourdieu discusses this very point in the Preface of The Rules of Art. "(...) countless are those who forbid sociology any profaning contact with the work of art. (...) I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why they are so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational, understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the 'work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence." A scientific understanding of art doesn't or negate or lower it. On the contrary : "(...) scientific analysis, when it is able to uncover what makes the work of art necessary, that is to say, its informing formula, its generative principle, its raison d'être, also furnishes artistic experience, and the pleasure which accompanies it with its best justification, its richest nourishment. Through it, sensible love of the work can fulfill itself in a sort of amor intellectualis rei the assimilation of the object to the subject and the immersion of the subject in the object, the active surrender to the singular necessity of the literary object (which, more often than not, is itself the product of a similar submission)." It's a short but dense 5 page read.

andi999 5y ago

Next thing you want to tell me is that wine doesn't really taste good? (the high quality wine of course)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sombremesa 5y ago
Who determines that the wine is high quality? You’ve already established taste there, regardless of the wine’s taste.
- tartoran 5y ago
  At least ones that give you headaches could arguably be placed in the lower quality bucket? Or the ones that taste like vinnegar? But once the low hanging fruit is done with it becomes a subjective experience and the price becomes the differentiator.
  - i_love_limes 5y ago
    I think by your definition, the best wine is grape juice, which is never vinegary and never gives you a headache.
    - tartoran 5y ago
      We were talking about wines, weren’t we? I don’t have a definition pinned down but do drink wine from time to time and I subjectively prefer some to others. What Im quite sure of is that nobody regards wines as high quality if they’re headache inducing or taste like vinnegar.
      - simiones 5y ago
        There are many people for whom the most important characteristics of wine (and other alcoholic beverages) is "how cheap is it and how likely am I to get drunk from it before I get sick?" Also, some of the most appreciated wines by wine connoisseurs are nigh-undrinkable to the uninitiated, and this tends to happen with most foods. Just sticking with wines, some greatly appreciate wines high in tannin, while I personally feel like I'm chewing cotton when drinking one of those wines: give me a decent vinnegar over those any day of the week. You'll find similar acquired tastes in every food culture (stinky cheeses, fermented teas, ultra-hot peppers, acidic coffees, etc.). The same actually happens with most art: most abstract art is completely meaningless to the vast majority of people - whether they're looking at a Pollock or generic art at Ikea, they wouldn't prefer either. Minimal music, such as Steve Reich's Four Organs, are profoundly distasteful to much of the population, while being adored by some in the music scene. Art films are routinely incomprehensible to general audiences, while winning critical acclaim.

watwut 5y ago

> I was genuinely shocked a few years ago when I realised how much my cultural interests had been shaped by that kind of social programming. I still enjoy art and music, but I'm little more circumspect about them now. I had similar realization, but it did not made me more circumspect about art, music etc. It made me to be more willing to try stuff I assumed I wont like. More likely to look at the context at which something odd to me appeared and then more likely to understand/like it. > cultural taste is an aspirational social marker. I agree. It is also identity. It also explains why aesthetic culture wars appears. It is not so much about what it is or liking or disliking it. It is about who is assumed to like the thing and performative acceptance/rejection.

jrumbut 5y ago
Like you, I had a similar realization but I think it was a pretty good idea. It was some instructions for a nice way to enjoy life. Fine art, classical music and dance, etc. are all relatively wholesome things that you can absorb as much interest as you can muster.

ambrozk 5y ago

What you say is true, but there's something missing, which is that a working-class person who was extremely fashionable by the standards of their own class would, if transplanted into the world of penthousees in SOHO, figure out quite quickly how to tastefully decorate their house, how to dress to impress, and so on. And the same would be true of the penhouse asthete if transplanted into a working-class milieu. Some people are just better than other people at figuring out aesethic systems.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

> But the real goal of "having taste" is to convince yourself and others you're a certain class of person, and also to reassure yourself and others you're not a certain other class of person. Of course someone with no taste would say this. :) I'm kidding. Your statement reads like a punitive judgement, constructed to paint anyone who pursues enlightenment as entirely performative for external validation. Am I wrong? What makes you so certain it is correct? In your world does no one pursue enlightenment for its own ends?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

> cultural taste is an aspirational social marker. "Aspirational" means "you don't have it". So all cultural taste is people trying to fake being in a better class than they are? Baloney. There are plenty of people who like things because they like those things, not because they think liking those things will make them look more upper class. "Aspirational" taste is exactly what you get when people don't have taste, but want to look like they do. They copy someone else's taste (or a group average). And because they're aspirational, they try really hard to pretend that they do in fact have taste. But they just wind up cluttering up the discussion, because they don't actually know anything. But there are people who actually do know some things about taste, and what is worthwhile, and value. They exist. They just get lost in the noise of a bunch of people who are trying to look like they know, even though they don't...

Aidevah 5y ago

It may well be that taste is initially acquired through feigning, but it can develop into something more personal down the line. Charles Rosen mentioned it at the end of his Critical Entertainments: "It is not at all natural to want to listen to classical music. Learning to appreciate it is like Pascal's wager: you pretend to be religious, and suddenly you have faith. You pretend to love Beethoven-or Stravinsky-because you think that will make you appear educated and cultured and intelligent, because that kind of music is prestigious in professional circles, and suddenly you really love it, you have become a fanatic, you go to concerts and buy records and experience true ecstasy when you hear a good performance (or even when you hear a mediocre one if you have little judgment)."

RogerL 5y ago
None of what Rosen writes there resonates with me. This almost reads like the insufferable reddit comments where people claim you don't like Moby Dick or Shakespeare, that you are just parroting opinions you were told to hold in school. I read and listened widely, often discursively, and ended up liking stuff that none of my peers even knew about for the most part. And no, I wasn't trying to be an iconoclast, the endless teasing was oppressive, but what can you do, you like what you like. Like I started with Bach because my mom showed me how to read music, then let me loose on the piano. I had a songbook, and it had Bach's (actually Petzold's) Minuet in G major&minor. That grabbed me in a way nothing else in the book did (kid's book, so stuff like silent night, camptown races, etc). No one 'told' me to like it, or even play it, and there was certainly no social pressure to do so, quite the opposite. It was entirely internal, and contrary to everything happening around me (pop, C&W, think rural uneducated population with a disdain for learning and the arts). I'm not arguing that people can't develop appreciation via faking, but I find it a rather dismissive and cynical way to look at it in general. I would say it takes a bit of openness if you are approaching something that you didn't consume naturally in social situations, but not too much, except perhaps for very abstract things, or complex things far removed from your experience (Chinese opera for an American, for example, which fascinates yet eludes me at some level).
- nextaccountic 5y ago