4 ms·
The conflation of skill with taste demonstrates exactly why Graham is wrong. There's many widely recognized works of art, by critics of similarly recognized tas
by nickelpro 5y ago
The conflation of skill with taste demonstrates exactly why Graham is wrong. There's many widely recognized works of art, by critics of similarly recognized taste, that are far less skillful than what a competent art student can put out today and yet held in higher acclaim.
Post-modernism, Dada, and surrealism drove the stake through this point, The Treachery of Images or Fountain (Duchamp) aren't extremely skillful, but they're world class art from a certain point of view.
- rp1 5y agoI think you’re taking too narrow a definition of skill. True, drawing a straight line is a skill, but the vision to draw a particular line in an innovative way is also a skill.
- nickelpro 5y agoAnd what counts as visionary and what counts as nonsense is entirely subjective. We can judge how straight a line is objectively, but we can't judge "vision" objectively, and thus "taste" is inherently subjective. That Graham wrote an entire essay rubbing up against this point without once encountering any literature that explains this (seminally Bourdieu, but there are many others) is surprising.
- rp1 5y agoBut subjectiveness applies to everything. For instance, whether or not something is moral is subjective, and yet there is a collective notion of morality.
- havermeyer 5y agoThere's even a subreddit dedicated to awful taste but great execution :) https://old.reddit.com/r/ATBGE/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ATBGE/