> This bourgeoisie -- the middle class that is neither upper nor lower, neither so aristocratic as to take art for granted nor so poor it has no money to spend

> This bourgeoisie -- the middle class that is neither upper nor lower, neither so aristocratic as to take art for granted nor so poor it has no money to spend in its pursuit -- is now the group that fills museums, buys books and goes to concerts. But the bourgeoisie, which began to come into its own in the 18th century, has also left a long trail of hostility behind it ... Artistic disgust with the bourgeoisie has been a defining theme of modern Western culture. Since Moliere lambasted the ignorant, nouveau riche bourgeois gentleman, the bourgeoisie has been considered too clumsy to know true art and love (Goethe), a Philistine with aggressively unsubtle taste (Robert Schumann) and the creator of a machine-obsessed culture doomed to be overthrown by the proletariat (Marx and Engels). - "Class Lessons: Who's Calling Whom Tacky?; The Petite Charm of the Bourgeoisie, or, How Artists View the Taste of Certain People", Edward Rothstein, The New York Times This article also discusses a painting called "The Most Wanted" which was drawn based off a survey posed to ordinary people about what they wanted to see in a painting. "A mishmash of images from it's training set," if you will. Claiming that others lack taste seems to be a common refrain--only this time, instead of a reaction to a subset of the human population gnawing away at the influence of another subset of humans, it's to yet another generation of machines supplanting human skill.