260818: More Thoughts on Taste
More and more I have been taking a deflationary view of taste: it is what we like, what we wish to see more of; and such a broad thing as liking and disliking will see no simple theory.
But I will try to argue that taste—and the question of whether we respect a person's taste (critic, curator, artist), is largely a matter of seeing shared values in their work, and a deep competence in articulating and advancing those values. Not just whether I respect the game someone's playing (the goals played toward; the moral constraints voluntarily shouldered) but also his sophistication at playing it.
Taste as emerging from committed, embodied personal integrities—taste as personal development and theology (rather than second-order mimetic authority stuff)—necessarily requires some intrinsic sense of first-order value.
And I like the foodsharing metaphor because an artwork's values are like, "Who do we share our food with? How do we distribute the food amongst the community?" And competence/sophistication is like, "Is this hunter bringing high-quality game to the dinner table?"
The cultural objects I like deliver something to me. There is a very tangible, albeit verbally inarticulable, payoff in experiencing them. I build a library of such deliverables: ideas, effects, mood shifts, self-broadenings. I develop a network of allies with their own unique but sophisticated hunting strategies. I share my catch and others share theirs in turn and we all have a richer diet.
Art-objects ("artifacts") also embody and transmit parables, worldviews, etc that teach us how to live, and that advocate for certain normative structures. We pass these around as part of our coordinating, a sharing of values, models, ideals. It sets an implicit contract between people, and this is part of what it means to share culture, part of what it means to share taste.
And of course it's true that all this hunting & sharing is inflected by power. People develop betting and trading economies around it. They figure out that good hunters get their rocks off more often, receive social deference, because everyone wants access to a good catch. People try to accumulate the authority (power) to speak and recommend and guide group decisions. They advertise their own informational advantages/asymmetries+privileged sources by being "early."
Money is involved. All sorts of communication games (affiliational, subcultural, class/status signaling) get played on the margins of taste economies. In certain circles they become the primary purpose of play. Sometimes the main reason you reno your kitchen is to emulate some higher-class style.
But the fundamental thing underlying all the semiotic competition is ultimately some kind of intrinsic value to the objects of taste, the quality of these artifacts, the elegance of their accomplishment. All this talk of signaling, signifiers, etc is about the gross gaming atop & around the fundamental value proposition of taste.