An acquired taste?

Anette Barnard, Visual Culture lecturer, The Open Window

We are all confronted by bad taste at some point in our lives (some more often than others), especially during the festive season. We are bombarded with sporadic bad taste - kitsch in the form of glossy Christmas decorations and cheap Christmas-curio that reeks of planned obsolescence. Then there is “long term” bad taste that reinvents itself annually and manifests in the form of “fashion” (But don't be fooled however. “Fashion” is only an alias. Still part of the obsolescence family, it also goes by the name of “cousin style obsolescence”).

But why do we sneeringly acknowledge the presence of bad taste? “The intoxicating thing about bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of being displeased.” (Jack Sternberg). We are offended by bad taste - an act that distinguishes us as somebody in possession of good taste (as connoisseurs as opposed to plebs). Bad taste is mundane, rear-guard, vulgar and popular - mass produced items camouflaged as exclusive. Form disguises either the nature of the item or the function (in the event of it having a function). Therefore, the raison d'être of bad taste is bad design.

However, when you are “aristocratically displeased” by the things around you then you have somehow managed to discern the good from the bad. Good taste is to have good judgement, which Immanuel Kant already established in 1790 in “The Critique of Judgement”. Far from being fickle, good taste is believed to be quite objective. The observation of the laws of good design reflects the laws of one's mind. Kant realised that sense perception and reason are unified. Any type of knowledge is therefore, acquired through a priori ability to judge rationally and a posteriori ability of observation. In short, how you understand things reflect your experience. Your mind structures experiences every time you think. Things are then placed in relation to each other, and this according to Kant is what creates “understanding”. When your brain compares stuff to each other with a degree of understanding (reason), mental nirvana is reached. You recognise the gap between “what is” and “what ought to be”. In this case, the gap between gaudiness and decorum.

Therefore, according to Kant, the mind does not conform to objects, but rather, objects conform to your knowledge. A design or garment or whatever is therefore not simply “good” or “bad” in itself, but the mind imposes its own nature on the object of experience. In other words, when a judgement about taste is made, more is said about one's mental organisation than about the actual object.

Good taste is not a given - it “occurs” when one's understanding transcends one's immediate parochial experience. But don't fret - this can be acquired through the rigorous observation of good taste. Discern the details that matter from the details that don't. Cut back the bushes of ignorance and provincialism and save our nation from a crocs-wearing apathetic idiocracy.