Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Taste.

One of my favourite senses.

And also a highly subjective judgment of what is beautiful, excellent and aesthetically valid.

Kate and I often talk about what taste is, and disagree.

We are fascinated by those who are elite "taste-makers". Those special few who point and clap to declare something worth seeing or silently scold another thing, banishing it forever from acceptance.

I've often said that today's art form, today's truest expression of creativity is consumerism.

I suppose it's nice that it means therefore, anyone can participate -as long as you can shop.

Knowing just what to buy, which tea towel is the chicest to put in your cleverly customised kitchen cabinets, having that rare, whimsical piece of furniture, having the "daring" to take a design risk with your wallpaper; these are the current barometers of creativity. That's why "lifestyle" is such a big word these days, our lifestyle is our art form, and each of our choices, from shoes to plates to collar angle and tit size are our media.

The hipster is the quintessential form of this, hence their unabashed distaste for the non hipster -if you don't live and breath your art, you might as well not live and breathe.

That is why Chuck Palahniuk, wrote a scathing assessment of it in Fight Club. Because surely if we move away from basic urges, basic needs and impulses, toward the fluffy expertise of highly adept consumers, we lose meaning.

But a highly attuned taste-maker would say such expertise is indicative of high evolution and that trying to bear likeness to our primitive ancestors is about as analogous as trying to bear likeness to the pharoahs.

I just read this yesterday:

'Art mirrors its age, therefore it [has] to change completely as the world change[s] so vastly and so quickly. One cannot expect every decade to produce genius. The 20th century has already produced enough. A field must lie fallow every now and then. Artists try too hard to be original. That is why we have all this painting that isn't painting any more. Today is the age of collecting, not of creation"
-Peggy Guggenheim

Bis

Milla