Not completely free of ego, I find it therefore gratifying when someone responds to my blog entries, even if it is to take me to task. Such has been the case with my last entry about the Los Angeles Antiques Show. Specifically, several of my 10 or so readers felt that, with the disparate types of material available at the show- period furniture, folk art, and, this year, contemporary photography- show visitors will be confused and confounded, and unable to move toward a refinement of their own taste.
The use of the word ‘taste’ in this context intrigued me, to the extent that I re-read what’s arguably the definitive essay on the subject, written by Edmund Burke in 1756. As Burke has it, taste relies not only upon (aesthetic) pleasure, but also on good judgment, which he terms ‘sensibility.’ What all of this means is that, as we commonly use the term ‘taste’ merely to differentiate what we find aesthetically appealing from those things we don’t, this reflects an incomplete understanding, and consequently inaccurate, use of the term. From time to time, we get somebody in our galleries asking for a particular item whereupon, when we point out a piece of goods that is ostensibly just the thing they are after, it will be dismissed out of hand with the phrase ‘It’s just not to my taste.’ ‘Maybe you don’t have any’ is the rejoinder that Keith McCullar and I never use but invariably repeat mentally. We are, of course, merchants, and there is some notion floating about that the customer is always right. They seldom are, of course, but we try to be nice just the same. In spite of being a bit thin skinned, we do try to expose even the casual browser to items of a kind and quality they are not used to seeing, such that, in addition to providing some aesthetic pleasure, our gallery visitors might also find their time with us a bit edifying. And that’s the basis for the development of taste- even if a body does not, prima facie, find something appealing, at least it might be seen, intellectually, as having merit.
This is why the antiques show with a wide range of objects within a number of different disciplines can work so well for the occasional and even the serious collector. While anyone can go right up to an object that a body’s particular aesthetic criteria finds appealing, the time spent to enhance one’s intellectual understanding moves a person toward the development of taste. I would suggest that this intellectual understanding may be the most important aspect of taste, as it can be developed and expanded rationally, where aesthetics are often informed by factors outside an individual’s direct control. Often, what is aesthetically appealing is something with which a person is already familiar, the phenomenon Aristotle termed ‘mimesis’. Frankly, a lot of my interest in 18th century furniture is informed by my early life in my grandmother’s house, surrounded by her mostly 18th century things. Of course, I loved my grandmother, and much aesthetic experience is bound up with emotion. How sad it would be, though, if my own taste were limited, stunted as it were, by my early aesthetic experience. On the flipside, people have an equal tendency to reject items because of negative experience. So, it seems, an awareness, and a possible containment, of the emotion associated with aesthetic appeal, and a rational movement toward, or at least giving equal time to, intellectual understanding of an object or class of objects, moves a body toward the development of taste.
All this said, the tasteful collector, and the tasteful interior designer, is probably the most eclectic, with an appreciation for a number of different types of objects and a number of styles. Does that sound like a definitive statement? With that established, I guess if you don’t go to the LA Antiques Show, you have no taste. No- I’m wrong there… If you go to the show and don’t find anything to your taste, it might possibly be because you don’t have any.