11
Foreword Part one: imbroglio
12 23 33 48 60
Taste: the story of an idea Whatever happened to ‘good’ design? Consuming taste Born to shop Brixton and Vienna
Part two: scenario 76 76 88 104 134 162
Architecture Panting the lily The ahock of the ordinary Transvestite architecture All the Looeys The design of approved insurance
172 172 180
Fashion Being and dressing Function is a matter of taste
196 196
Food Acquired taste
208
The sport of things
232
Index
11
11
Foreword Part one: imbroglio
12 23 33 48 60
Taste: the story of an idea Whatever happened to ‘good’ design? Consuming taste Born to shop Brixton and Vienna
Part two: scenario 76 76 88 104 134 162
Architecture Panting the lily The ahock of the ordinary Transvestite architecture All the Looeys The design of approved insurance
172 172 180
Fashion Being and dressing Function is a matter of taste
196 196
Food Acquired taste
208
The sport of things
232
Index
11
Taste: the story of an idea
Shakespeare and design: the shifting value of art Look at Dr Freud’s consulting rooms. The great man is sitting in a sombre Viennese interior. You can see the craquelure, smell the leather and the polish, sense the aspidistra. Even though it is a black and white photograph you can tell the dominant colour is brown. Tomes of grim Mitteilungen suggest that psychoanalysis has the sanction of the past, that it is an ancient and respected academic medical practice. Two things would be different if Dr Freud were practising in New York or London today rather than in the volatile Vienna of Loos, Schiele, Klimt and Werfel. One is that his consulting rooms would look very different: nowadays leaders of the medical profession do not present their seriousness in terms of sombre bourgeois interior design; wealthy professionalism is suggested by black leather and chrome furniture and middlebrow junk art. The other is that the dark corners of his patients’ minds would, on inspection, be found to be corroded not by anxieties about sex, death and mother (for nowadays these things are commonplace), but by … taste. This word, which formerly signified no more than ‘discrimination’, was hijacked and its meaning inflated by an influential elite who use the expression ‘good taste’ simply to validate their personal aesthetic preferences while demonstrating their vulgar presumption of social and cultural superiority. The very idea of good taste is insidious. While I stop short of believing that all human affairs are no more than a jungle of ethical and cultural relativity, the suggestion that the Amus quid quae. Ut quae pra cum quia nis que con endit qui atur sitias modi odi officilique porio. Xeria ipsam, cuptium faccusc ienient quisquo mos doluptur magnimi, si ut earum
13
Taste: the story of an idea
Shakespeare and design: the shifting value of art Look at Dr Freud’s consulting rooms. The great man is sitting in a sombre Viennese interior. You can see the craquelure, smell the leather and the polish, sense the aspidistra. Even though it is a black and white photograph you can tell the dominant colour is brown. Tomes of grim Mitteilungen suggest that psychoanalysis has the sanction of the past, that it is an ancient and respected academic medical practice. Two things would be different if Dr Freud were practising in New York or London today rather than in the volatile Vienna of Loos, Schiele, Klimt and Werfel. One is that his consulting rooms would look very different: nowadays leaders of the medical profession do not present their seriousness in terms of sombre bourgeois interior design; wealthy professionalism is suggested by black leather and chrome furniture and middlebrow junk art. The other is that the dark corners of his patients’ minds would, on inspection, be found to be corroded not by anxieties about sex, death and mother (for nowadays these things are commonplace), but by … taste. This word, which formerly signified no more than ‘discrimination’, was hijacked and its meaning inflated by an influential elite who use the expression ‘good taste’ simply to validate their personal aesthetic preferences while demonstrating their vulgar presumption of social and cultural superiority. The very idea of good taste is insidious. While I stop short of believing that all human affairs are no more than a jungle of ethical and cultural relativity, the suggestion that the Amus quid quae. Ut quae pra cum quia nis que con endit qui atur sitias modi odi officilique porio. Xeria ipsam, cuptium faccusc ienient quisquo mos doluptur magnimi, si ut earum
13
first book, The Gothic Revival (1928), it was almost as a jeu d’esprit: Victorian Gothic architecture was a lost cause and it was a sophisticated and amusing literary rite of passage for a parvenu aesthete such as Clark to talk it up. During the First World War, on strolls through Kensington Gardens, the philosopher R. G. Collingwood was shocked by the ugliness of the Albert Memorial. He concluded in his Autobiography (1939) that the Albert Memorial was ‘visibly misshapen, corrupt, crawling, verminous’. Despite this attack, he found the general effect of Gilbert Scott’s design so powerful that he produced a study, Truth and Contradiction, which attempted to deal with the perplexing problems, perceptual and ideological, which the curious memorial caused him A marvellous diversion in the history of taste, it was never published. The Albert Memorial has often been described as a ‘test for taste’. Despite Collingwood’s obloquy, the memorial became absorbed into the repertoire of Englishness, while the memory of the cruel and squalid age which created it faded into comfortable nostalgia. The Gothic revival itself, witness the successive editions of Clark’s book, became more and more acceptable, until verminous became quaint and quaint became haunting. This process culminated in the founding of the Victorian Society in 1958, a club whose members can also be verminous, quaint and haunting. Perhaps an even more dramatic demonstration of changing values in art occurs in literature. Shakespeare’s reputation as a genius of timeless relevance is a recent one, or, at least, recently renewed. To us he bestrides the narrow world like a colossus. And so he did to Samuel Sheppard, who in 1651 described him as ‘sacred’, but by 1662 Samuel Pepys thought Romeo and Juliet ‘the worst [play] that I ever heard’ and described A Midsummer Night’s Dream as ‘insipid’ and ‘ridiculous’. Half a century later Alexander Pope called Shakespeare ‘divine’, but there was also a moment in the eighteenth century when he was regarded as a talented barbarian of local interest and little more: Dr Johnson wrote in the Amus quid quae. Ut quae pra cum quia nis que con endit qui atur sitias modi odi officilique porio. Xeria ipsam, cuptium faccusc ienient quisquo mos doluptur magnimi, si ut earum
16
17
first book, The Gothic Revival (1928), it was almost as a jeu d’esprit: Victorian Gothic architecture was a lost cause and it was a sophisticated and amusing literary rite of passage for a parvenu aesthete such as Clark to talk it up. During the First World War, on strolls through Kensington Gardens, the philosopher R. G. Collingwood was shocked by the ugliness of the Albert Memorial. He concluded in his Autobiography (1939) that the Albert Memorial was ‘visibly misshapen, corrupt, crawling, verminous’. Despite this attack, he found the general effect of Gilbert Scott’s design so powerful that he produced a study, Truth and Contradiction, which attempted to deal with the perplexing problems, perceptual and ideological, which the curious memorial caused him A marvellous diversion in the history of taste, it was never published. The Albert Memorial has often been described as a ‘test for taste’. Despite Collingwood’s obloquy, the memorial became absorbed into the repertoire of Englishness, while the memory of the cruel and squalid age which created it faded into comfortable nostalgia. The Gothic revival itself, witness the successive editions of Clark’s book, became more and more acceptable, until verminous became quaint and quaint became haunting. This process culminated in the founding of the Victorian Society in 1958, a club whose members can also be verminous, quaint and haunting. Perhaps an even more dramatic demonstration of changing values in art occurs in literature. Shakespeare’s reputation as a genius of timeless relevance is a recent one, or, at least, recently renewed. To us he bestrides the narrow world like a colossus. And so he did to Samuel Sheppard, who in 1651 described him as ‘sacred’, but by 1662 Samuel Pepys thought Romeo and Juliet ‘the worst [play] that I ever heard’ and described A Midsummer Night’s Dream as ‘insipid’ and ‘ridiculous’. Half a century later Alexander Pope called Shakespeare ‘divine’, but there was also a moment in the eighteenth century when he was regarded as a talented barbarian of local interest and little more: Dr Johnson wrote in the Amus quid quae. Ut quae pra cum quia nis que con endit qui atur sitias modi odi officilique porio. Xeria ipsam, cuptium faccusc ienient quisquo mos doluptur magnimi, si ut earum
16
17
the matter of taste has involved choice, whether individual or collective. Today, taste means both aesthetic and social discrimination, as well as gustatory sensation. Etymologically, the work we use derives from the old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera. In English, the term ‘good taste’, meaning ‘sound understanding’, appears in the early fifteenth century, but it is not until the seventeenth century that the concept of aesthetic discrimination arrived in England: in the 1685 translation of Baltasar Gracian’s El Oraculo Manual y Arte de Prudentia (1647) the term ‘gusto relevante’ becomes ‘quaint and critical judgement’. Interestingly, this book for the courtier has never been out of print since its first appearance, and, more interestingly still for a book devoted to the professional cultivation of charm, it was made most famous in the German translation of Arthur Schopenhauer. The metaphorical use of ‘taste’ to mean judgemenet began in France, where Gracian’s ‘gusto relevante’ was rendered as ‘le gout fin’. A literal translation gave a new and troublesome word to English. The salons of Frence, where art, literature, antiquities and science were discussed in circumstances of considerable comfort and luxury, adopted the word and gave it a capital ‘T’. By the early eighteenth century the word ‘taste’ was becoming familiar in essays on literature; the major transformation was complete and ‘taste’ had become synonymous with judgement. A subtle and even elusive concept was born, elements of refinement and restraint attaching themselves to the definition only later.10 The Earl of Shaftesbury’s Letter Concerning Design is a typical market of the phenomenon.9 It was published just as critical discernment was about to become an intellectual sport. The Letter was written when art had been separated from its didactic and divine purposes and was well on the way to becoming a consumer product. At this moment taste did not have any particular values: it was only identified as a part of the human apparatus of Amus quid quae. Ut quae pra cum quia nis que con endit qui atur sitias modi odi officilique porio. Xeria ipsam, cuptium faccusc ienient quisquo mos doluptur magnimi, si ut earum
23
the matter of taste has involved choice, whether individual or collective. Today, taste means both aesthetic and social discrimination, as well as gustatory sensation. Etymologically, the work we use derives from the old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera. In English, the term ‘good taste’, meaning ‘sound understanding’, appears in the early fifteenth century, but it is not until the seventeenth century that the concept of aesthetic discrimination arrived in England: in the 1685 translation of Baltasar Gracian’s El Oraculo Manual y Arte de Prudentia (1647) the term ‘gusto relevante’ becomes ‘quaint and critical judgement’. Interestingly, this book for the courtier has never been out of print since its first appearance, and, more interestingly still for a book devoted to the professional cultivation of charm, it was made most famous in the German translation of Arthur Schopenhauer. The metaphorical use of ‘taste’ to mean judgemenet began in France, where Gracian’s ‘gusto relevante’ was rendered as ‘le gout fin’. A literal translation gave a new and troublesome word to English. The salons of Frence, where art, literature, antiquities and science were discussed in circumstances of considerable comfort and luxury, adopted the word and gave it a capital ‘T’. By the early eighteenth century the word ‘taste’ was becoming familiar in essays on literature; the major transformation was complete and ‘taste’ had become synonymous with judgement. A subtle and even elusive concept was born, elements of refinement and restraint attaching themselves to the definition only later.10 The Earl of Shaftesbury’s Letter Concerning Design is a typical market of the phenomenon.9 It was published just as critical discernment was about to become an intellectual sport. The Letter was written when art had been separated from its didactic and divine purposes and was well on the way to becoming a consumer product. At this moment taste did not have any particular values: it was only identified as a part of the human apparatus of Amus quid quae. Ut quae pra cum quia nis que con endit qui atur sitias modi odi officilique porio. Xeria ipsam, cuptium faccusc ienient quisquo mos doluptur magnimi, si ut earum
23
discernment; you either had it or you didn’t and there was no question of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. When man replaced God as the chief object of study, it was inevitable that the idea of beauty deriving from divine inspiration was replaced by a more secular, even materialistic, notion of aesthetic satisfaction. La Rochefoucauld remarked that ‘Our pride is more offended by attacks on our tastes than on our opinions’, an observation which puts into nice equilibrium the forces of cupidity and sophistication which dominate modern consumer behaviour.10 But in a culture which had only one class with the economic capacity to make discriminating judgements, the matter of whether taste was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ was not so much irrelevant as inconceivable and its characteristics still wanted defining. Early pursuit of precision in this matter began by trying to locate where exactly in the body taste operated. To the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), having taste was like having an accessory for the soul. To Joseph Addison (1672-1719), as soon as taste was established, vice and ignorance would automatically be banished, presumably from loins and head – in that order. David Hume (1711-86)– who had said of Shakespeare ‘a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold’ – defined taste as a ‘sensibility’ to every kind of beauty or deformity. Hume’s view was that standards could be established, while Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) upheld this view in the fine arts. Reynolds thought that genius and taste were very much the same thing, except that genius had the added ingredient of execution. To an academic painter like Reynolds, taste was to be found lurking in the same dominion as reason and was, therefore, in his view, equally exempt from any possibility of change. The Discourses which Sir Joshua Reynolds delivered at the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1786 are a tour de force of aesthetic conviction; they are also the richest ground for sniffing out the English Enlightenment’s attitude both to man-made rules and to God-given genius. Reynolds declared, ‘Could we teach taste or Amus quid quae. Ut quae pra cum quia nis que con endit qui atur sitias modi odi officilique porio. Xeria ipsam, cuptium faccusc ienient quisquo mos doluptur magnimi, si ut earum
25
discernment; you either had it or you didn’t and there was no question of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. When man replaced God as the chief object of study, it was inevitable that the idea of beauty deriving from divine inspiration was replaced by a more secular, even materialistic, notion of aesthetic satisfaction. La Rochefoucauld remarked that ‘Our pride is more offended by attacks on our tastes than on our opinions’, an observation which puts into nice equilibrium the forces of cupidity and sophistication which dominate modern consumer behaviour.10 But in a culture which had only one class with the economic capacity to make discriminating judgements, the matter of whether taste was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ was not so much irrelevant as inconceivable and its characteristics still wanted defining. Early pursuit of precision in this matter began by trying to locate where exactly in the body taste operated. To the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), having taste was like having an accessory for the soul. To Joseph Addison (1672-1719), as soon as taste was established, vice and ignorance would automatically be banished, presumably from loins and head – in that order. David Hume (1711-86)– who had said of Shakespeare ‘a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold’ – defined taste as a ‘sensibility’ to every kind of beauty or deformity. Hume’s view was that standards could be established, while Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) upheld this view in the fine arts. Reynolds thought that genius and taste were very much the same thing, except that genius had the added ingredient of execution. To an academic painter like Reynolds, taste was to be found lurking in the same dominion as reason and was, therefore, in his view, equally exempt from any possibility of change. The Discourses which Sir Joshua Reynolds delivered at the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1786 are a tour de force of aesthetic conviction; they are also the richest ground for sniffing out the English Enlightenment’s attitude both to man-made rules and to God-given genius. Reynolds declared, ‘Could we teach taste or Amus quid quae. Ut quae pra cum quia nis que con endit qui atur sitias modi odi officilique porio. Xeria ipsam, cuptium faccusc ienient quisquo mos doluptur magnimi, si ut earum
25