Graham seems to be conflating skill with taste. The artists he mentions are skilled at art and he states that he is not. Distinguishing between skilled and unskilled work may be "good taste" but what is considered good art is more than just skill.
Yes, it seems to me that Paul's reasoning makes this mix up at this point:
> So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it.
People can be measurably good at realising specific criteria, even if you can't absolutely compare these criteria.
What other considerations are there other than skill? Isn’t everything a skill? Graham lists a few other extraneous concerns that people judge art by. He asserts these are unrelated to the art itself, like which museum the art is hanging in.
I agree with Graham’s premise. My theory is that people don’t believe good taste exists because most people have bad taste and that’s too big of a pill to swallow. Would you rather admit to having bad taste, or posit that taste doesn’t exist? This is supported by Graham’s observation that contemporary art critics are nearly always disproven a generation or two later, meaning most critics have flawed taste.
The conflation of skill with taste demonstrates exactly why Graham is wrong. There's many widely recognized works of art, by critics of similarly recognized taste, that are far less skillful than what a competent art student can put out today and yet held in higher acclaim.
Post-modernism, Dada, and surrealism drove the stake through this point, The Treachery of Images or Fountain (Duchamp) aren't extremely skillful, but they're world class art from a certain point of view.
I think you’re taking too narrow a definition of skill. True, drawing a straight line is a skill, but the vision to draw a particular line in an innovative way is also a skill.
And what counts as visionary and what counts as nonsense is entirely subjective. We can judge how straight a line is objectively, but we can't judge "vision" objectively, and thus "taste" is inherently subjective.
That Graham wrote an entire essay rubbing up against this point without once encountering any literature that explains this (seminally Bourdieu, but there are many others) is surprising.
But subjectiveness applies to everything. For instance, whether or not something is moral is subjective, and yet there is a collective notion of morality.
Skill is used to produce, but the product of skill isn't necessarily good if it doesn't fulfil a useful purpose. Good taste beyond pure aesthetic appreciation is related to interpretation/analysis, understanding what the artist accomplished and what can be read from the work. Good art says something new. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images is a good example - it has very little aesthetic value but a lot of meaning, especially for the era is was made in. Compare that to e.g. Vermeer (one of my favourite artists), whose work is full of skill and aesthetic beauty but doesn't have anything to say because it's a figurative work.
> What other considerations are there other than skill?
Narrative is critical, and often external, coming from the curator, dealer, critic, etc. Humans love stories.
“Death and Transfiguration” by Strauss is a beautiful, skillfully written piece of music. A story I heard is that Strauss on his deathbed exclaimed “it’s just like I wrote it!” Is it true? Did he say this? I have no idea, and in a sense it doesn’t matter. The piece is made better by the story I remember when I listen to it. It’s not in the music, it’s with the music.
> My theory is that people don’t believe good taste exists because most people have bad taste
This breaks down pretty quickly outside of fine art criticism. If I put 20 people in a room and only one of them has dressed "in good taste", they'll stick out badly enough that the consensus of the group will be that the one is in "bad taste".
The problem is that "taste" is vague, depends on ephemeral context and may be subject to popular whims and ignorance.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Graham is not saying that taste is quantifiable or identifiable via public opinion or consensus, so I'm not sure how the situation of 20 people in a room evaluating taste is relevant.
I think he is still correct though but for a different reason. When someone first creates art they may begin naively and create art that is lacking in subtlety, perhaps speaking to the more immature aspects of our human nature?
A good artist graduates from that phase and begins to recognize it in other artists — can say, "Yeah, I used to do art like that but I have moved on." In the same way the art connoisseur should be able to say, "Ahhh, I used to like art like that once, but my tastes now appreciate the more nuanced."
Maybe an example is a car that the owner did as "black-on-black", like Darth Vader, blacked out badges, blacked-out windows, black paint job.... You recognize that "Hey, all black, cool, right?"
If taste is subject to experience -- and it is unless you think someone who has only seen very little art in a very limited scope of style is as qualified to judge the quality of art as someone who has seen lots of art of many different styles -- then skill is definitely a strong factor in influencing taste.
While it is true that there are people who have a high degree of technical skill (or of talent) who have poor taste, which means that skill is not the direct cause of taste, it is an essential -- and significant element.
It's like assuming that practicing athletics does not make you better able to appreciate the achievements of other athletes.
Skill give both awareness and depth to your perception, and if you think neither of these attributes are applicable to determining quality, you lack the linguistic or cognitive ability to join the discussion.
I came here to type this sentence almost word for word.
I think this divide is most easily seen in the realm of acting, with no better example than Nicholas Cage: high skill level, low taste, at least judging by the majority of projects he chooses. (The counterargument might be that he realizes he's making a lot of bad movies and just needs the paycheck – he's infamous for blowing his money in foolhardy ways – but I definitely think at least some part of the essence of Nicholas Cage comes from conflict between high skill vs low taste).
I was friends with a guy in college who was a masterful musician (toured professionally as an all-purpose backup musician for some mid-tier bands you have heard of) and I used to argue with him about one particular band whose music I disliked [^1], and he would say, "But do you know how hard it is to play those notes? Look!" and he would stretch his fingers all over the bass fret, and I'd say, yeah, but... finger gymnastics is not the same as good music.
Also back in college, when CDs were a thing and money was scarce, I used to debate with myself about whether it would be worthwhile to accept the faustian bargain of trading my own musical tastes to exactly match the contents of the record store's discount CD bin, which was filled with things like Richard Marx albums [^2], so I could buy ten albums for five dollars.
[^1]: I don't want to start a flame war but it's the 80's-era band with complex bass arrangements which I have noticed is popular with sysadmin folks
[^2]: No disrespect intended to people who dig Richard Marx, or to Richard Marx himself, but it sticks in my mind as the thing that was in the bin I was looking at when I had this thought.
There's plenty of things to complain about in PG's essays, but subject matter expertise is not one of them. PG has been an practitioner and student of art for decades.
Graham seems to be conflating skill with taste. The artists he mentions are skilled at art and he states that he is not. Distinguishing between skilled and unskilled work may be "good taste" but what is considered good art is more than just skill.