The vain search for good taste

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What is good taste? And who decides? It’s a question I discussed last weekend with architect and designer Harry Nuriev, museum director Melissa Chiu, and Net-a-Porter president Alison Loehnis: three arbiters of style. But the only real deal we could get to on the subject is that there are no rules anymore.

Until about 20 years ago there were fairly static ideas about what passed as of rigor. In a world where opinions were decided by a small cabal of voices, the number of “serious” art collectors numbered in the few hundred and the main markets were supposed to be in Paris, London and New York, there was a easy consensus on the type of furniture one should sit on, the brand of the bag one was carrying, or the art that hung on its walls.

Trends were cyclical and ever-changing, but the things that represented “good taste” remained pretty fixed in people’s minds. If your chairs were Le Corbusier, you had a Giacometti or you handled an Hermès Birkin bag, you were part of an elite group whose taste was aspired to and admired. Today, however, taste has become more fluid and subjective. His refereeing is less clear. The Internet has turned everyone into a critic, new markets have sprung up outside the traditional hubs, and the consensus has largely broken down.

The internet has turned everyone into a critic and the consensus has been largely broken.

Where once good taste was seen as a mark of privilege and education, today’s tastemakers are a much more reactive crowd. And the things that emerge as barometers of our cultural position are less likely to be the product of explicit knowledge than the result of a collective, internet-fueled hive mind.

Nuriev was born in Russia: Earlier this month he worked with culinary studio We Are Ona to create a pop-up restaurant that was the talk of art week in New York. When she’s not creating events in one of the world’s most notoriously unimpressionable communities, she makes quilts out of old boxer shorts and bespoke wallpaper with a trompe l’oeil effect to look like mold: she’s currently crushing up plastic Evian bottles to create a bespoke chandelier. . His work walks the line between bland and transcendent and classic and rude, but his bold “transformer” vision has made him one of today’s most in-demand designers.

When asked what good taste is, he shrugs and says he has no idea. But she knows his clients want to work with him because they feel he represents the kind of design statement they want to make.

“Good taste” has become more democratic. Not to mention politicized: Most national galleries are in the midst of major changes to try to exhibit work by women, non-white artists, or outsiders whose works have hitherto been ignored. When Chiu, the Asian-Australian director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, began working as an expert on contemporary Asian art, people dismissed her as not existing. To connoisseurs, Asian art meant ancient porcelain and dynastic loot. It was only with the rise of a new consumer market, and the Internet, that those views changed. Once upon a time, she argues, artists hoping for longevity would have to follow a very specific career path. Today, some of the most collected artists—those who sell for millions at auction—have never had a single work on display in a museum.

Is good taste, then, something innate and elevated, or is it simply hitting certain trends? Even with the proliferation of influencers, click culture, and social media, some things still surface as “tasteful” at any given time. In fashion, for example, we’re in the midst of a vaunted “stealth riches” phase, where logos are more understated, fabrics more luxurious, and the height of elegance wrapped in layers of beige is now considered.

But is this good taste or just “safe taste” an attempt to hide one’s riches by trying to look completely like me? Surely the true arbiters of “great” taste should have more verve and expression; that’s definitely what I look for when choosing the aesthetes you see at FT Weekend’s HTSI magazine.

And the old masters? One would assume that some things must surpass all metrics with their expertise and beauty, and yet even the most revered artists can languish, dusty and loveless. Look at Vermeer, currently the subject of the most popular show on earth at the Rijksmuseum, but whose paintings, now widely considered masterpieces, could barely dent passing interest for nearly 200 years.

Good taste was an expression of privilege and tradition, controlled and manipulated by a powerful elite. But that hegemony of mostly white male creative personalities is now being recast to reflect more diverse intellects. I think the most important thing is that good taste should not be boring: it should be daring, daring and original. It should dare to flout convention, provoke, and yet ultimately seduce.

Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com