Standards of taste are relative to an era and society, not universal criteria

Evidence

At the time, I cried about this; yet another injustice. Now I know better. Some things in life can’t ever be retrieved — an enjoyment of green robots in sequins and pedal pushers being one of them. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 367 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Taste is the most accurate seismograph of historical experience. Unlike almost all other faculties, it is even able to register its own behaviour. Reacting against itself, it recognizes its own lack of taste. Artists who repel or shock, spokesmen of unbridled cruelty, are governed, in their idiosyncrasy, by taste; the cultivation of a fine sensibility, the domain of nervous neo-romantics, is as patently coarse and unfeeling, even to its protagonists, as is Rilke’s line: ‘For poverty’s a great glow from within. …’ The delicate shudder, the pathos of being different, are now no more than stock masks in the cult of oppression. … The individual is so thoroughly historical that he is able, with the fine filigree of his late bourgeois organization, to rebel against the fine filigree of late bourgeois organization. … Even the rejection of mimesis, the deepest concern of the new matter-of-factness in art, is mimetic. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 167 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Imitation and distinction operate as complementary forces rather than opposites — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 165; Great taste requires bounded originality beyond copying what one ought to like — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 256; Geographic arbitrage of scarce goods can manufacture great taste — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 259 (+5 more)

Related

• Taste registers historical experience because the individual is itself a historical product (similarity 0.83)
• Under the culture industry the concept of taste has become obsolete. (similarity 0.81)
• Taste manifests only through social activity filtered by status value (similarity 0.81)
• Taste earns status only when proven anchored to a life history (similarity 0.80)
• Great taste requires bounded originality beyond copying what one ought to like (similarity 0.80)
• Taste is read as a holistic gestalt, not signal-by-signal (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Color aesthetics are culturally coded, not universally fixed #exemplifies (0.90)
• Some tastes and pleasures are irrecoverable once context has shifted #qualifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 367
• Taste registers historical experience because the individual is itself a historical product #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 167
• History shapes diet and taste, not the reverse #complicates (0.78)
• Under the culture industry the concept of taste has become obsolete. #qualifies (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 68