Subtitles section Play video
-
When it comes to design and decoration,
-
it feels extremely tricky and dangerous
-
to accuse anyone of having bad taste,
-
or to pride oneself on having good taste.
-
The official story is that anything goes
-
and no one knows what is good or bad anyway.
-
But that seems too easy, and lacking in ambition.
-
Progress can in fact be made on this important issue
-
if we try to understand what psychological mechanisms govern the business of taste in the first place.
-
Why do we have the taste that we have?
-
Why are we attracted or repelled by certain sorts of styles?
-
The best way to interpret this is via a theory of compensation.
-
We're all a bit unbalanced inside,
-
and get attracted to styles in the world
-
that promise to compensate us for the things that we're lacking within.
-
so for example, people who feel chaotic, undisciplined, and cluttered inside,
-
are liable to be very drawn to interiors that are serene, pure, and poised.
-
Equally, people who are very exposed to
-
and oppressed by the brutal tempo of modern life,
-
with its excessive brutality, precision, and technological war
-
are likely to be drawn to styles that speak of the rustic, the natural, and the cozily shabby.
-
Now that might be an explanation for taste, but what about bad taste?
-
What singles out instances of bad taste is excess in some direction or another.
-
Bad taste is a massive overcompensation,
-
which has been generated by a sharp shortfall in some area or another;
-
it's a response to a psychological or physical trauma.
-
So for example, the Russians and the Saudis have, over the years,
-
developed a reputation for spectacularly bad, as in gaudy, over-the-top taste,
-
a pumped up version of Versailles in Riyadh or Moscow.
-
This isn't, in a sense, surprising; a century of extreme deprivation under communism,
-
and an eternity of eking out a living in the barren deserts of Saudi Arabia
-
have created, understandably, desperate desires for compensation,
-
which have evidently, rather, overshot their mark.
-
Or, think of sentimental bad taste, the kind where there are gnomes in the front gardens
-
and gaudy, and sickly sweet trinkets inside.
-
This is a style frequently favored by the less well-off in society
-
people whose woking lives are humiliating back-breaking and
-
the very opposite of welcoming tender.
-
it should be no wonder that these unfortunates might therefore be in the mood
-
for something counter-balancingly sweet at home
-
in every instance of bad taste, we're looking at the overeager embracing of a good quality
-
like sweetness, freedom, fun or prosperity that was once in a very short supply
-
bad taste often sickens people but once one understands its origins
-
it starts to seem unduly harsh to judge like this
-
we can all understand that if a person is starving, they might eagerly eat things which
-
in less desperate situations they'd obviously reject and that in their desperation
-
their manners might take a back seat
-
it's not at all pretty but we never blame them because we know why they're stuffing themselves with such haste
-
We should apply similar tact when confronted with unfortunate taste in design
-
What's bad in bad taste isn't the person but the prior trauma which
-
they're seeking to compensate for, through their déco.
-
There is no point in mocking or offering lectures about art history
-
the problem isn't a lack of information. It's a trauma created by a badly broken and unbalanced world
-
the solution to bad taste is therefore, political
-
good taste comes about when people feel appreciated. When there is enough to go around
-
and when there's an economy which doesn't routinely humiliate in a base its workers
-
to make good taste more widespread. What matters above all are efforts to diminish
-
the desperate lives in which lapses of taste invariably have their origins.