Repairing chairs

[JoceAndChris]

De gustibus (et coloribus) non est disputandum

I dispute that statement.

 

[Penners]

De gustibus (et coloribus) non est disputandum

I dispute that statement.

Oh no you don't!

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh yes I do.

 

[Penners]

Oh...(etc. etc.)! :wink:

 

[JoceAndChris]

Seriously though, I don't agree with the de gustibus maxim. Things which we deem "pretty " " handsome" " interesting" are a lot more down to inbuilt rules of proportion, colour, symmetry, fitness for purpose, harmony, pleasing and natural materials, than taste. If you put a blackbird and a kingfisher in a beauty contest I'm sure the kingfisher would always win. You might prefer the blackbird for various reasons, but I can't imagine any would say it's the prettier of the two. Same goes for, I don't know, Elizabeth Taylor in her youth compared to Ann Widdecombe in hers. Or a mud and straw hut compared to Fonthill Abbey. One is clearly prettier than the other, to say it's a matter of taste is nonsense.

 

[Penners]

Nonsense? Absolutely not! Yes, there are rules of proportion that seem to have been an influence on human design since time immemorial, but tastes in pretty well every aspect of art and design have changed dramatically and constantly. Who is to declare whether a mud and straw hut is intrinsically less beautiful than Fonthill Abbey*? Each can have its own kind of beauty (or, in the eyes of some perhaps, ugliness). It's all completely subjective.

* A view with which, incidentally, I disagree!

 

[JoceAndChris]

I disagree. It's a lot more prescribed than that. If it weren't, language would become meaningless, words like "elegant" " sweet" " fascinating" " beautiful" would become meaningless as they would not connect us with some commonality of thought.

The points at which we meet and say something is "nice" are far far greater than those hair-splittings where we divide and say "X is nicer than Y".

I don't think tastes have changed all that dramatically. We bring in flowers to decorate the house. We rejoice at the sweetness of chicks and springtime. We adorn ourselves with garments that go beyond the merely functional, buildings that are expressive of our era and environment, sit on chairs that reflect our culture. De gustibus etc just isn't a way I can look at the world.

 

[Feltwell]

I'm in agreement with Penners. It's all down to the individual. One person can admire an object for it's great beauty, another can say it's too ornate and a bit tacky - and they are both, or neither, right!

For example:- Stately homes leave me rather cold. If I go to one, I'm much more interested in the "working" parts of the house and estate than the grand rooms. Give me a decent working blacksmith's shop that is in use to watch a demonstration by a craftsman rather than a grand state room tour any day.

I can (and do) admire the craftsmanship that goes into the grand rooms, but the aesthetics of them seem to me to be all too often gaudy, tasteless and principally to do with showing off a vulgar display of wealth. There is perhaps an extreme example of gaudiness below!

http://www.royal.gov.uk/virtualtours/BuckinghamPalaceVirtualTour/throne_room.html

Others of course love to see & tour the grand rooms and would think that the room above is stunning and is the very epitome of fine taste - and good for them - their money helps fund the repair work which keeps the craftsmen's skills alive.

There are of course exceptions, but what is stunning and opulent to one person can be over the top and gaudy to another. Just as what is plain, simple and tasteful to one person is plain, dull and lifeless to another. It would be a very boring world if we all liked the same things.

See you later, I'm just off to the Tower having insulted Liz's pad..........

 

[Nigel Watts]

I agree with Joce that aesthetics are not wholly subjective. There are rules and established patterns and frameworks within which things can be and are judged. Individual taste, or perhaps more importantly what our German friends call the zeitgeist, clearly play an important part, but they do not invalidate these. It is still possible, for example, for someone who hates classical or modernist architecture, to distinguish between a good one and a poor one.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Absolutely - well put. I'm not really talking about Feltwell's point that we like and are interested by different things, which of course you can't argue with. The point I'm trying to make is that the words "elegant" "exquisite"" classical" "intricate" "detailed" " opulent" "assertive" "rich" "riotous" "fairy-tale" "brutalist" "hand-made" "artisan" "bijou" "clumsy" "mis-shapen" "rustic" "simplistic" "dazzling" "pretty" "whimsical"are used, broadly, to mean the same kinds of things - it isn't about taste. It's about using your eyes, brain, education, knowledge, understanding, senses and intuition to respond to an object with the language we have at our disposal to describe and place it so that it makes sense with relation to all the other objects. If you used the wrong words or cited radically odd opinions you'd soon find out your error, and be corrected by the rest of society, as children are.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Would the "naming shapes" experiment help here?

These two shapes are newly-discovered alien life forms. One is called Boobar, and one is called Krikri. Which is which?

 

[Nigel Watts]

No, I'm afraid it doesn't Gareth. It's fun though.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I think it sort of helps,and its certainly fascinating. There's a fundamental response to things that goes even deeper than language, culture, environment, era - which perhaps stems from the monkey in all of us and its instincts to survive, prosper, and then later in evolutionary terms, make sense of the world around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

From a quick google, it seems there's enduring debate about whether beauty is more objective or subjective - it has to be both, otherwise you couldn't have beauty competitions, auditions for glamour mags, art prizes or village of the year awards.

 

[LadyArowana]

The concept of beauty, as applied to people, probably has evolutionary roots in the quest for fitness and reproductive health. All rather boring and biological.

 

[worms]

All rather boring and biological.

Au contraire! Biological systems manage to combine form, function and aesthetics in ways that architecture aspires to, but often doesn't achieve!

 

[Penners]

It's a lot more prescribed than that. If it weren't, language would become meaningless, words like "elegant" " sweet" " fascinating" " beautiful" would become meaningless...

Of course they wouldn't! They are infinitely flexible words that reflect current and personal taste.

Person A: "Wow! She's beautiful!"

Person B: "Do you really think so? I find her quite plain."

Substitute any of your quoted adjectives into that conversation, and refer them to anything - a woman, a building, a sideboard - and it remains one that you would hear ubiquitously. What's more, the "beauty" referred to would change from age to age. For example, in the Tudor period, female beauty required fair hair, a white complexion and rosy cheeks and lips. A suntan was considered ugly and peasantish. Whereas today...

It's all subjectivity. Therefore there can be no right or wrong, only personal taste.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I can't disagree that those kinds of conversations happen, but where we would disagree is that I think there often is a right or wrong viewpoint. Conservation Officers, judgers of art or architecture, antique dealers, the buyers for the top fashion houses, spend their lives assessing the quality of the item in question, and consequently are well placed to make the decision on which is better.

My friend, who has a stand in a Grantham junk shop, was saying to me that she can't believe the horrible things people buy. She'll remark to a colleague how truly hideous an item is, and that it ought just be binned, and 5 minutes later someone will come in and buy it very happily. She has quite discerning and well-informed taste so I'm sure she's right, plus I've been in that shop and it is full of rubbish - people are wasting their money on unbelievable tat, and they need educating to improve their judgement and hone their shopping skills, and if taste were policed much more thoroughly, our environment would be vastly nicer.

All of which just goes to show Mr P is nice and kind and tolerant, and I'm a snobby old judgemental harridan. :wink:

 

[Feltwell]

Come on Joce! Are you really going to tell us that you've never seen some great work of art, revered by the critics and priced in the millions, and thought "I wouldn't give it house room - it's hideous!"?

And as for buyers for top fashion houses - how many would have approved of giant shoulder pads in the 1980's? And how many women did they actually look good on? Clothes fashion is about as fickle as it can get!

 

[JoceAndChris]

Sorry Feltwell but I can't concur with either of your examples! Big shoulder pads fitted perfectly in an era when women were gaining equality in the workplace, I personally preferred girly dresses through the 80s but I admired the women smashing up the glass ceilings in their shoulder pads and killer heels. I can completely see why they existed. As for the challenging art work, I really don't think in those stark terms. 99.9 % of art I wouldn't really want to live with - but that doesn't mean I can't be fascinated by the conditions and inspiration that provoked that work and have some degree of admiration for the artist's skill.

Sadly an un-appreciation of art is frequently down to ignorance, a can't be bothered attitude and a refusal to read and learn about the artist or the times or culture in which they worked. So, when one's natural response is "Gosh, that paint splattered canvas or cow in formaldehyde is totally repellent" then the next step should be to try to understand why that work was produced, why it's hanging in a gallery and what it contributes to the progression of art, so that you can give a more meaningful response than "that's crap" and be more fully engaged with the world in which we live. Dismissing it as pure rubbish and the critic who placed it there as bonkers is laziness of thought I'm afraid.

 

[worms]

Joce,
As you correctly say

people are wasting their money on unbelievable tat

but surely this simply reflects

the times or culture

that they live in?