In this article, I want to talk about taste, and I’m going to use taste as an umbrella term for taste, style and “coolness”. I’ve been thinking about this topic lately in regards to my own artistic practice, for those who don’t know I’m an illustrator and have been drawing since I was a kid. I’ve been thinking about taste because taste defines our unique artistic voice, but it also trains us as artists. A painting can be good on a technical level, but it is the cultivation of your own taste as an artist, or group of artists, that makes a work of art truly engaging.
Effort is Part of Taste
This is also part of what makes AI art so "soulless". Now one might argue that if taste is what makes a work of art engaging, then AI art should be as good or bad as the person who produces the prompt. However this belief is rooted in a misunderstanding of how taste is formed, taste is formed by the cultivation of one's own artistic craft, it is through practice that one comes to understand one's own taste. Ira Glass has a quote about taste, “All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.” I would take this a step further and say that while one may start out with an intuition of what good taste is through the consumption of media that informs their taste, it is not until they begin to implement their craft that they understand how their taste shapes their art.
Bacchus by Caravaggio, an example of chiaroscuro, and highly regarded work of art.
To use drawing as an example, you may appreciate the lighting style of chiaroscuro, but until you practice chiaroscuro yourself your taste as an artist is copying the taste of others, but not yet transforming it, once you begin to practice the technique your taste becomes your own. Fashion critic Bliss Foster, once said that “quality is care”, I’ve been thinking a lot about this statement. The care and effort you put into your artform is part of what makes your art good, it’s part of what shapes your taste. Without effort you are not expressing your taste, merely copying the taste of others.
Culture is Part of Taste
Patricia Morrison, goth musician and icon.
Taste is never independent of other people, taste is in fact informed by others and cannot exist in a vacuum, because taste is cultural. Much like being funny, good taste is something that must be conferred onto someone by others, because taste is rooted in culture, this is why there are different beauty standards and preferences in different cultures and subcultures. The aesthetic preferences of an American goth in Seattle is going to be wildly different from the preferences of a Hmong person in rural Laos, this is a fundamental part of taste. It is so fundamental that taste and culture are almost inseparable.
To use goth as an example, it’s generally agreed upon in alternative communities that buying a complete goth outfit from fast fashion brands is considered uncool. What makes a goth fit ordered wholesale off Temu tacky and lame, versus a goth fit curated piece by piece and DIYed by hand? Well two things culture and effort, a person who has pieced together a look bit by bit, they have likely been engaging in the goth subculture for awhile if their outfit took a long time to curate, and to go back to my example if learning chiaroscuro, they have put in the effort to implement their own taste into an artistic expression. Both the cultural context and the effort are fundamental in giving them good taste in goth clothing.
While we’re on the topic of a Gen X dominated subculture, let’s talk about a term Gen X popularized, the poser. The poser is trying to be part of a subculture that they don’t yet have the right to claim, and there is no worse poser than the person who commercializes the signifiers of a subculture without engaging in the community, in this way being a poser is comparable to cultural appropriation, both are a taking of something without giving back to the community. What’s more is that since taste is cultural, motifs which define a subculture, be they the makeup styles of goths, the embroidery patterns of Ukrainian vyshyvka, or the drawing styles of animations on Newgrounds, are collectively formed, have specific cultural context, and comprise the taste of that subculture. Artistic styles and motifs come out of groups of artists communicating with each other, and these motifs then go on to become iconic aspects of the subcultures that created them. And to the subcultures that collectively create them, they have specific meanings, when motifs are removed from the context they are created in, such as when a motif is mass produced and commercialized, the meaning is lost, resulting in poor taste on the part of the manufacturer or creator.
This is part of why mass produced objects, and corporatized art is viewed as being of less artistic merit. This is also why “AI slop” is so disliked. AI “art” removes both the effort that forms an artist’s taste, and the cultural context that shapes motifs found in the “art”, and in doing so, generates nothing but an echo of better art. Generative AI “art” is the equivalent of ordering a meal off an app, and claiming because you enjoy the flavors of the meal you, and because you ordered the meal, you are a chef. Until you try and incorporate the flavors you tasted into your own cooking, you are not a chef, you are a consumer, the same holds true for being an artist versus consuming art.
Taste is a Type of Power
So why bother to AI generate images and call them art? Why do AI companies so desperately want to be seen as arbiters of taste. Why do billionaires do things like, throw big bucks to the Met Gala? Why the desperation to be perceived as having good taste? Taste is a form of social currency, it’s the social currency of being cool, and it creates respect and trust. When we trust someone’s taste in art, we are more accepting of their actions, just look at how celebrities' crimes are treated. For AI companies, and for billionaires alike, having taste is a way of cultivating acceptance of their actions.
Anok Yai at the 2026 Met Gala, wearing fashion in theme of "Costume Art"
Ironically, taste is a type of social power that is often difficult for the rich, the powerful and the corporatized to obtain. New cutting edge art usually comes from those who are marginalized in one way or another, so much of our most beloved art has come from queer people, like Freddie Mercury and Gertude Stein, from poor drug addicts, like Janis Joplin and William S. Boroughs, from communities that have been disenfranchised by mainstream society. Look at how much popular American music has been defined by black American culture, a culture that has been among the most marginalized in the US. I my opinion new interesting tastes come from outside the mainstream because of a continual search for authenticity in art, and the less “mainstream” the less sanitized, the less corporatized, the less commercialized, and even the less popular a work of art is the more likely it is to be viewed as authentic. In a future post I may explore why we seek authenticity in art, but before I veer off into the weeds of free flowing thought, I want to refocus on the central topic of this article, taste, and how it is formed.
In my opinion, artistic taste is formed not simply by consuming art, but by the act of creation itself, much like tasting flavors in a dish, you might enjoy the dish, but until you begin cooking yourself you won’t fully understand how those flavors are incorporated into the dish, how they play off each other and why they were chosen for that dish. Furthermore, as in cooking, taste is cultural, and immersing yourself in the culture whose art form you are interested in pursuing will help you in your journey of developing your taste. If you have a creative practice of some kind, there is nothing like the act of creation to hone your taste.
Everything I write was written using only my brain, without of the help of LLMs, if you are interested in my research, please visit my website’s about page.
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Further Reading/Watching
What Does "High Quality" Mean in High Fashion?
Why Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed with Taste
Late capitalism creates its own aesthetic categories
The Fading Underground: The Decline of Subculture in the 21st Century