Graham seems to be conflating skill with taste. The artists he mentions are skilled at art and he states that he is not. Distinguishing between skilled and unskilled work may be "good taste" but what is considered good art is more than just skill.
> So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it.
People can be measurably good at realising specific criteria, even if you can't absolutely compare these criteria.
I agree with Graham’s premise. My theory is that people don’t believe good taste exists because most people have bad taste and that’s too big of a pill to swallow. Would you rather admit to having bad taste, or posit that taste doesn’t exist? This is supported by Graham’s observation that contemporary art critics are nearly always disproven a generation or two later, meaning most critics have flawed taste.
Post-modernism, Dada, and surrealism drove the stake through this point, The Treachery of Images or Fountain (Duchamp) aren't extremely skillful, but they're world class art from a certain point of view.
That Graham wrote an entire essay rubbing up against this point without once encountering any literature that explains this (seminally Bourdieu, but there are many others) is surprising.
Narrative is critical, and often external, coming from the curator, dealer, critic, etc. Humans love stories.
“Death and Transfiguration” by Strauss is a beautiful, skillfully written piece of music. A story I heard is that Strauss on his deathbed exclaimed “it’s just like I wrote it!” Is it true? Did he say this? I have no idea, and in a sense it doesn’t matter. The piece is made better by the story I remember when I listen to it. It’s not in the music, it’s with the music.
This breaks down pretty quickly outside of fine art criticism. If I put 20 people in a room and only one of them has dressed "in good taste", they'll stick out badly enough that the consensus of the group will be that the one is in "bad taste".
The problem is that "taste" is vague, depends on ephemeral context and may be subject to popular whims and ignorance.
I think he is still correct though but for a different reason. When someone first creates art they may begin naively and create art that is lacking in subtlety, perhaps speaking to the more immature aspects of our human nature?
A good artist graduates from that phase and begins to recognize it in other artists — can say, "Yeah, I used to do art like that but I have moved on." In the same way the art connoisseur should be able to say, "Ahhh, I used to like art like that once, but my tastes now appreciate the more nuanced."
Maybe an example is a car that the owner did as "black-on-black", like Darth Vader, blacked out badges, blacked-out windows, black paint job.... You recognize that "Hey, all black, cool, right?"
Am I being too elitist?
(Hello user, BTW.)
While it is true that there are people who have a high degree of technical skill (or of talent) who have poor taste, which means that skill is not the direct cause of taste, it is an essential -- and significant element.
It's like assuming that practicing athletics does not make you better able to appreciate the achievements of other athletes.
Skill give both awareness and depth to your perception, and if you think neither of these attributes are applicable to determining quality, you lack the linguistic or cognitive ability to join the discussion.
I came here to type this sentence almost word for word.
I think this divide is most easily seen in the realm of acting, with no better example than Nicholas Cage: high skill level, low taste, at least judging by the majority of projects he chooses. (The counterargument might be that he realizes he's making a lot of bad movies and just needs the paycheck – he's infamous for blowing his money in foolhardy ways – but I definitely think at least some part of the essence of Nicholas Cage comes from conflict between high skill vs low taste).
I was friends with a guy in college who was a masterful musician (toured professionally as an all-purpose backup musician for some mid-tier bands you have heard of) and I used to argue with him about one particular band whose music I disliked [^1], and he would say, "But do you know how hard it is to play those notes? Look!" and he would stretch his fingers all over the bass fret, and I'd say, yeah, but... finger gymnastics is not the same as good music.
Also back in college, when CDs were a thing and money was scarce, I used to debate with myself about whether it would be worthwhile to accept the faustian bargain of trading my own musical tastes to exactly match the contents of the record store's discount CD bin, which was filled with things like Richard Marx albums [^2], so I could buy ten albums for five dollars.
[^1]: I don't want to start a flame war but it's the 80's-era band with complex bass arrangements which I have noticed is popular with sysadmin folks
[^2]: No disrespect intended to people who dig Richard Marx, or to Richard Marx himself, but it sticks in my mind as the thing that was in the bin I was looking at when I had this thought.
Even if you were right, the majority of canonical art history comes down to how rich people are spending their money.