GOOD TASTE IS BAD TASTE - SOME JUMBLED THOUGHTS ABOUT AUTISTIC GIRLHOOD AND A WARHOLIAN EXPEDITION [OCTOBER 30TH 2023]

There's a John Waters quote that's been rumbling around in my brain for years. Randomly it'll pop up again; in the car, in the shower, in the bed.

'To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste. it's easy to disgust someone; I could make a ninety-minute film of people getting their limbs hacked off, but this would only be bad bad taste and not very stylish or original. To understand bad taste one must have very good taste. Good bad taste can be creatively nauseating but must, at the same time, appeal to the especially twisted sense of humor, which is anything but universal.'

Growing up taste was a warzone. I couldn't just enjoy something like other kids my age, as the way i enjoyed things was wrong. I loved obsessively and for too long. I spent 5 years refusing to engage with anything other than my favorite book series. Adults didn't quite understand it, kids my age got bored after a while - i repeated the same rituals for years and years. It always started out fine enough, i watched a movie and talked about it for a couple days. And then i didn't stop, and the days turned into months and sometimes years. Good taste turned into bad taste, like mold turns good fruit into bad fruit.

Taste is political, which people either ignore or spend their whole online lives fussing about. Certain things you can nostalgically watch in groups, you can bond and learn and grow: all because of your shared taste. Certain things will break friendgroups in an afternoon. I've been worn off my favorite book series as a kid, as JK Rowling decided one day that trans women are the root of all evil. Taste can change, suddenly or slowly.

Taste does not require actual artistic vision, or skill. An art critic has taste, of course, that's their whole job! Not everyone can be a critic, contrary to the popular statement. If everyone had taste then what would be the point? Everyone can be super, and when everyone's super; no one will be. Good taste requires something else to be in bad taste, this is the most fundemental part of the whole ordeal.

Andy Warhol had taste like no other, i've been told. A girl i used to know gushed about his genius at any opportunity she could. What a vision the guy had! What a way to revolutionize the stiffed up art world at the time!

Without his 'amazing' taste, Warhol would struggle to fit into the art world he publically detested and privately depended on. He relied on the women in his life, his so called "muses", to be the interesting part in his filmmaking. One of his muses that i think a lot about was Edie Sedgewick.

'According to Lily Saarinen, Sedgwick was very insecure about men, though all the men loved her.' Warhol saw with his fucking excellent taste what a charming and enigmatic woman she was, and for a year in the '60s she was the star of the movies he produced.

'Their final official movie began when Andy offered writer Robert Heide a sole directive: 'I want something where Edie commits suicide at the end.''... 'And then Dylan grabbed Edie’s arm and snarled, ‘Let’s split,’ and they did. As we stared up at the window, Andy murmured, ‘Do you think Edie will let us film her when she commits suicide?’'

I don't like Andy Warhol's taste, if it wasn't obvious enough.

My favorite band in my preteens was one direction. Music critics widely agreed that their messages were vain, and their popularity was a plague among teen girls everywhere. I got ridiculed by my male peers whenever i said what my favorite songs were. But then again, i was lucky i wasn't a belieber, cause i knew he fucking sucked! And he was gay!! The horror of being a belieber... I would rather die than be caught enjoying his music. At least one direction usually got a sentence or two about how their production was alright, and that's where the rolling stone article would end. I knew that my taste was better than others, and i thanked the heavens for that.

'What’s in a title? For Lady Gaga and her comeback, a fair bit: responses to her third album may well revolve around how her branding of it as a 'reverse Warholian expedition' hits you.
The pitch sounds like a fussy regurgitation of old ideas on the surface, which it is, but erase from existence those pop stars who dressed up cannibalised ideas in fancy togs and pop might be a duller place. This is Artpop’s contradiction: though simpler than its presentation seems to promise, it has enough fun splatter-gunning ideas to make sure some of it sticks.'

Artpop received generally mixed response from music critics, and Adam Markovitz from Entertainment Weekly stated that many of the album's songs were 'enjoyable but well-worn'. Helen Brown, writing in The Daily Telegraph, criticized Gaga's choice to do another album 'themed around her own stardom', and commented that although Gaga approached different genres of music, 'she doesn't do anything wildly original with them, but she has fun'.

In art school art is simultaneously objective and subjective. Most of the evaluations at the end of a project are tricky for both the teachers and the students. You cannot name the elephant in the room, even if you're staring it dead in the eyes. You must find a way to rebuild language. There is no such thing as real art. All art is real art. The question of "what is art?" is the most annoying thing to bring up, because in a room of experts no one will have anything new to add. The most fundemental part of the lessons is that art is undefinable. And this is all fine and well, if everyone agrees then everyone must be right. Problem solved! We still get grades in the class though. The sculpture that the guy next to me made didn't get as high a grade as my own painting. And my painting wasn't as adored as the girl who made a video of ambient sounds. Thank god for objective art!

Whatever. I'm gonna go watch the same movie i've been watching weekly for the last year. Maybe one day my taste will change, but not today.