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 The Invention
of Taste

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ii
 The Invention
of Taste
A Cultural Account of Desire,
Delight and Disgust in Fashion,
Food and Art

Luca Vercelloni
Translated by Kate Singleton

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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 Bloomsbury Academic
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Italian in 2005

© Luca Vercelloni, 2005 and 2016

English language translation © Kate Singleton, 2016

Luca Vercelloni has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as Author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without
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refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN : HB : 978-1-4742-7360-2
ePDF: 978-1-4742-7361-9
ePub: 978-1-4742-7362-6

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iv
 CONTENTS

Preface: Accounting for Taste vii

David Howes

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

1 The Success of a Metaphor 5

2 Pleasures and Morals 15

3 The Birth of Aesthetics and the Bifurcation of Tastes 39

4 The Arts of Happiness: A Journey Through Impure

Tastes 73
5 The Economy of Taste in Consumer Society 95

Notes 159
Bibliographies 177
Index 191

v
vi
 Preface: Accounting for Taste

David Howes

This book is about one of the more fascinating developments in the cultural
history of the senses: the invention of “taste.” It is written by an
interdisciplinary scholar of the first order, a man who moves comfortably
across the disciplines of history, philosophy and sociology. The fact that
Luca Vercelloni is also a brand expert, and founder of the international
consulting firm Brandvoyant, gives him an added insight into contemporary
tastes. His account is accordingly a “history of the present,” an archeology
of the genesis and proliferation of a peculiarly modern sensibility.
To give some historical background to this account, Aristotle identified
taste as one of the five senses, but characterized it as “a form of touch,”
hence lacking autonomy. In the ensuing centuries, as the idea of a hierarchy
of the senses was elaborated, taste was grouped with the “lower,” “bodily”
senses of touch and smell, as opposed to the “higher,” “intellectual” senses
of sight and hearing. Due to its association with self-indulgent sensuality, it
was subject to extensive moral regulation.1 To be a gourmand—that is, one
who revelled in the pleasures of the palate—was to commit the sin of
gluttony, one of the seven cardinal sins. With the increasing secularization of
society in modernity, gustatory indulgence would lose much of its negative
connotation and associations. Vercelloni relates, in one of the many
revelations of this book, that a number of former “sins” were in effect recast
as “virtues”: the sin of vainglory was reconstituted as personal ambition, the
sin of sloth was recast as leisure, and the gluttonous delight in fine foods was
converted, on the one hand, into gastronomy, and, on the other, metaphorized
as the sense of discernment, of beauty. According to Vercelloni, this
transformation of vices into virtues was a key element in the coming to be
of modern society.
The transformation or bifurcation in the meaning of taste, which appears
to have originated in sixteenth-century Italy or seventeenth-century Spain
(there is some dispute), unfolded gradually and reached its apogee in the
eighteenth century. That century has come down to us under various names:
the “Age of Reason” or “Enlightenment,” but also the “Age of Sensibility,”
and, of course, the “Century of Taste.” The German philosopher Alexander
von Baumgarten played a role in the doubling or reconstitution of taste as
the aesthetic sense by introducing the term aesthetic. This term was derived

vii
viii PREFACE: ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE

from the Greek aisthēsis (meaning sense perception) to refer to the capacity
to discern the unity in multiplicity of sensible qualities, without recourse to
reason. The new “aesthetic” sense was accorded a variety of names in
English until, thanks to the interventions of Alexander Pope and David
Hume, it became known as taste.2 However, it is another German philosopher,
Immanuel Kant, to whom we owe the most influential and indeed
transcendental account of this new faculty, as elaborated in the Critique of
the Power of Judgment.
Why taste? Vercelloni asks. Why not refer to this newly-theorized sense
of beauty as a “third eye” or “inner ear”? It would appear that what
commended the metaphor of taste to the thinkers of this period was the
presumed spontaneous and pre-rational as well as subjective character of
this sense. De gustibus non est disputandum—“there is no accounting for
taste,” as the saying went, with the implication that in this field “to each his
own” applies. This construction agreed with the rising tide of individualism,
the cult of sensibility, and the burgeoning influence of an empiricist mindset
that undermined the Platonic idea of Beauty. Henceforth, the experience of
beauty could only be a matter of perception, not an objective quality.
It was against this backdrop that the term taste was metaphorized—i.e.,
borrowed from the sphere of the palate and applied to the realm of aesthetics.
In the course of this transposition it was also severed from sensory pleasure.
The purification of taste was the work of Immanuel Kant. Vercelloni
emphasizes that the puritanical and totalitarian, though resolutely
egalitarian, account of taste as based in “disinterestedness” proposed by
Kant was but one construction among others, even if it would prove the
most enduring. There was also the more hedonistic and conciliatory though
distinctly élitist account proposed by Hume, which centred on the sensibility
of the educated gentleman or “Man of Taste.” For Kant, however, the
judgment of taste—as related particularly to the fine arts—had to be
disinterested, universal, necessary and pure, which is to say impermeable to
pleasure and need. Hence the famous line: “whoever declares something to
be beautiful wishes that everyone should approve of the object in question.”3
In this way, beauty (or the experience of “spiritual” pleasure which derives
from it) was isolated, sealed off from the body, and what is merely agreeable
or useful, and came to center on the elevation of the mind. In a new variation
of the religious strictures on sensuality, everything turned on the “continence
of desire” or taming of inclinations, the “snuffing of sensuality,” as Vercelloni
puts it, in the cause of intellectual refinement.
The elevation of sensibility decreed by Kant was motivated by ideology.
It was tied to the Enlightenment dream of a society based on the principle of
universal rights and mutual respect in which each subject “gives the law” to
him- or herself voluntarily. On this account, taste (aesthetic taste, that is)
promotes upward integration and the edification of the subject, in contrast
to the ancien régime, where taste was the preserve of an élite, modeled on
the unrestricted gratifications of the aristocracy. However, there was a
contradiction embedded in this construction. On the surface it appeared to
 PREFACE: ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE ix

be open to every man, and held out the possibility of consensus, the
emergence of a shared sensibility. But this construction obscured the
underside of the judgment of taste, which entailed the rejection of all that is
facile, childish, vulgar or “primitive.” Viewed from this angle, taste can also
be seen as a force for discrimination downwards. To have taste, a certain
savoir vivre, as the bourgeoisie would come to define it, could serve as a
source of “cultural capital,”4 which was the very antithesis of disinterestedness
as conceived by Kant.
Vercelloni is adept at exposing the contradictions embedded in the Kantian
doctrine of “pure” taste, with its emphasis on controlling (or sublimating)
desire “for the betterment of sensibility and manners.” But he does not stop
there. Rather, he plunges into an exploration of various “lesser” manifestations
of taste, which developed as the term spread to encompass discernment in
other domains besides the fine arts—most notably food and fashion—on its
way to becoming the most ubiquitous disposition of the nascent consumer
culture. The taste of the palate and taste in clothing were dismissed or
belittled by Kant on account of their seemingly ephemeral and whimsical
character—their lack of continence and consistency. But these “impure”
tastes, with their accent on frivolity or excess (i.e. distance from necessity)
would win out over the aesthetics of solemnity and distance championed by
Kant on account of their link to the post-Enlightenment penchant for self-
fashioning and privileging of personal identity over social equality.
To understand this shift entails delving into the other meaning of the
adage De gustibus non est disputandum, which is hidden from us today
because of our ignorance of the premodern cosmology on which it was based.
Vercelloni’s archeology of gustatory perception indicates that the reason
there could be no disputing taste was due to medieval dietetics. The latter
regimen was informed by humoral theory, which held that the temperament
of each individual was determined by the balance of humors in the body,
which, in turn, was often assigned an astrological basis. The task of the cook
was to blend the hot or cold, wet or dry qualities of the food served up to
match or modulate the temperament of his patron. In this view, there was
nothing temperamental (in a modern sense) or fickle about taste. Individual
tastes were cosmologically conditioned, hence given in the order of things,
intrinsically incommensurable, and therefore impervious to disputation.
Of note in this connection was the curious phenomenon of the “silence
of taste”5 in the first cooking manuals and recipe books (dating from the
mid-seventeenth century) which contained the seeds of the discourse of
gastronomy. The authors of these books did not rationalize their concoctions
in terms of the pleasures they afforded (that would have been immoral), but
referred instead to the Providence of the Creator, or the therapeutic benefits
of different foodstuffs. Taste (gustatory taste, that is) was muted, and, aside
from providing recipes, the food writing of the period dwelt mainly on the
rules of comportment (table manners) and the visual order or architecture
of the banquet, as if the repasts concerned were intended more as feasts for
the eyes than the palate. It was not until the latter half of the eighteenth
x PREFACE: ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE

century that the cult of good food and elegant dining, with Versailles as its
epicentre, became established, and the thoroughly modern figure of the
gourmet or gastronome arrived on the scene.
The role of the gastronome, as the name implies, is “to rule over the
appetites of others.” Unlike the seventeenth-century authors of cookery
books, who often wrote in the third person, the gastronome writes in the
first person. He uses his personal taste to sample and pronounce judgments,
which can then be followed by others (i.e. status seekers). The whole point
of the gastronome’s existence is to make an exception of himself, to “show
off his unparalleled sensory refinement.”6 His is a discourse that eschews
universality, being founded on the pleasures of diversity, and goes to great
length in the pursuit of detail. Gastronomic writing evoked “voluptuous
experience, titillating the tastebuds and promoting lubricious salivation.”
Kant—as well as the Church Fathers—would have been aghast.
The literature of gastronomy never amounted to more than a minor
literary genre, disdained by philosophers, but its “appetising eloquence”
proved disarming—and charming. Most importantly, according to Vercelloni,
it was addressed to an audience “desirous of discovering exactly what it
should experience, prefer and appreciate,” and provided “a way of enclosing
individual sensibility.” This function was particularly important in the heady
days after the Revolution of 1789 when restaurants sprang up all over Paris,
manned by the chefs who had been put out of work by the execution of their
patrons. Middle-class restaurants provided the bourgeoisie with an
institutional context for self-fashioning, and the gastronome provided them
with a compass and language for their desires. Another key supplier of the
means of individuation that arose during this period was the fashion house.7
Like the restaurant, it provided its clients with a range of options from which
each could choose. In this way, haute cuisine and haute couture, which were
both inspired by and derived from court society, were commercialized and
rendered respectable diversions as “vehicles for the principle of personal
style.” From this perspective, the most salient outcome of the revolutionary
period was thus not so much the right to equality as the “right to desire,” to
pursue happiness. The “arts of pleasing”—gastronomy and fashion—now
vied with the fine arts as avenues for the discovery and refinement of
individual sensibility.
This brings us to the final chapter of Vercelloni’s book, “The Economy of
Taste in Consumer Society,” which covers the period from the beginning of
the nineteenth century down to the present. In the section on “Bewitching
Commodities,” Vercelloni traces the trajectory from the first magasins de
nouveautés and arcades to the grands magasins, such as the Bon Marché
department store, and universal exhibitions that served as sites for the
“democratization of luxury” and idealization of commodities. This period
witnessed the transformation of capitalism from a mode of production
predicated on self-discipline and sensory restriction into a mode of
presentation-seduction (e.g. window displays, advertising) and consumption,
premised on self-indulgence and sensory enticement.
 PREFACE: ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE xi

In “Ease and Progress,” Vercelloni describes how the shock that came in
the wake of the democratization of luxury and the onslaught of commodities,
the proliferation of tastes, and the rise of mass taste provoked a rearguard
action. This came in the form of the Modernist Movement. The proponents
of Modernism denigrated ornament, denounced the spread of “feminine
taste” (on account of its alleged frivolity and excess), and decried anything
that was easy, or comfortable. They spoke in the name of rationality, progress
and efficiency with such slogans as “form follows function” and “less is
more.” Kant would have approved. The “enlightened” ascetic aesthetic of
contemplation and distance reasserted itself —as can be seen in the linear
purity and grey predictability of the modern office tower, or the home
designed as a “machine for living.” Then Modernism lost its hold, became
just one style among others, and was even outstripped by the style of
streamlining (e.g. the tailfins of a 1950s Chevrolet, which had as much to do
with ornamentation as function).
In a section entitled “The Gallery of Iconoclasm,” Vercelloni relates how
modern art (the art of the avant garde) was born with “the explicit intention
of not pleasing.” Divorced from aesthetics (as conventionally understood),
it became an outlet for “the spirit of desecration” and scandal. This in turn is
exemplified by Marcel Duchamp’s submission of “Fountain,” which consisted
of a urinal turned on its side, as an exhibition for the Salon of Independent
Artists in New York in 1917. By taking the lowliest of everyday objects
(a readymade at that) and promoting it as art, Duchamp upset and made
a mockery of the established norms of art. (While rejected at the time,
Duchamp’s gesture has been growing in stature ever since.) Art after Duchamp
would emphasize individual genius (or self-referentiality) over beauty and
skill. As for taste, “Taste is no longer the faculty for recognizing an abstract
ideal, a shared goal to which all ages in history were supposed to draw
closer. [Instead, it] is Style that commands, the prototype of all individual
predilections: gratuitous, revocable, and yet at the same time irresistible and
inexplicably contagious.”
In “Tattooed Man,” Vercelloni delves deeper into the election of style as
a dominant ideal of taste in the twentieth century as exemplified by the
figure of the fashion designer. The fashion designer “lays down the laws of
vanity”: his or her signature helps people in their choice of what to wear by
canonizing (a particular) taste or style. Designers such as Christian Dior and
Pierre Cardin have also drawn up a vast range of previously unrelated
commodities—“from garments to cosmetics, chocolate, furniture and
appliances”—into the realm of fashion, under the system of brand licensing,
investing them “with their personal charisma to further their commercial
success.” The exponential growth of the style trade, which centres on “the
metamorphosis of brands into the symbols and mirages of lifestyles,” can no
longer be explained in terms of competition between social classes, “trickle-
down” effects, and the like, because designers now increasingly take their
inspiration from the streets (e.g., grunge, hiphop). Rather, the “irresistibility
of fashion lies in its ability to foment desires and encourage the compulsion
xii PREFACE: ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE

for luxury, or at least what is superfluous, in the name of self-realization.”

Sadly, being a follower of fashion is no guarantee of happiness or “material
grace.” It just as often issues in disappointment and depression, “the empty
chimera of unfulfilled promise.”
In the final section of Chapter 5, Vercelloni turns his attention to the
“nutritional prosperity” that the industrialization of the food chain and
globalization have wrought. Ours is an age of overabundance that holds out
the promise of unlimited freedom of choice. It is no longer the case that you are
what you eat; instead you eat (or at least try to eat) what you would like to be.
Food choice is no longer conditioned by cultural background and family habit,
but rather by self-affirmation and body-image. However, this ostensible gastro-
utopia has created more hunger, not less, and instituted an ever-growing rift
between control and indulgence, between the duties involved in looking after
one’s health and giving in to temptation. Whence the proliferation of diets
promising nutritional salvation and longevity, and all the new gastronomies of
pleasure beginning with the nouvelle cuisine of the 1970s, which heralded a
return to “nature,” the primacy of ingredients over processing, and “lighter,”
“simpler” fare (in contrast to the monumental, pompous dishes of haute
cuisine). Also of note in this connection is the phenomenon of “gastronomic
restoration”—the counter-revolution in taste that has put pasta and olive oil
(essential ingredients of the Mediterranean diet), daily doses of red wine (the
French elixir) and “gastronomic treasures” (the “typical” products of a given
terroir) back on the “High Table of Comestibles.” Of course, these time-
honored traditions are no less invented than the latest food fad, but we delight
in the reassurance they provide just the same.
Summing up, Vercelloni writes: “Impure, changeable and concupiscent
though it may be, taste is the true engine of consumer society, the organ of
individual preferences and the tool with which people build up their
personalities. Spurned by educated aesthetics, it has its revenge in ratifying
an inalienable right: the search for human happiness; in other words the
right to desire.”
In this account, I have provided only the briefest sketch of the many
twists and turns of Vercelloni’s own account of the “odyssey” of taste. The
map he provides is vital reading for anyone—taste-maker, cultural historian
or ordinary consumer—interested in understanding how tastes are invented
and diffused in today’s society. He gives us access, in a way which is rare in
contemporary cultural history, to the big picture, in all its eclectic detail.
When this work was first published in Italian in 2005, it attracted much
critical acclaim. Vercelloni nevertheless revised it extensively for this English
edition. He was fortunate to find Kate Singleton to translate his work, for
she has succeeded magnificently at transposing the author’s many subtle,
and deeply perspicacious, turns of phrase into their English equivalents.
Just as the history of sight is not synonymous with that of painting, and
the history of smell must needs depart from that of perfume, so the history
of taste could never be confined to the history of cuisine. The extent to
which taste has spread since its metaphorization, and become the ground
 PREFACE: ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE xiii

for so many struggles (between classes, between sexes) in so many domains

(fashion, food, art, architecture, design), across so many senses (there is
taste in music as well as food), the paradoxical way in which taste has
been universally adopted as a means for individual expression and
gratification and serves as the engine of consumer society—point to the
necessity for a cultural account of taste. It is such an account that is provided
in this book, giving the lie to the still commonplace expression De gustibus
non est disputandum.

Notes
1 For excellent accounts of the moral regulation of the senses in the early modern
period see W. de Boer, “The Counter-Reformation of the Senses,” in A. Bamji, G.
Jansen and M. Laven (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter
Reformation, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, Surrey, 2013, pp. 243-60; and C.
Classen, The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch, University of Illinois
Press, Champaign, 2012.
2 Other terms for this new faculty included the “inner sense,” the “seventh sense”
and the “sense of beauty.” The invention—or, discrimination—of new senses in
the eighteenth century is a fascinating topic, which calls out for more
investigations like the present one. See D. Howes, “Introduction,” in D. Howes
(ed.), The Sixth Sense Reader, Berg, Oxford, 2009.
3 I. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2000, p. 121.
4 P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1984.
5 V. von Hoffman, Goûter le monde: Une histoire culturelle du goût à l’époque
moderne, Peter Lang, Brussels, 2013.
6 Kant did not approve of people making exceptions of themselves in aesthetics—
or in ethics. See G. Grant, English-Speaking Justice, House of Anansi Press,
Toronto, 1985.
7 Vercelloni quotes Lipovetsky regarding how the rise (and volatility) of fashion is
related to “the awareness of being an individual with a specific destiny, the
desire to express an original identity and the cultural celebration of personal
identity.” For Vercelloni himself, however, the matter is not just one of
individuation but also one of feminization—the feminization of taste, “the
predominance of the female sensibility.” See especially his discussion of the
Great Sacrifice and the Great Revenge.

References
Boer, Wietse de, “The Counter-Reformation of the Senses,” in Alexandra Bamji,
Geert Jansen and Mary Laven (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to
the Counter Reformation, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, Surrey, 2013,
pp. 243-60.
 xiv PREFACE: ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE

Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Harvard

University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1984.
Classen, Constance, The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch, University of
Illinois Press, Champaign, 2012.
Grant, George, English-Speaking Justice, House of Anansi Press, Toronto, 1985.
Hoffman, Viktoria von, Goûter le monde: Une histoire culturelle du goût à
l’époque moderne, Peter Lang, Brussels, 2013.
Howes, David, “Introduction,” in David Howes (ed.), The Sixth Sense Reader,
Berg, Oxford, 2009, pp. 1-52.
Kant, Immanuel, Critique of the Power of Judgment, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2000.

David Howes
Series Editor
30 September 2015

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 Acknowledgments

Though this book aims to trace a cultural history of taste through different
ages, conceptually it starts from the end: from my own empirical observations
of consumer behavior, attitudes and aspirations over a period of three
decades and in around forty countries. During my research it became
increasingly evident that geography, age, gender, social background and
education influence and shape people’s varied lifestyles and preferences,
dreams and desires. Culture is the yardstick and engine of the apparently
volatile kaleidoscope of human tastes.
When culture is freed from the artificial confines of academic debate and
is extended to embrace material and social phenomena, it also provides the
only reliable standpoint for appraisal of the evolution of taste as a social
fact.
Several important books have been written about taste, and of course I
am indebted to Bourdieu, Croce, Dorfles, Elias, Simmel, Sombart,
Tatarkiewicz and many other eminent scholars who have dealt with the
topic. But I always I felt that something was missing. The subject required a
comprehensive overview that could explain the outwardly irrational
manifestations and whimsical practices of taste within the fields of arts,
fashion, cuisine, and entertainment. And, above all, why all these fields are
subject to the same concept—taste. Analysis of a huge quantity of facts and
figures persuaded me that individual taste represents a cultural construct, an
implicit self-portrait that relates our identity to that of others in an ongoing
process of emulation and differentiation, sense of belonging and aspiration
to change. Such are the guidelines that I have used in my exploration of the
different stages of the history of taste.
I spent five years writing the first Italian edition of the book, and another
five revising and enriching the text for the present English edition. I
am particularly grateful to my friend Sebastiano Cossia Castiglioni, a
connoisseur of fine arts, wine and cuisine, who encouraged me to accomplish
this double effort and provided me with precious advice. I am also very
grateful to Kate Singleton who patiently and skillfully accomplished the
polished and impeccable English translation of the text. Special thanks also
go to Serena Feloj who helped me with a meticulous bibliographic revision.
Lastly, I am beholden to Jennifer Schmidt of Bloomsbury, who first
acknowledged the value of the manuscript, and I especially am grateful to
professor David Howes for his enthusiastic support of the publication and
for agreeing to write the insightful preface.

xv
xvi
 Introduction

The history of successful ideas is full of discontinuity and metamorphosis.

And that of taste is no exception. For such twists and turns actually help
promote what is new, widening its relevance and sphere of acceptance,
changing habits and modifying representative images.
The odyssey of taste is swathed in enigma and paradox, starting with the
original meaning of the word. As one of the five senses, taste is a natural
faculty, an integral part of our biological constitution. However, it is also
acquired, and thus not entirely natural: an expression of habit, tradition
and the civilizing process no less than of corporeity. Taste is stimulated by
hunger and the instinct for survival, but also by the seduction of value and
privilege. It captures and reveals human pleasure, starting with the primordial
need to satiate hunger and thirst. It is adaptable, variable and subject
to influence, in relation to the variety and availability of food and drink.
The sense of beauty that guides visual taste presents much the same problem,
in that it is spontaneous and unintentional, and yet at the same time
susceptible to improvement, refinement and education. Though it tends to
conform to models imposed by society, it can also vary according to culture
and historic period. Thus both gastronomic and aesthetic taste are
characterized by the same basic ambivalence.
This essential contradiction is part and parcel of the history of taste,
perceived as an expression of a sensibility that can be communicated,
learned and perfected. On this account taste can also claim to be an
uncontestable form of knowledge, however partial, imperfect and elusive it
may appear to be.
Another feature intrinsic to the idea is the stratification of meanings and
spheres of experience inherent in its development. Taste comes across as
pooled knowledge, as an accumulation that absorbs and reshapes earlier
conceptions rather than erasing them. When the term is used to refer to
something immaterial, the original sensorial meaning acts as an analogy
that supports and divulges the new semantic content. Even when taste
invests an exclusively spiritual sphere, its relationship to the palate remains,
by way of difference and contrast.
When knowledge and experience are stratified, they inevitably interweave
and do so with many other threads of history. In particular, with the history

1
2 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

of art and its contemplative function, which both have a great deal to do
with taste as a metaphor. But also with the history of costume and fashion,
whose evolution mirrors the loosening of moral constraints; with the
invention of good manners; with the development of luxury; with the
stylization of vanity and appearance—all of which are an integral part of
the metaphor in its widest acceptance. As for the history of ideas and
ideology, it engages taste within the overall perspective of modern subject’s
spiritual prerogatives. Lastly there is the history of cuisine and gastronomy,
which tends towards the refinement of the palate and the portrayal of taste
as a manifestation of privilege and cultural accomplishment.
At this point it is clear that only an “eclectic” reconstruction of the history
of taste can throw light on the points of contact, mutual influence and fusion
that have characterized its parallel lives. Such an approach has the advantage
of transcending the disciplinary confines and interpretative constraints
typical of the specialist perspective. Its originality lies in its ability to cross
borders and provide new insights.
The first of the five chapters of this book is devoted to the invention of
the metaphor that transformed a bodily sense into a faculty of the mind.
Scholars of the past have posited a number of explanations for this
phenomenon, but most of them leave many questions unanswered. Why
exactly did taste become a metaphor? What counter-effects did this semantic
development have on artistic perception? What were the conditions that
made this side-step possible? As we shall see, the famous medieval adage de
gustibus non est disputandum helped mediate the transition, but acquired a
whole new meaning in the process.
Chapter 2 reconstructs the main stages in the “moral history” of taste.
Starting with the manifestations of “weakness” criticized by ancient Greek
and Roman commentators, it traces the secularization of the capital sins to
focus on the birth of sumptuous cuisine and the necessary refinement of
appetites. In so doing, it throws light on how the spread and acceptance of
an idea paved the way for the expression of predilection, and thus the
evolution of customs and the development of self-awareness.
In Chapter  3, thoughts are centered on the main theories of taste
propounded by philosophers once the phenomenon had spread from the
sphere of the body to that of the mind. Though many authors have argued
that the whole process was both natural and intrinsically excellent, it is our
opinion that the Kantian divide between palate and mind is anything but the
objective fruit of theoretical endeavor. To the contrary, it is the necessary
corollary of Enlightenment equalitarianism.
Chapter 4 takes a look at two “lesser” manifestations of taste: gastronomy
and fashion, which continue to exercise considerable influence despite
Kant’s evident disapproval. Until recently, in fact, academic study spurned
these two spheres of activity, which were deemed extraneous to serious
literature. The chapter also proposes possible explanations for just why this
should have been so.
Finally, Chapter 5 deals with the various different manifestations of taste
 INTRODUCTION 3

in contemporary society, where the term implies “good taste” and is thus a
measure of social distinction. This in itself means redefining the phenomenon
and establishing a new framework for its applications. The commercialization
of taste, the aesthetic straitjacket imposed by architecture and design, the
rejection of common criteria for appreciating modern art, and the wide
range of identities offered by ubiquitous fashion all relate to the paradoxes
of taste during the twentieth century. The chapter then examines taste
relating to the palate in an age when such sensorial perception has been
irreversibly remodeled and transformed by ideological and conceptual
constraints. The chapter ends by providing an account of the triumph of
pleasure in consumer society, with its power to manipulate the development
of taste, from its first appearance as a metaphor through to the present day.
4
 1
The Success of a Metaphor

The figurative use of the term “taste” to refer to the human faculty for
discerning between what is beautiful and what is ugly is a relatively recent
cultural acquisition. It implies being in possession of measure, refinement
and skill (in dressing, self-expression, and the appraisal of other people’s
accomplishments); but also the enjoyment of products intended for
contemplation, and indeed the ability to describe a cultural context and the
stylistic features characteristic of a given period, nation or artistic circle.
Taste, as a word, has become so common in everyday language that
nowadays it would be impossible to contain it within the sphere of its
original meaning: the sensation of the palate, or the perception of the flavor
of a given food or delicacy. Taste has definitively come to embrace the
universe that derives from that sensorial Ur-experience, in other words, the
experience of what is beautiful.
Yet, for a good thousand years, Western civilization was perfectly able to
cope without this extended meaning, despite people’s evident interest in the
availability of precious products. Luxury and opulence, elegant attire and
coiffure, fine tapestries, paintings and sculptures all held sway well before
the word taste was introduced to signify discernment. Those who could,
read poetry, listened to music and went to the theater. They talked long and
deep about the sublime, and even spent fortunes on the purchase of particular
foods and spices. And they did so without feeling the need to establish a link
or similitude between the perception of beauty and the sense that pertains to
the palate.

The Sense of Discernment

The figurative use of the term taste thus brings about a neologism, which is
believed to have spread between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
leaving its mark on manners of speech and thought.
That said, however, scholars do not agree over what exactly came when.
Benedetto Croce,1 among others, argued that the origin of the metaphor is to
be found in the stirring of arts and ideas that centered on Renaissance Italy.
Initially interchangeable with “judgment,” a word it was later to replace,
taste in this case was the organ of aesthetic sensibility: that special faculty

5
 6 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

that eludes reason, but allows communication between the artist and his or
her public. In other words, between two characters who play different roles
with respect to the past. The artist is no longer the skilled craftsman who
submits to the desires of the patron or client, but an individual moved by
inspiration and endowed with charismatic talent who expresses his creative
genius in his work. Those who are able to grasp and appreciate the brilliance
and originality of style above and beyond meaning or intent constitute the
artist’s public. And it is taste that creates the link between the two.
Other scholars, including Schümmer2 and Franckowiak,3 were more
inclined to attribute the paternity of the taste metaphor to Spanish authors
on morality, especially Baltasar Gracián, for whom taste was not so much an
expression of the recognition of beauty as a person’s ability to choose and
pursue whatever suits his or her nature and contributes to the sensation of
happiness. It was thus conceived as an inclination that is both natural and
cultivated, in so far as it is part of human society and only in this instance
acquires relevance and value. Within this perspective, Gracián speaks of
good taste, which he deemed a precious gift in social life. Indeed, he related
it to tact, which is another sense that has extended its original range of
significance to embrace discretion and composure.
Regardless of where the extended meaning of taste may first have
originated, the cultural roots underlying the success of the metaphor are
somewhat different. While both aim at explaining the newly acquired
importance of sensibility within the hierarchy of human faculties, one
pertains to the world of art and the awareness of beauty, and the other to
the refinement and stylization of behavior. The taste metaphor is thus an
expression of the new culture that is both a product and an image of Europe,
but one that is based on an essential ambiguity, shaped by growing social
awareness and therefore subject to continual change.
Benedetto Croce hesitated initially, but ultimately ascribed the paternity
of the metaphor to Italy. Later Robert Klein followed suit, but with greater
conviction. In their view, it was Italy that nurtured the modern conception
of taste into being.
According to Klein, the gestation of the taste concept as an expression of
aesthetic sensibility came about during the sixteenth century, under the
influence of natural philosophy, especially in the disciplines relating to the
soul: astrology, the theory of temperaments, magic and their most subtle,
worldly manifestations, particularly the theory of love, of female beauty, of
persuasion, of musical modes and of melancholic genius.4
Klein identified in the treatises on art of the period a progressive
replacement of the term “judgment” with that of “taste,” and argued that this
lexical mutation both accompanied and to some extent promoted a cultural
hiatus. For while “judgment” still bears witness to a certain intellectual
approach and assumes the existence of ideal rules, the taste metaphor suggests
something more akin to an instinctive faculty relating to the appetites, a
sphere in which judgment (or its quasi synonym, “discretion”) introduces a
further, decisive acknowledgment: the discovery of artistic individuality.

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 THE SUCCESS OF A METAPHOR 7

The success of the metaphor is thus the epilogue of an age in the history
of aesthetics: the doctrine of mimesis, which had prevailed for several
thousand years, gives way to the exaltation of individual genius as the source
and inspiration of artistic creation, a wellspring of energy that transcends
the established order and stands in opposition to tradition. As Hauser has
pointed out, this conception was entirely alien to the Middle Ages, which
did not attribute value to originality and to creative spontaneity, but rather
urged artists to imitate, and indeed copy, their masters.5 No longer tied to
ideal canons and established rules, the painter heeded only his own inner
desire to “paint himself.” In other words, a concept of taste that was
tantamount to style or manner brought about an “involuntary self-portrait”
on the part of the artist, which in its turn ushered in newfound glory,
reputation and market value.
The inevitable counterpart to artistic celebrity was the parallel refinement
of critical acumen among those in a position to appreciate and appraise
works of art. Indeed, it was taste that acted as the commercial platform
linking artist and potential customer. And it is worth pointing out that the
phenomenon of collecting that came about during the Renaissance coincided
chronologically with the perception of the artist as a creative spirit that was
not anchored to the desires of the patron or customer.
Up until the fifteenth century, the art market had been shaped by demand.
Each work was created as the fruit of a commission, which implied exact
awareness of where it was to be displayed: an altarpiece for a chapel with
which the painter was familiar, for instance, or a devotional painting for a
particular room, or indeed the portrait of a family member for a certain
wall.6 Since many different arts, which included what we would now call
crafts as well as painting and sculpture, were practiced in the same workshop,
they tend to blend in with each other. Only during the following century,
when art was accorded a degree of autonomy, did the creative spirit acquire
independence from practical goals in a manner that placed art on a totally
different footing to crafts. At this point the artist was free to give full rein to
his creative inspiration, with little regard for the desires of the patron or
client. And this, in its turn, gave rise to a new generation of buyers: experts,
connoisseurs, who no longer made their purchases as part of celebratory or
commemorative obligations, but as an expression of their desire to possess
the works of famous artists of that period, or indeed of the past. Little
wonder, then, the market for antiquities also came into being during the
same age.
Essential to this development was the fact that the experts and
connoisseurs were necessarily “huomini di gusto,” or men of taste, who
attributed value to works of art regardless of their practical purpose. So just
as taste became a metaphor, it also evolved to imply good taste—even if the
term itself was still to be coined. This meant that right from the outset, the
concept of taste was able to exercise a sort of cultural monopoly: “what we
call Renaissance was the patrimony of ideas, jealously guarded and exclusive,
of an élite imbued with Latin culture. The most meaningful works of art
8 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

were created for this circle. The world at large knew nothing about them
whatsoever. This gave rise to the distance between the cultured minority and
the uncultured majority that was to prove insuperable and decisive for all
future developments, though it was practically unheard of in earlier ages.
No one ever decided (as they did later) to create a culture that was deliberately
reserved for an élite, and from which the majority was to be excluded.”7
If good taste is the ultimate arbiter in appraising works of art, the
attention of the public inevitably slips from content to form, from
interpretation to impression, from understanding to contemplation. Art at
this point claims its own right to exist, freeing itself of the subordinate role
it had played in an earlier age, when it had necessarily contained a message,
albeit in allegorical terms. Formal perfection and immediate impact were
certainly required to capture the attention of the viewer, but only as a way
of achieving a higher goal: that of communicating a moral, religious or
social message. In this sense, art worked along the same lines as fables,
which in medieval times turned to elegance and style not for the sake of
beauty, but in order to be rhetorically effective.
From the Renaissance on, the importance of the communicative functions
of a work of art diminished as the accent on visual impact became more
marked. Moreover, the contemplation of beauty brought with it conscious
admiration of the creative genius of the artist. If medieval art was largely
bent on education, the primary focus of that of the Renaissance was the
principle of delectatio, or experiencing delight. This was a radical break
with the past.
A great many books have been written in praise of the autonomy acquired
by art. Very few, on the other hand, have taken a more critical approach to
the subject. Yet to appreciate fully the degree of change that came about, the
cultural shock that it produced, and the concomitant disarray in artistic
perception, it would probably be more instructive to listen to the lament of
the defeated rather than the panegyrics of the victors—and not only because
modernity has learned to turn a deaf ear to the ensuing confusion. To
formulate the question in more immediate terms, if an orthodox Schoolman
of the Middle Ages were catapulted into the twentieth century (or even the
nineteenth, for that matter) and could obtain an overall view of the history
of art during the past five centuries, what would be his reaction?
Confronted by the despotic supremacy of form over content, he might
well surmise that “the current approach (to works of art) may be compared
to that of a traveler who, when he finds a signpost, proceeds to admire its
elegance, to ask who made it, and finally cuts it down to use as a mantelpiece
ornament.”8
To our hypothetical time traveler, not only the emphasis on form would
appear to be incomprehensible, but also the aesthetic foundations of modern
art: “The Greek original of the word ‘aesthetic’ means perception by the
senses. Aesthetic experience is a faculty that we shared with animals and
vegetables, and is irrational. The ‘aesthetic soul’ is that part of a psychic
makeup that ‘senses’ things and reacts to them: in other words, the
 THE SUCCESS OF A METAPHOR 9

‘sentimental’ part of us. To identify our approach to art with the pursuit of
these reactions is not to make art ‘fine,’ but to apply it only to the life of
pleasure.”9 So to claim that the aesthetic can be assimilated with art is simply
misguided: “Aesthetic experience is of the skin you love to touch, or the fruit
you love to taste. (To speak of) ‘disinterested aesthetic contemplation’ is a
contradiction in terms and a pure non-sense.”10
At this point the astonished Schoolman would be bound to express his
complete disapproval of what he had seen. If art fails to communicate ideas,
aiming at no higher good than the promise of pleasure, if its only goal is to
tickle our emotional sphere, then the chances are that feelings alone will
claim to be the arbiter of beauty, and all judgment will be a question of taste.
In other words, all aesthetic appraisals will be entirely subjective. If this is
the case, then art would be not just a question of opinion, but also the
subject of moral reproof: “The purpose of art it to give pleasure, the work
of art as a source of pleasure is its own end; (. . .) our conception of beauty
is literally skin-deep; (. . .) the work of art is then a luxury, an accessory to
the life of pleasure.”11 Furthermore, “to equate love of art with love of fine
sensation is to make of works of art a kind of aphrodisiac”:12 today we
“prostitute its thesis to an aesthesis; and this is the sin of luxury.”13
To think that the taste metaphor could lead to so much!
As Croce pointed out, the expression was coined as a result of the new
ideas and disquisitions on art. With respect to Klein’s reconstruction,
however, Croce moved the birth of the metaphor forward to the seventeenth
century, when “several new words emerged, or new meanings for existing
words, such as: genius, taste, imagination or fantasy, sentiment and other
similar terms.”14 Amid such lexical fervor, the word taste took on a number
of figurative meanings. In Italy and Spain, the term gusto, borrowed directly
from the sphere of the palate and applied to the spirit—or indeed to
entertainment—was equivalent to pleasure or delight. Another meaning that
was equally common in Italy, as Klein also appreciated, was judgment
(giudizio), applied to “any literary, scientific or artistic matter.”15 For Croce,
however, there were only two anticipations of what taste, “the special faculty
or attitude of the soul,” would mean in modern times. He initially believed
that Spain and France were the source of this semantic development. In the
mid-1600s, Spain adopted what Croce described as an expression of “concise
eloquence: good taste,” meaning a form of behavior based on discretion or
tact, whereas France, during the last quarter of the same century, started
using the term in its aesthetic sense.16 Later, however, Croce reviewed his
original attribution, distinguishing between the words themselves and the
ideas for which they stood, and arriving at the conclusion that Italy had
played a fundamental role in the ensuing extension of meaning. “It was the
Italians . . . who posited a special aesthetic power or faculty that was able to
judge without logical arguments, as clearly defined by Zuccolo in 1623.”17
The fact remains, however, that the Italian and French dictionaries of the
period fail to include the new meaning of the term. Yet while the early
editions of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca are entirely reticent
10 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

on the subject,18 the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française (1694) does at

least prepare the ground for change, listing and clarifying in considerable
detail most of the modern interpretations of taste. Alongside expressions
that were evidently already in use, such as “good taste, delicate taste, exquisite
or depraved taste,” we also come across the following distinctions:
a. the sense that presumably originated in Spain, suggesting
“discernment, fine judgment, sensitivity”;
b. the more Hedonistic, sensual meaning that implies “pleasurable or
enjoyable feelings regarding a given object”;
c. the more formal, style-oriented use of the word that communicates
the idea of “the way in which something is made or done, or the
particular character of a work”;
d. the historical, critical extension of the term that is applied to the
“character of an author, a painter, a sculptor, or the general
character of a century.”
Clearly these partial definitions of taste still fail to tally with the modern
conception of the term that so obsessed the philosophers and moralists of
the following century. What is missing is the meaning whose origins Croce
attributed to Italy: the idea of a “superior power” of eye and ear (without
which “even horses and dogs would have the same taste for painting or
music that we enjoy”) that combines with the senses “to create judgment,
which increases in relation to the gifts of nature and the skills of art, yet
without requiring rational discourse.”19
Before this conception of taste could become part of the idiomatic
expressions of learned speech it had to be freed of the audaciously pictorial
metaphor, which took several decades. The international success of the
metaphor was certainly enormous, as an entry written in 1778 by Voltaire
for the Encyclopédie made explicit. Without bothering to outline the birth
and development of the concept, he simply declared that “this sense, this gift
for distinguishing our foods has produced in all known languages the
metaphor that uses the word taste to express sensitivity to the beauty and
defects of all arts.”20
To differentiate itself from the past and make its intent more intelligible,
the change in aesthetic sensibility clearly called for new terminology. To be
precise, what was required was a word that could stand for the special
faculty of judgment; a form of mixed metaphor, or catachresis, as it is known
in rhetoric.21 But just why was taste the chosen term, especially in view of
the fact that since ancient times this particular sense had been deemed the
most abject and wretched of faculties? Why seek a paragon with the palate,
rather than suggesting a third eye, or an inner ear, to follow Zuccolo’s line
of argument, or indeed the heart itself, given that the elusive faculty was so
full of sentiment?
Evidently because the taste option was more effective and better suited to
expressing the anti-dogmatic questions in hand. Underlying its superior
 THE SUCCESS OF A METAPHOR 11

suitability were two essential and decisive aspects of the future debate on
taste and its manifold manifestations: one concerned pleasure, and the other
spontaneity (as opposed to reasoning).
As far as the former is concerned, it would be tempting to explain that
taste was able to gain ground as a metaphor for artistic discernment because,
of all the senses, it is arguably the most universal and instinctive vehicle of
pleasure. In actual fact, however, the question is rather less straightforward.
If direct comparison with appraisal of the palate is to work, then we must
deal with the moral and aesthetic question of how to distinguish between
the two levels of pleasure. Voltaire claimed that the taste of the palate related
to the taste of the spirit rather as the gourmet related to the connoisseur;22
indeed, he believed that even in questions of culinary preference it was
legitimate to speak of bad or depraved taste. “Just as physical bad taste
consists of being stimulated by sauces that are too spicy and refined, so bad
taste in the arts lies in the appreciation of contrived ornamentation rather
than in that of beautiful nature. Depraved taste in food is choosing what
other people find disgusting: it is a sort of sickness. Depravation of taste in
the arts is finding pleasure in those subjects which appall refined minds, is
preferring burlesque to noble, choosing what is affected and artificial over
what is simple and natural: it is a sickness of the spirit.”23
The parallels end here. While taste of the palate is innate, universal and
related to genetic makeup, that of the spirit is not a feature of all men, or
indeed of all peoples. It requires protracted cultural training to achieve
refinement, and favorable social and political conditions to gain ground. So
when “one says that there is no disputing taste, this is true if we’re talking
about taste as a sense, that is about the disgust certain foods provoke and
the preference some people have for others: there is no disputing such
reactions because you cannot correct a physical defect.”
But the question is different when talking of art. In this case, the defects
of the mind (in other words, the inability to recognize beauty) can be
corrected, that is refined. Likewise, according to Montesquieu, if it is true
that taste is “the measure of pleasure,” then there are acquired pleasures,
and others that are entirely spiritual, in other words detached from the
senses and “founded on the inclinations and prejudices that certain
institutions, customs and habits” have imposed upon the human spirit.24
More complex still is the second aspect of the metaphor, which pertains
to the pre-rational or spontaneous character of taste. Ever since the sixteenth
century, all treatises on the subject have underlined the impulsive nature of
taste in contrast to the labored nature of reason. The former concerns
“immediate discernment, like that of the tongue and the palate, and, like
this, comes before reflection.”25 Some authors even posited a “sixth sense,”
against which “concepts and disputes are of no avail,” since no argument
could convince us “to believe the opposite of what we perceive.”26
During the Renaissance, this insistence on the instinctive nature of taste
became the backbone of the metaphor, the true antidote to intellectualism
brandished to assert the emancipation of art and the exaltation of
12 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

individuality. Once it had become an established creed, however, it unleashed

a host of contradictions: if taste does not heed reason, is it truly arbitrary?
And if this is the case, why do people busy themselves with “producing
works of art, costly and elegant edifices, fine gardens and other such
labors”?27 If the saying “each to his/her own” is true, then how can we speak
of “good taste”? And if taste is instinctive, how can it be refined? Lastly, if it
is vain to account for taste, how come so much time is spent discussing it?
De gustibus non est disputandum: in essence the famous medieval adage
embraces the entire history of taste. Its gradual loss of verisimilitude and the
repertory of confutations that so engaged innumerable thinkers (including
some of the greatest minds of the Enlightenment) are part of the tangled web
that this book hopes to unravel and explain.

Changing Meaning of an Adage

To this end, we must position the question sociologically. In premodern society
generally, including tribal communities and imperial cities, according to Alain
Laurent, the social order tended to be “rigidly hierarchical and coherent, where
the whole held complete sway over the parts, or individuals. People’s behavior
was entirely established by group membership, by the unthinking submission
to its laws and by the practice of largely unchanging traditions. No individual
could claim autonomy of choice regarding values and rules of conduct, but
rather acted as an interdependent fragment of a collective awareness.”28 It is
obvious that in such conditions there was little scope for the urge to establish
and express individual predilections. Such volubility would imply excess, and
when the consumption of food was subordinated to the unreliable, strenuous
availability of the raw material, filling the stomach preceded the pleasures of
the palate. Of course the finest morsels were the prerogative of chiefs and
kings, and always had been, but the fact that food reflected the social pyramid
was not enough to explain the system of personal preferences and idiosyncrasies
that were later to resemble taste, as we conceive of it today.
The second stage in our inquiry revolves around the invention of the taste
adage. The anonymous Schoolman who thought it up was unquestionably
referring to the realms of physical taste, to the palate. As for the disputatio,
it was simply a discussion technique used for teaching in medieval
universities. Its goal was to clarify dubious, badly formulated or contradictory
statements by means of interrelated, serried argument. Presumably the
conclusion that there should be no disputing the taste of the palate was
simply the fruit of an unresolved disputatio. This laconic outcome merely
signified that it was impossible to establish a scale of values within the
sphere of oral sensations: no taste was better than any other because they all
pertain (in other words, are produced by) individual temperaments. Clearly
this shifted the discussion from the realm of culture to that of nature, which
in its turn implied a change in specialization: taste was not the prerogative
of metaphysics and logic, but of medicine and dietetics.
 THE SUCCESS OF A METAPHOR 13

The outstanding feature of the third stage lies in the way the debate
concerning taste and beauty during the Renaissance was accompanied by
the adaptation of the finer points of the discussion to the wider world of
their application. When the word taste is used figuratively, is it still true that
it cannot be disputed? If the metaphor is basically valid, this is thanks to the
fact that artistic appreciation, no less than appraisal by the palate, represents
final judgments that are not open to appeal. It would thus seem that there is
no disputing taste here either: no right or wrong against which to measure a
particular perception. As in the case of the predilection of the palate, there
are no true or false, good or bad tastes in relation to artistic products: all
tastes, however erratic, are equally legitimate. Clearly the whole matter of
disputing—or otherwise—depends on the authority of the relative argument.
However, this is precisely where the taste debate reveals its weakness, since
it is based on the repetition of a pleasurable experience produced by a given
stimulus. That said, it is not true that all tastes are equally valid: unlike the
sphere of fashion, the fine arts are not governed by whim and deliberate
oddity. Moreover, there may be no irrefutable proof of the existence of
beauty in a particular situation, but by and large some general agreement
does exist. Lastly, although the delectatio aroused by a masterpiece cannot
be explained by logical reasoning, within a given cultural milieu there
generally tends to be a certain amount of concurrence.
Paradoxical though it may seem, taste is thus both one’s own and that of
many others, changeable and constant, innate and acquired, good and bad,
refined and vulgar. Moreover, the history of taste is inevitably interwoven
with these ambiguities. Philosophers of the past recognized the enigma, did
all they could to resolve it, and ultimately agreed that taste was a sort of
elevation of the mind similar in various respects to a particular form of
knowledge. They thus concurred that there was no point in disputing taste
through rational argument, but that discussing it was reasonable enough.
Since then, though the discussions have abounded and true disputations
have failed,29 it is hard to imagine that the approach to the matter will
change much in times to come.
And this in itself leads to further reflection. Indifferent to questions of
principle and legitimacy, taste began to contaminate a growing number of
individuals and subjects, spreading beyond the field of art to involve the
values and destinies of individuals. Those touched by it were no longer just
inspired artists, voyeur patrons or sophisticated humanist thinkers, but also
hordes of sensitive beings who started visiting museums and art galleries with
great enthusiasm. Later came the snobs and dandies who adopted taste as a
raison d’être, a mainstay and point of honor. To say nothing of the gastronomes
(etymologically speaking, the “governors of the stomach”), who elevated the
function of digestion to the ineffable realms of palatal orgasm.
In the kaleidoscope of fashions and desires for luxury, the saying “each to
his/her own” seems particularly well suited to the contemporary age.
Individual taste relates to style a bit like one of those water pumps that
sucks in at one end and spews it out at the other. To maintain that taste is
14 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

never divisive is clearly ridiculous, even in times of cultural relativism and

epistemological bric-a-brac.
Gallery owners and art critics, fashion and product designers, food
writers, advertising gurus and spin doctors have all made a specialization
out of taste, for which they are often handsomely rewarded. Granted, in
such cases the disputatio side of rational argument has played a practically
non-existent role, because the principle of authority, founded on fame and
individual reputation, has tended to hold sway. But then hasn’t much the
same thing happened in other fields of the human sciences?
Taste today has become a question of capital importance, literally
speaking, in view of its direct influence on company assets. And not just in
the food industry, but also in sectors pertaining to tobacco, alcohol,
perfumery and—to go beyond the domain of taste buds and smell—clothes
and accessories, furniture and cars, music and entertainment, tourism and
leisure pursuits. In other words, in practically every “mature” sector taste
represents the main spur for competition and the true elixir of commercial
success. In this case it is the market that approves or rejects the enticements
of taste: when basic needs are met, it is the logic of desire that takes over,
and here the last word lies with the consumer, who expresses his or her
individual taste, albeit along with the rest of a vast collectivity.
Bearing all this in mind, the aim of this book is to reveal to what extent
the history of taste goes well beyond the history of a metaphor (and the
parallel decline of an adage).
To this end, it hopes to illustrate how:

1 The invention of taste in the figurative sense acts as a divide between

two ages: not only as regards the history of art, since taste soon
transcended this particular sector, but also as regards its role in the
history of Western culture, where taste will shape the developmental
and emulative process.
2 As taste spread and became more democratic, it managed to preserve
its original hedonistic value, but in time lost its primal spontaneity
to become a tool of mediated preference, in other words of socially
and commercially conditioned choice.
3 The success of the metaphor was ultimately to lead to the retroactive
redefinition of the original meaning of the term (taste as the sense of
the palate), absorbing it into the extended meaning, and thereby
projecting it into the fickle realm of luxury.
4 The “ideological success” of taste propeled it into contemporary
consumer society like an ineluctable overdose, spreading
progressively though the system of predilection and aspiration so as
to shape our desires and our perception of reality.

To reach this epilogue, however, we must first take a close look at how
taste was perceived and practiced before the concept itself was discovered
and extended.
 2
Pleasures and Morals

Notes on the Archeology of Taste

There are three major transformations in society that sum up the birth of
what we generally refer to as taste: the unseating of content by form;
the exaltation of self-proclaimed artistic demigods; and the sensual fusion
that has come to underlie the perception of art work. That said, however,
art is not the only sphere in which taste has informed the way people
think and what they desire. Taste does not relate so much to hunger as to
an appetite for something specific, and the metaphoric use of the term
transcends the relationship between artist and public, influencing a range of
experiences that have more to do with general rules than with individual
exceptions. No matter how refined the habits and customs of everyday life
may appear to be, they do not accommodate the outré touch of creative
genius (at least not until the invention of haute couture), or the ecstatic gaze
of the onlooker.
The experience of beauty embodies different sorts and degrees of intensity
and tone, starting from the elevated realm of the major arts (those that are
defined as fine arts) and embracing in descending order lesser forms of
creativity described as decorative or applied arts, where the aesthetic factor
works as a sort of surplus in relation to the object’s primary function.
Regardless of the value of the materials used, or the exquisite craftsmanship
involved, a piece of furniture or an ornamental object is first and foremost
simply that: an item of furnishing that has no claim to the sort of
contemplation reserved for the figurative arts. The distinction between art
and crafts consists in the fact that the former implies a unique product that
embodies the artist’s personality, whereas the latter is a multiple that
conforms to the style of a tradition or school. Regardless of the degree of
cultural prestige and the difference in viewing conditions, however, to some
extent art and crafts do actually share a certain objective: that of showing
themselves off, of enhancing or beautifying something (a church, a square, a
public building, a private home), or eliciting admiration on the part of
viewers, or stimulating their aesthetic appreciation. Moreover, personal
ornament and attire, including jewelry, headgear, coiffure, makeup and
perfume, as well as uniform, arms and armor, follow pretty much the same

15
16 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

rules: in other words, they represent the initial vehicle of elegance and
opulence.
The way in which we adorn, embellish and enhance our bodies cannot
claim to operate on the same lofty sphere as the arts, be they figurative or
decorative. Yet our choices in this sense certainly define an extremely
stringent and pervasive aesthetic realm precisely because they establish the
roles that we play on the social stage. Refinement in terms of clothing,
ornament and look, along with sophistication in what we eat (where the
cultural perception of good taste transcends the more material taste for food,
or indeed the taste of the food itself), are not just conventions pertaining to
good manners, but stage props essential to the whole theatrical performance.
Competing cultural models, together with the symbols of admiration and
infatuation, all come under the jurisdiction of taste.
Yet behavior bent on ostentation, on extremes of refinement, or indeed
waste, was widespread in ancient times, to the extent that such habits
became almost synonymous with the fortunes of a particular city or
civilization. The history of Western society alone provides plentiful examples
of the taste for luxury, from Sybaritic voluptuary to the magnificence of
imperial Rome. The desire for splendor was expressed not only in lavish
dwellings and legions of servants, but also in the acquisition of sumptuous
commodities, those frivolous, short-lived objects that often end up by
undermining wealth.
This in itself brings to the fore some interesting questions concerning the
nature of taste in antiquity. It would seem that the phenomenon itself
predates the historic etymology of the term and its use as a metaphor. In
other words, the origins of taste can be traced back to well before the word
itself became part of everyday parlance. Granted, this claim depends on the
definition of taste as an analogy, and on the appropriateness of applying it
retrospectively to the behavior of past civilizations.
One factor pertaining to our current perception of taste is its role in the
projection of esteem. Taste is seen as the subjective ability to discern things
intuitively, a gut reaction to an external stimulus, be this beautiful or ugly,
sophisticated or obvious, refined or vulgar, authentic or fake. Taste, or rather
good taste, is the compass that directs our perceptive apparatus on the high
seas of sensation. Refinement of taste is what allows a person to become
a connoisseur, to rise above blind, emotional reaction and the innate
tendency that guides it. Perceptions thus involve an infinite range of subtle
distinctions.
This was all abundantly clear in Antiquity. Suffice it to recall the figure of
Gaius Petronius Arbiter, the refined viveur who practically invented
dandyism and whose name alone suggests his role as a judge of all forms of
elegance.1 That said, the information that has come down to us about
Petronius is extremely patchy so, rather than studying the author himself,
for a better understanding of the manifestations of taste in early times we
should turn to Trimalchio, his alter ego in the Satyricon. A freedman who
has acquired enormous wealth through maritime trade, Trimalchio is a
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 17

parvenu who uses grotesque extravagance to gain prestige and merit with
the true notables, in other words with those who lived off the income from
their estates. He is a sociological caricature, portrayed in pitilessly realistic
terms.
Hostility towards merchants who managed to accumulate great fortunes
in a short space of time was a constant feature of ancient Greek and Roman
society. The process of social competition that they were able to unleash was
seen as a threat, to be met with moral disapproval and aesthetic disdain:
“Inherited wealth defended itself against upstart merchants by imputing to
them every conceivable vice: merchants are rootless, greedy, the source of all
evil; they promote luxury and weakness; they distort nature by traveling to
far-off lands, violating the natural barrier of the seas and bringing back
what nature will not permit to grow at home.”2
In this sense, Satyricon can be seen as a chapter in the unending battle
between bad and good taste, between the material ostentation of wealth and
waste and the cultural heritage of refinement and good judgment. It also
reveals how the ancient Romans believed that these latter traits could not be
acquired, but only nurtured and handed down. The banquet, which was the
most tangible and widely practiced expression of munificence, was also the
quintessential opportunity for carousing and revelry, to the extent that it
naturally became a prime target for satire.
Although the love of food and fine cuisine met with contempt and scorn
on the part of men of letters and philosophers, in Antiquity such passions
became one of the most sophisticated manifestations of connoisseurship. “In
imperial Rome, gourmets made a point of showing off their discernment as
regards the origins of what they ate, rather as today’s wine buffs do
concerning what’s in their glass. Juvenal refers to a certain Montano, who
could tell from the first taste whether an oyster came from the Circeo, or
from the rocky Lucrino area, or from the seabed of Rutupia. Likewise, at a
mere glance he could identify the provenance of a sea-urchin. Often such
appraisals went to exaggerated lengths. When judging a food of animal or
vegetable origin, even the time of capture or harvest was taken into
consideration.”3 Certainly, the pleasures of the table were held in high esteem
well before Lucullus and Apicius described them. In the golden age of the
Sybarites, half a millennium earlier, cooks were granted a sort of copyright
for their culinary creations that lasted for one year. Twenty-five centuries
later, the stars of Nouvelle Cuisine had prepared the ground for similar
claims on the part of the chefs propriétaires. Plato himself referred to the
Sicilian Miteco as “the Phidias of cooks,” which clearly means that in his
own times a cook could become a pan-Hellenic celebrity with the prestige of
an artist.
It goes without saying that the gourmets of the past did more than simply
devote themselves to heightening their senses and indulging in the pleasures
of the table. When taste transcends mere refinement, the positive image
created extends to embrace desire, including the flame of passion that can
end up as a mania. This is where excess and abandon coincide with the
18 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

Dionysiac dimension, which was very much part of classical civilization,

and as such continually criticized by moralists of various doctrines.
There is no need to turn to the taste for sensual license and the ensuing
repertoire of sexual fantasy and distraction to find examples of voluptuary
consumption in Antiquity. The food rituals and gastronomic frenzies that were
fashionable at the time comprised plentiful examples of opsophagia, a form of
gourmandise typical of Athenian culture involving an absolute passion for
relishes, in other words the tasty accompaniment to the staple dish. For the
Greeks, this was fish, which was a luxury item for private consumption, unlike
various meats, which could be part of a sacrificial or social ritual.4 To say
nothing of the ancient Roman custom of self-induced vomiting as a way of
extending the pleasures of the palate beyond the limits of the human
metabolism: the gastronomic frenzy of Lucullus and the other Roman gluttons.
Aesthetic ecstasy, which is the sublimated and socially acceptable version
of taste as desire, is another form of behavior that can be traced back to
Antiquity. From Aristotelian catharsis to the experience of the sublime
theorized by Pseudo-Longinus, the shuddering of the soul brought about by
a work of art is the thread that links up the aesthetic conceptions of the past.
A further aspect of the question lies in the vast range of customs and
behavior. Showing off luxury and opulence, the manifestations of distinction
and emulation, ostentation and exhibitionism are all part of the picture.
Here again, the past provides us with plentiful examples.
It was not just a question of reclining on magnificent couches around the
banqueting table, or going to great lengths to acquire the rarest of fine foods,
or breeding fish in special seawater pools on private estates whose owners
were mockingly described as piscinarii by Cicero. There was also the attitude
of men wishing to make an impact, to cut a swathe in the public eye. Horace
made fun of such pretentions, rather as modern-day critics do of people
showing off on motorbikes or in sports cars. “They paraded through the city
in carriages that were taller than the usual ones,” he declared, “or they raced
through at great speed drawn by horses.”5 And of course there were
equivalent jibes for the female contingent, who had no compunction about
turning themselves into “itinerant jewelry stores,” so bedecked were they
with rings, “buckles, hair pins, ornate golden hair ribbons enhanced with
gemstones, earrings, bracelets, necklaces; to say nothing of the necklaces
and the huge ankle rings.”6
As for artifice in the form of cosmetics, back at the time of Pericles women
often dyed their hair “to make it blonde, the eternally favourite colour: wigs
and false switches were also common. Furthermore women shaved or
plucked superfluous hair, as well as using beauty creams, all sorts of perfumes
and make-up. Courtesans not only employed white-lead ceruse and alkanet
rouge, but also emphasized their eyes and eyebrows with black or brown
liners, and were well acquainted with the use of strophion, or brassiere.”7
One of the most interesting aspects of the whole question of taste is the
underlying social and political dimension. In Antiquity, this largely took the
form of dissuasion, enacted through moral censure and legislative deterrents.
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 19

Much attention has been devoted to the cases of sumptuary laws

promulgated in ancient Rome in order to rein in excesses in luxury and
manifestations of decadence. The Lex Oppia of 215 BC prohibited women
from possessing more than a certain amount of gold jewelry and precious
ornaments, from wearing colored garments (especially purple cloths), and
from traveling by carriage in the city. The Lex Orchia of 182 BC established
how many guests could be invited to a private banquet, and later even the
expenditure for hospitality and the menu were subject to constraints. Then
in 161 BC the Lex Fannia obliged citizens to take a solemn oath whereby
they promised to keep their sumptuous purchases within certain limits,
defined with a differentiation for feast days. To say nothing of the Lex
Aemilia, passed in 76 BC, which prohibited the consumption of imported
shellfish and fowl.8 Such countermeasures, which largely turned out to be
ineffective, do at least provide us with an idea of how extreme indulgence in
the dictates of taste was perceived as potentially destructive for the
established social order.
During the Stoic period, and later at the dawn of Christianity, self-control
and the ability to rein in the appetites fired a form of moral superiority that
was typical of those who saw themselves as free of the slavery of vice and
self-indulgence. Such restraint was seen as admirable, a point of reference in
the education of the offspring of the aristocracy. Yet, from Veblen to
Bourdieu, the distance from need as such, the symbolic sublimation of desire
and the perception of pleasure as innocent have long been recognized as the
distinctive trait of the leisured classes. As for sumptuary laws, they have
reappeared from time to time right up to the present, largely as forms of
taxation on the added value of luxury goods or commodities that are
imported from abroad.
Not even the idea that taste should be accessible to a wider circle is really
a prerogative of modernity. And nor is the ensuing multiplication of the
sources by means of which desires can be gratified. Imperial Rome was a
clear example of a society based on entertainment. And even if such pursuits
had little to do with aesthetic discernment, they remained intimately linked
to the personal sphere of pleasure and predilection that established the
success—or otherwise—of a given event or participant. The circus and the
arena, fights and naval battles, games and races, music and dance,
pantomimes and comedies were all pleasures to be enjoyed socially. They
could delight or disappoint, but their aim was always to entertain the
audience. As such, events of this sort fell within the sphere of taste. Indeed,
often within that of bad taste, since the intellectuals of the time rarely failed
to denounce them as manifestations of decadence and vulgarity.
Along with baths, wine and sex (which, as a Roman proverb declared,
may have shortened life, but was actually “true life” itself), the system of
collective entertainment belonged to the realms of universal pleasures,
pursued and enjoyed by a society that was intimately given to a frenzy of
hedonism. Of the gratifications available to Roman citizens, only the games
and spectacular events were spared by the political establishment, precisely
20 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

because such sumptuous entertainments had very widespread appeal. By

contrast, other manifestations of excess in taste, especially those relating to
effeminacy or ostentatious dissipation and expenditure, were condemned as
undermining the established social order.
Current historical interpretation tends to reduce Roman entertainment to
a deliberate panem et circenses control mechanism aimed at diminishing
social tensions and fostering political consensus. However, this does not
explain what was really the first large-scale experiment with mass culture; a
phenomenon whose impact and influence were unequaled in antiquity. The
fun and entertainment device was, at best, a secondary expression of
magnificence, a form of collective self-indulgence that had little to do with
shaping personal quirks and preferences. Only the ostentatious splendors of
modern-day Hollywood and Las Vegas come anywhere near the scale of the
mega events of Imperial Rome.
That said, the suggestion that history repeats itself, that everything has
already been tried out in past ages, is actually misleading. Modern taste
differs from that of Antiquity in various ways, as we shall see.
Part of the previous chapter was devoted to the relationship between
aesthetic perception and the way this can be shaped by the ongoing process
of individualism in art. The fact that modern taste largely derives from this
cultural imprinting is also significant as regards its “lesser” manifestations.
Taste can be intended as the manner in which a work of art is selected and
perceived. Yet taste also shapes behavior and the way people present
themselves. In both cases it is culture that helps form perception. Assimilation
of the predominant culture is essential to the education of the latter-day
gentleman, not least because both forms of taste play a part in the overall
image.
In other words, the self-determination of aesthetic judgment with all its
hedonistic overtones reveals, and perhaps introduces, a wider form of
autonomy based on the discovery of subjectivity. This is evident in many
different sectors, from politics to morals, fashion to food. The wide range of
spheres in which taste now lays down the law involves a deep-rooted
labyrinth of social, economic and ideological ramifications whose further
implications are beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to point out that
the ensuing centrality of the individual redefines the role of each person
within his or her social context, thereby reshaping the very essence of
Western sensitivity.
It was the stylization of behavior in court society that originally gave
impetus to the process, both chronologically and culturally. Granted, other
civilizations and epochs have witnessed a similar refinement of manners. But
with the formation of nation states and the intermixing of church and
aristocracy that began in the sixteenth century, for the first time the
phenomenon acquired social prestige in the form of ideological support. In
this way behavior trickled down from the establishment and was
progressively absorbed by the common man, in time becoming a form of
spontaneous action, a cultural blueprint. The outcome amounts to “the
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 21

production of a fundamentally new economy of the psyche, whereby a

particular culture, opposed to that of the ‘savages,’ sets out on a triumphal
march with a claim to being exclusive. While this is a spectacle for Europe,
it is also a global discipline for its followers. With varying degrees of efficacy,
in relation to the groups and periods involved, it suppresses the direct
expression of passions and bodily functions.”9
The civilizing process, reconstructed by Norbert Elias to explain the change
in customs that began in the early Middle Ages,10 redefined the threshold of
modesty and repugnance relating to what was socially acceptable and what
was perceived as disgusting. In other words, it turned sensitivity into a cultural
phenomenon. The world of appearances, the sphere of what was ephemeral,
the battle of tastes became criteria for mutual recognition and the principles
of social stratification. The emulation of glorified court behavior implied a
community of images and desires, a repertory of conventional acts, words,
pleasures and novelties. By the same token, however, this shared perception
encouraged the social élite to further disparage and exclude the world of
those who were not part of their lofty rank.
This is the historic context in which taste came into its own, helping to
define both the despot and the underdog, the judge and the condemned, the
upholder of orthodoxy and the heretic. As consumption and behavior grew
in sophistication, multiplying their applications and appearance, taste
became an integral part of a socio-cultural process, injecting its development
with new impetus.
The role played by luxury within the evolution of capitalism revolved
around the perception and gratification of desires, which in their turn
implied consumption and investment. Such were the elements that shaped
modern taste. When the exhibition of luxury became an expression of
aristocratic and bourgeois decorum (in other words, when certain hitherto
unknown commodities were suddenly perceived as necessary by a given
generation), taste became part of everyday life, which it shaped in its own
image, thereby playing a major role in individual self-esteem and gratification.
At this point it is easier to grasp the difference between modern taste and
that of the phenomenon ante litteram. Modern taste revolves around the
individual, whose skittish but constant desires fire its development. Central
to the whole system is the thirst for excess, for the superfluous, that manifests
itself in the passion for novelty, refinement and comfort: all those totally
unnecessary things that we think we might like to have and that suddenly
become an essential part of our lives. The appearance on the scene of the
individual desirous of novelty is an integral part of the construction of
modernity.
In this sense, taste represents much more than a simple cog in the wheel
of history. It acts as a lubricant, indeed as a fuel. All things considered, taste
has been the principle vehicle of the new mentality, an invitingly intuitive
tool that allows the individual to understand, share and partake in select
novelty. Clearly the aim is not so much to redefine sensibilities, but to make
inroads into the realm of values. The outcome is a seductively non-conformist
22 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

take on behavior that undermines the traditional view of things to such an

extent that it rocks the very foundations of established perceptions of vice
and virtue.

The Development of a Lay Morality

Like a mirror image of the cardinal virtues, the seven deadly sins represented
a concentrated version of the precepts, fears and prejudices that were rooted
in Greek Stoicism, permeated Ancient Roman culture and were formalized
in the Middle Ages, where they spoke for the prevailing vision of the world.
The soul at its most wretched and the shortcomings of personality were
early forms of vice that could lead to the transgression of divine teachings.
When this early form of vice was followed by action, the outcome was sin,
in other words misdeeds perpetrated against the established order of society.
Four of these vices pertained to the rejection of a given condition or position
within the community, and the obligations that derived therefrom: vainglory
amounted to excessive ambition; acedia was the lack of attachment to duty;
wrath was the loss of self-control; envy arose from inappropriate comparison
with another person’s condition. The latter was also a form of destructive
desire, like the remaining three vices: avarice, or lust for money; gluttony, or
yearning for food; and lechery, meaning an excessive sexual appetite.
These sins were considered “capital” because they generated other vices
and sins:

vainglory ushers in disobedience, an overbearing sense of superiority,

hypocrisy, quarrelsomeness, obstinacy, discord and constant demands for
novelty. Envy gives rise to hate, insinuation, gossip, delight in other
people’s affliction and sufferance when things go well for them. Wrath
leads to quarrels, the swollen chin, insults, shouting, indignation and
cussing. Melancholy is accompanied by nastiness, rancor, cowardice,
desperation, laxity in adhering to rules, a wandering mind attracted by
forbidden subjects. Betrayal, fraud, cheating, false promises, restlessness,
violence and hardness of heart are born of avarice. Next come loose-
tongued talk, ribaldry, smuttiness, verbosity, the dulling of the senses.
Lechery leads to mental blindness, inconsiderateness, inconstancy, giving
in, self-love, hate of God, attachment to the world, horror or desperation
for future destiny.11

In inverse correspondence to the deadly sins there were seven cardinal

virtues, four of which derived from Stoicism (prudence, diligence, temperance,
justice), while the remaining three (faith, hope, charity) were of Christian
origin. In the psychomachia between vice and virtue that provided the
following six centuries with the parameters for moral inhibition and
incentive, there was no space for desire. What was deemed appropriate
behavior was far removed from anything of the sort: bodily yearning was
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 23

repressed, pleasure was equated with guilt, personal desires were banished
in the name of ideals and interests that transcended the individual sphere:
“overeating, drinking without measure, indulging in the pleasures of the
flesh betray the body’s ability to prevaricate over reason, the rejection of the
organs of social submission (the nervous system) to the advantage of those
of radical subjectivity (the rest). Mortification, penitence, meditation on the
terrible consequences that derive from veneration of the pleasures of the
palate: by renouncing the energies that permeate the body, man contributes
to the establishment of social order, promoting the structure and efficiency
of the fabric of civilization.”12
Hate of novelty, fear of sexuality and the dulling of passions all revealed
the desire to limit and subdue individual free will. In other words, to eradicate
the sin of pride, which was the first of all vices, a spur for the most potentially
insidious foolish aspirations: “what is condemned is the mere possibility of
dissatisfaction concerning one’s lot in life, the very idea that the individual
might desire a different place, a different destiny; indeed might act to bring
such things about. Rebellion against the state of things, desire for a different
world, the pride implicit in the attempt to create a more pleasant condition:
these, in the eyes of the moralists, are characteristics of the person overly
desirous of expanding his control of self and surroundings.”13
On the other hand, when desire is reined in by the principle of the
inviolable nature of what already exists, repressing subjectivity and
imagination, taste is clearly deprived of all content: without the palate there
would be no gastronomy, without pride the arts and elegance would not be
cultivated, without envy there would be no fashions to follow or models to
emulate, and without lust all jewelry, cosmetics and other manifestations of
narcissism and seduction would be pointless.
This brings us to an obvious conclusion: a civilization of taste that
revolves around subjective pleasure and desire can only prosper if the
remains of traditional moral precepts are dismantled and replaced by a
bulwark defending new values and convictions. To present-day sensibilities,
what was accepted as a rule in a past era now appears to be a sort of
caricature, something grotesque, like a deforming mirror. The deadly sins
are turned completely upside down, to the extent that they become absolute
needs, individual requirements, the object of social approval and therapeutic
support, the essence of commercial seduction, a spur to consumption, a
means of self-affirmation, an irresistible leisure pursuit.
As we moderns see it, the satisfaction of these needs is not just an
inviolable right, but rather the main source of life’s gratifications and the
only criterion with which to measure the quality of life in concrete terms.
The gluttony that once meant greed now signifies the cult of the table, a
consolatory rite, a worthy form of pleasure. By the same token, pride
becomes self-esteem, initiative, the desire for self-improvement, while sloth
justifies spare time and leisure. As for the thirst for wealth, clearly it is
nothing more than the legitimate desire to raise social standing and living
conditions. Likewise, envy drives forward the consumer economy, and lust
24 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

is essential to joie de vivre and the elixir of eternal youth. Anger lends itself
to the development of ideals, political engagement, social indignation and
rebellion, a passion for sport. If anything, those who are excluded from such
earthly pleasures are considered social outcasts or pathological cases. In the
here-and-now paradise of total self-indulgence and universal eudemonia, all
that remains of the constraints of bygone ages is a sort of peripheral inferno,
perceived as an unfortunate but inevitable “malaise of civilization.” Within
this perspective, uncontroled gluttony can lead to bulimia, alcoholism,
addiction to cigarettes or drugs. But fear not: for each of these sins of lack
of restraint, the new religion of wellbeing offers specialized purgatories
equipped with the most modern forms of expiation. In relation to the gravity
and nature of the problem, the guilty can opt for gyms, beauty farms, diets
for losing weight, anorectic pills, artificial sweeteners, antidepressants,
psychoanalytical sessions, plastic surgery . . .
Greater detail is hardly necessary. For our present purposes the main
objective is to observe the moment of transition when vices turn into virtues.
This crumbling of identities was already evident in court society and in the
early manifestations of capitalism, especially where the new social contexts
interacted with the dynamics of taste.
What do alchemists, the discoverers of philosopher’s stones, petty thieves,
freebooters, diviners, treasure hunters, tricksters, usurers, gamblers, speculators,
donneurs d’avis and brasseurs d’affaires have in common? All these and the
many other illustrious forerunners of the modern entrepreneurial spirit clearly
share an urgent desire to get rich (greed), to rise above their current social rank
(envy), to perceive themselves as the arbiters of their own destiny (pride), and
to aspire to a life of pleasure, waste and refinement (gluttony, lust, sloth).14
According to the medieval classification of vice, they should all be banished to
the dark underworld of the fraudulent.
Not that life at court, despite its appeal for the ranks of would-be nobility,
provided a more edifying picture. In the career of a courtier, arrogance and
envy were the guidelines for dressing up and behavior, in what Norbert Elias
described as a deliberate strategic plan aimed at gaining or losing opportunities
for prestige and status, within the incessant competition for power.15
As for avarice, it also played a role, though in the shape of an extreme
version of its opposite. The bourgeois ethic recommended caution in the
handling of the family budget, to the extent that expenditure should be less
than income, so that the difference can be reinvested, to the benefit of the
family patrimony. By contrast, the court ethic promoted dissipation, in other
words the acquisition of prestige through ostentatious display. Thus greed
for money was transformed into an insatiable appetite for glory and honor,
and the desire for gain into ambition at court, such that a person who tended
to be tight-fisted could become a spendthrift. Little wonder that the figures
of the miser and of the squanderer appear to be practically interchangeable,
relegated to the same circle of vice in medieval iconography.
By the same token, gluttony and lust were equally active. Cooking became
cuisine, in other words a refined art, for the delight of princely palates in a
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 25

period in which the dining table was turned into a sort of gastronomic theater.
Within the same context, a new female figure came to the fore to exercise her
charms on the male members of the select society around her, occupying a
position somewhere between “la femme honnête” and “la putaine.” As
Sombart pointed out, Romance languages have come up with a colorful range
of epithets to describe this particular female genre: courtesan, concubine,
maitresse, grande amoureuse, grande cocotte, kept woman, and so on.16
Yet it is luxury that best embodies and exemplifies the new morality
based on what is ephemeral. Luxury is the magnet that attracts the urge
towards social prestige, and to some extent actually manages to satisfy it, at
least for a short time. It is luxury that promotes and forges the desire for
refinement, creating the conditions for the development of commerce. And
it is luxury that swells the ranks and aspirations of social climbers, providing
a justification for vice and laxity.
It is interesting to note that in Latin, lust and luxury were “a single word
(luxuria) and which consisted in denying oneself nothing and believing that
‘anything goes’ .”17 Little wonder, then, that manifestations of luxury also
helped shape the ways in which the passions could go beyond the confines
of morality and decency. Whether this took the form of self-indulgence
(gluttony and lust), of avarice (redirecting wealth from patronage to the
private sphere), or personal ambition (vainglory), it was still a case of
uncontroled desire.
Change came about when luxury was no longer merely a sign of
eccentricity and moral decadence, but asserted itself at the pinnacle of the
social pyramid, putting on a show for the admiration of those clinging onto
the rung just below. Life at court was a device for magnificence, a showcase
for sumptuousness, a propagator of extravagance, the yeast of discretionary
consumption, providing daily performances of luxury at its most visible.
As Norbert Elias pointed out, “in a society in which everything to do with
an individual stands for something in social terms, expenditure on the part
of those who occupy the higher echelons of society is an absolute necessity:
a way of achieving social affirmation, especially if—and this is indeed
common in current society—there is constant competition on the part of the
members of the society to establish and maintain status and prestige. A duke
must have a house built that immediately shows that he is a duke and not a
baronet, and the same applies for his entire public persona.”18
Luxury thus becomes the main criterion for the certification of social
eminence. The display of luxury is not merely a symbolic manifestation of
reality, but rather reality itself: “the way social prestige and success depend
directly on how much is spent on maintaining the household and on
consumption has also been described by Werner Sombart. As the German
author revealed, a person whose appearance falls short of his rank soon
loses respect in his given society. In the continual race for status and prestige,
he will be overtaken by other competitors, and will run the risk of being
ruined, sidestepped or ousted from the group or rank to which he originally
belonged.”19
26 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

Expenditure for representation included the costs of courtesans, a

discretionary commodity that called for some very expensive maintenance.
Before achieving acceptance on the part of the spouse, new fashions in
clothing usually featured in the wardrobe of the mistress, whose public
appearances tended to anticipate what would later become à la mode, rather
as those of modern-day fashion models do. A woman’s attire thus took on
an erotic charge that reflected the growing sensuality of taste. It was a
widespread cultural assumption that women like what makes them
attractive, in other words whatever enhances their appearance and appeals
to their vanity. What was new in this case was that they were finally able to
give free rein to their inclinations and predilections. Repressed, censured
and denigrated since the times of Cato and Tertullian, the female genius was
at last able to make claims of its own.
According to Sombart, the boom in luxury commodities that characterized
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was largely attributable to women—
or rather the power that they began to wield at court. Women became the
high priestesses of luxury, in the sense that they both enjoyed and distributed
discretionary consumption, establishing in the public arena exactly what
was and was not in fashion.
Radical transformations in how luxury was perceived and used gave rise
to a growth in consumption that entirely pertained to the female sphere.
During the Middle Ages, luxury was essentially a public phenomenon that
involved shows, jousting, processions and banquets. In the hands of women,
it underwent a form of privatization, becoming domestic and less ephemeral.
This brought about a decrease in expenditure for servants in relation to
what was spent on durable goods such as clothing, jewelry and furnishings,
which in its turn ushered in forms of sensuality and refinement that are
closer to female tastes.20 This explains the increasing role of applied arts in
domestic furnishings, the supremacy of rococo over baroque, and the
growing impact of intricate pastries and desserts in the overall universe of
refined cuisine.
The focus on what was private, objective, refined and sensual helped
shape perceptions and appraisals of luxury: in other words, taste. Moreover,
as luxury expanded, its accentuation in feminine terms was to influence the
future history of Western sensibilities, and not always in positive terms.
Since then, in fact, the realms of taste have moved from artistic statement to
decorative seduction, from the flair of artists to that of couturiers and
designers, from the contemplation of what is beautiful to indulgence in the
showmanship of short-lived delights.
This constitutes the first step in the direction of turning what is a daily
occurrence into an aesthetic experience. As Sombart was to declare, the
transformation was largely effected by women and involved focusing on
cushions covered in Lyons silk rather than ornamental colonnades, on pale
blue underwear rather than pale blue silk bed covers with white tulle
canopies, on grey silken hosiery, satin dresses, on the obvious seduction of
gowns decorated with swan or ostrich feathers and Flanders lace.21 The
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 27

outcome was a noisy, showy “salon symphony” that was to continue, with
all due variations, until the dawn of the twentieth century. Only when the
Modernist Movement upturned established norms and spoke out against
decoration in starkly virile terms was the female monopoly of the domestic
scene called to account and contrasted.
As taste underwent feminization it also became more subject to change.
Despite the efforts of Enlightenment philosophers and aesthetes to position
it on a universal pedestal, at the dawn of the modern age taste proved to be
increasingly prone to whim, which in its turn made it culturally datable. In
the Middle Ages, the great multi-generational workshops and building sites
were conceived as properties to be handed down to future generations. By
contrast, the modern conception and production of luxury commodities as
goods for individual enjoyment brought about an acceleration of supply,
which was accompanied by a multiplication of styles and interests. Little
wonder, then, that taste soon came to mirror the short-lived whims of
fashion, embracing and provoking sudden change: to whit, the complete
turnarounds in taste that have become a common occurrence in the space of
a lifetime.
This helps explain why the multiplication of luxury has been interpreted
as the economic spur of capitalism. Because the proliferation of private
consumption brought about elevated levels of commodity obsolescence,
consumer behavior became somewhat unpredictable, requiring a more pro-
active approach to supply. During the seventeenth century, the silk and lace
industries, the manufacture of mirrors, china, glass, the wool industry and
sugar production all grew at an extraordinary rate to meet the increasing
demand for such commodities. These sectors all took on a basically capitalist
structure because this was better suited to the new conditions of the market.
In their turn, they also influenced the other luxury industries, which adopted
the same model. Clearly only those who could avail themselves of plenty of
investment capital were able to purchase rare, expensive raw materials.
Furthermore, expanding production called for a higher degree of
specialization, because customers were becoming increasingly sophisticated
and demanding. In other words, the entrepreneur required overall vision
and a farsighted approach that allowed him to predict the oscillations of
demand. Handling the complexity of the market called for greater
organizational skills. To add to which, since many of the new entrepreneurs
were actually foreigners, they also had to have the clout to overcome the
various protectionist constraints erected by the local artisan guilds. The
mechanized production of artifacts that came about with technological
progress is generally held to be responsible for this phenomenon, whereas in
fact it only came about at a slightly later stage.22
At this point, it is clear that there was no going back once luxury became
a rule for behavior, providing social hierarchies with order. At this point,
economists and philosophers stopped criticizing and began praising the
virtues that increased the prosperity of the state and the wellbeing of
nations:23 luxury was spurring competition and the thirst for novelty,
28 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

percolating down from the realms of the aristocracy to the more pedestrian
spheres of tradesmen intent on learning to show off and be fashionable
like the best of them. The desire for discretionary goods thus fomented
markets and promoted social mobility. A new morality had pervaded the
mentality of the leisured classes, and those who aspired to join their ranks.
It was a virtuous circle linking exhibition, aspiration and the dynamics of
consumption.
In this way taste not only fueled luxury and furthered feminine vanity,
but also gave rise to the socio-economic development that was to usher in
the modern era, quod erat demonstrandum. Even the Ur-faculty intrinsic to
the palate, the form of perception that happens to bear the same name, had
also undergone indelible change.

Refining Appetites and Mouthing

Euphemisms
Of all vices, the one that seems most difficult to cure is gluttony. Any effort
to contain or contrast it has to come to terms with the fact that it is
necessarily related to an essential instinct for survival: “With eating, pleasure
is mixed with necessity; we are not able to discern what is required by
necessity and what is claimed by pleasure.”24 By contrast, the sin of lust is
easier to cast aside, because it is possible to live an entirely chaste life, along
the lines of true monks and saints. Transposition of such conduct to the
sphere of food leads to ascetic fasting and the luckless anorexic maidens
venerated in the Middle Ages, however, and this does not appear to be an
edifying model for Western culture.
So gluttony is more a question of measure than any other moral precept.
Thus, while it is natural and legitimate to derive pleasure from sustenance,
it is unwise and thus wrong to go beyond the confines of need. Indeed, a
tendency to indulge this inclination is wont to lead to weakness with regard
to other, more insidious temptations. Not only those that have to do with
the sin of lust, which is related to gluttony on account of its being a sin of
the flesh (in other words, a bodily sin that seeks bodily satisfaction), but also
those forms of behavior that derive directly from gluttony and express
themselves in conviviality: binging, scurrility, grossness, garrulity and mental
torpor.25 As for drunkenness, though it may prove to be more of a social
nuisance than over-indulgence in food, it is in fact simply the liquid version
of the same thing.26 Thomas Aquinas provides some inventive etymology in
defense of his conviction that drinking beyond measure is a form of gluttony,
in other words an excess of a pleasure that is otherwise legitimate. “The
term sobriety derives from a measure: as if the expression were servans-
briam” (in other words, “able to keep to the measure of one mug”). Thus
even in the case of inebriating drinks, “keeping to one measure is extremely
admirable: moderate consumption is greatly helpful, whereas the smallest
excess hinders the use of reason much more than an excess of food.”27
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 29

Gluttony is thus the unregulated desire to eat and drink. That said, of
course, it is not easy to establish the criteria that distinguish the norm from
what is abnormal, need from whim, delight from depravation. And once
found, are these criteria the same for everyone, or do they vary from one
individual to the next? And if they do vary, has this to do with age, or state
of health, or the balance of humors, or what exactly? The moral and social
problem of gluttony is entirely contained within these questions.
During the Middle Ages, it was theology and morality that addressed
matters of principle, while medicine and diet dealt with matters of fact. Only
once the various verdicts came under the heading of good manners and
gastronomy could gluttony acquire gentility and become part of the rituals
of a life of refinement.
The process requires a degree of reflection, however. Just when exactly
does appetite exceed need and as a result become a sin of gluttony? According
to Gregorius Magnus, the author of one of the earliest analyses of capital
and venial sins, we are already guilty of vice when our appetite makes us
“eat earlier than we really need to; seek out rare foods; prepare them with
refinement; go beyond the limits of quantity needed; give in to insatiable
desires.”28 To put it briefly—too early, too much, too refined, too rich, too
greedily. Later on, these five declinations of the vice were reduced to a basic
dichotomy that finally cleared the ground in which the subject of gastronomy
was able to germinate beyond the reach of moral censure: on the one hand
the manifestations of gluttony (that could be reduced to quantity and
manner); and on the other the expressions of refinement (natural refinement,
that resided in the value of the ingredients, or artificial refinement, that was
due to culinary skill). Both were affected by the process of the stylization of
behavior and used as a measure of social distinction, but with a fundamental
difference: the former became part of a form of self-discipline, with its
concomitant aura of modesty and disgust; while the latter were exhibited as
manifestations of good taste, with the ensuing implications of cultural
aspiration and social emulation.
In the Middle Ages, nevertheless, the distinction scarcely came to the fore.
This explains why Thomas Aquinas may initially appear to recognize, at
least in theory, the autonomy of taste as a means for reining in gastronomic
pleasure, even though he ultimately concludes that it pertains to gluttony,
and is therefore a sin. In his theory of vice, a particular yearning for food,
rather than the desire to eat as such, can manifest itself in two situations:
“with respect to the substance, the search for costly foods, in other words
luxury; with respect to the quality, the desire for foods prepared with
excessive care, in other words refinement.”29 Moreover, both “appear to
concern the goodness of flavor, which is the essence of taste.”30 This is, of
course, a dialectical nicety that the author himself then denies in the solution
of the dispute. Evidently the time was not yet ripe for recognizing the
flamboyant stereotype of the gourmet. Largely extraneous to the customs
and mentality of the Middle Ages, this figure was at the most a reprehensible
guzzler, a man given to binging. “Foods that are precious or prepared with
30 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

refined skill do not elicit pleasure in the glutton on account of their savor, as
wines do for those that taste them, because this regards the realms of taste.
The folly of this kind of pleasure lies in the fact that it pertains more to
curiosity than to the palate. The glutton, on the other hand, finds delight in
the very ingestion of precious and refined foods, and this act has more to do
with touch.” In other words, with the sense that perceives the filling up of
the stomach rather than taste as such, which would be content with
stimulating the palate.31
At this point everything would seem to depend on the exact location in
the human body of the organ whose job it is to relieve the intemperance of
the palate. If this is in the mouth, and consists of whetting the taste buds
before food is actually swallowed, then the sense is clearly taste, which is
stimulated by curiosity. This is what happens with gourmands, if and when
they are considered to be the gastronomic equivalents of the wine tasters
already mentioned.32 If on the other hand the organ is located in the stomach
and advises the guzzler of the fulfillment that comes with satiety following
the swallowing of food, then the sense in question is touch, at least according
to Thomas Aquinas. What is more, there are significant analogies between
this sphere and that of lust. Indeed, in sexual behavior touching, licking,
rubbing and seminal fluids derive from contact between bodies, and thus
pertain to tactile stimulation. As a corollary of this anatomical reconstruction
of gluttony, it is also worth noting that the organs pertaining to these two
sins of the flesh—stomach and genitals—also share a degree of proximity to
the belly.
In so far as acts of gluttony are considered travesties of moderation,
deciding just how much is the right amount is a task for dietary science.
“Eating and drinking should be regulated in relation to the requirements of
bodily health. Often what is a moderate quantity of food and drink for a
healthy man can be excessive for a sick man, and the contrary may also be
true, that is, what may be too much for a healthy person could be the right
amount for someone who is sick, and has been ordered by his physician to
eat enough to provoke vomiting.”33
This is certainly the case as far as quantity is concerned. But what about
quality? If there are fine foods and delectable delicacies just as there are
excellent wines selected from casks by skilled tasters, this is thanks to the
discernment of merchants and cooks who are sensitive to the inclinations of
“taste as such.” But this is largely beside the point, in the sense that it cannot
be reduced to universal principles because tastes vary from one person to
another, just as the right quantity is also an individual factor. Thus the study
of variety and difference within the overall sphere of taste pertains to the
realms of dietary matters.
In early modern times, dietary precepts were part of a discipline based on
respected dogmas whose ancient origins can be traced back to pre-Socratic
cosmogony. According to the Sicilian physician Empedocles of Agrigento
(fifth century BC), the universe was based on four original elements: air,
water, earth and fire. To adapt these to the study of biology, Philistion of
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 31

Locri (fourth century BC) transformed them into primary powers or qualities,
with paired opposites (wet–dry and hot–cold) that provided the universal
coordinates underlying, in varying compositions, all material, organic and
inorganic substances. It was Polybus, a contemporary of Philistion and son-
in-law of Hypocrates of Cos, who applied this theory to medicine. Polybus
believed that the combinations of primary qualities corresponded to the
same number of organic fluids, or “humors,” that were fundamental
components of the human metabolism: blood, which was hot–wet; phlegm,
which was cold–wet; yellow bile, which was hot–dry; and black bile,
which was dry–cold. Five centuries later, when he was going through the
observations of Hypocrates, Galen of Pergamon, who had been the
gladiators’ physician, came to the conclusion that these were the main
principles of a psychosomatic typology. In his view, the humors corresponded
to “temperaments”—sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious or choleric, melancholic—
which revealed the predominance of one of these primary qualities over the
others. When evenly balanced, the primary qualities would produce a
perfectly balanced temperament (eukrasia), which would be a rare occurrence.
In reality, there is usually a dominant humor, and this was believed to account
for the individual character and physiognomy of each person. The search for
anthropologically constant features fitted in with this overall view by
creating a symbiotic correspondence between macro and microcosm. Thus
temperaments were held to be influenced both by endogenous factors such
as sex, age, consanguinity, and by exogenous factors such as the seasons and
the climate. By the same token, the temperament was thought to condition
and shape the psychological profile of the individual.34
Nutritional needs were also perceived as depending on temperament. If
all material substances are a mixture of primary qualities, then food itself is
composed of the same elements, and once ingested will produce certain
effects on the person’s temperament. According to Galen, the human
metabolism is naturally attracted by whatever promotes the balance of
humors: in other words, the relationship between an individual and food is
based on a compensation mechanism controled by intake and elimination,
such that the human body, like all other living organisms, “attracts what it
requires and eliminates what is extraneous to it.”
The opposing humors thus tend to balance each other out. For example,
the choleric temperament with its characteristic hot, dry complexion will be
inclined to ingest cold, wet substances such as fruit, whereas the phlegmatic
temperament, which is cold and wet, will be drawn by hot, dry substances,
such as red wine, roasted meats and bread. The best way to stay healthy is
to keep to a “natural” diet, in other words a diet that is appropriate for the
individual temperament. By the same token, a person who ingests foods
with the same composition of humors present in the body is likely to provoke
imbalance (diskrasia), which will undermine health. “The temperament of
the young is hot and rich in blood, whereas that of the old is poor in blood
and cold, which means that it is useful for old people to drink wine, because
it aids the recovery of the right degree of heat and cold for that age, whereas
32 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

wine is very damaging for those who are growing. During youth nature is
very hot and extremely agitated: wine would provoke over-heating and
uncontroled, violent action.”35
In the dietetics of antiquity, taste was thus the manifestation of the faculty
of appetite entrusted with regulating the relationship between requirement
and food, in other words between desire and health. The word “idiosyncrasy”
was adopted to refer to intolerance for certain substances, either in medicine
or nutrition. So Galen used, and presumably introduced, the literal meaning
of the words idios (particular) and synkrasia (mixture—of humors in this
case) to refer to the natural (symptomatic) manifestation of revulsion and
disgust.
The individual complexion was perceived as deriving from the sex and
age of the person, the surrounding environmental conditions, habits formed
and adopted, and the influence of the stars and the seasons. In relation to
this, taste was the genetically determined somatic trait that, like character
and physiognomy, cannot be corrected or reshaped at will. For this very
reason, there is no accounting for taste: de gustibus non est disputandum.
The cook’s task was thus not to appease the desires of the palate or belly,
and certainly not to stimulate a capricious inclination for guzzling, which
would inevitably undermine health. Instead the cook was supposed to
further temperance in taste as a means for achieving correct sustenance for
the body. This required skilled knowledge of the “physics” of cooking, which
meant “knowing exactly the complexion of the guests, the physical
environment and the constitution of the foods, so as to achieve in all cases
the right amounts for maintaining the correct balance of humors. (. . .) Thus
for every ingredient it is essential to establish the exact composition—
natura—and its influence on the organism—vis, facultas.”36
This explains the structure of medieval recipes, which not only provided
advice on the preservation and preparation of different foods, but also took
into account their effect on health. For example, “dry” meats such as beef or
venison were best prepared in a stew, whose wetness re-established the
balance of humors. Vice-versa, “wet” meats such as goose or lamb were
better roasted, because this re-introduced the dry element. Mixtures, sauces,
condiments and serving different foods together were subject to the same
principles, at least in theory. Apart from modifying the nature of foods as
they appear in nature so that they become more digestible, culinary skills
were also useful for making dishes tastier, in other words, better suited to
the body from the sensorial point of view. Luxury in medieval banquets was
not only a question of lavish table settings and complex dishes. It also found
expression in the widespread mania for spices, which were originally
introduced into Europe—like sugar itself—for their medicinal virtues.
An important exponent of this school of thought was Platina, the
fifteenth-century author of a treatise on cooking that met with widespread
acclaim. Within the framework of medieval dietetics, with all its moralizing
magic, he managed to rescue the activity of the cook from the smoking spit
and elevate it to the realms of learning. Starting with the title, De honesta
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 33

voluptate et valetudine (1475), his aim was not to condone revelry and
debauchery, but to show men of discernment how best to enjoy life. He
viewed good health as the essential moral and dietetic condition for the
enjoyment of food and pleasures of the palate. “Not all foods are suited to
all men, but there should be a sufficient variety of foods to respond to the
different basic principles, to man’s different desires in relation to the humors,
and to the different tastes, so that each person can have what is good for
him, what he likes and what is nutritional for him.”37 The Epicurism that
Platina proclaimed to be philologically correct: far from being a justification
of luxury and dissoluteness, it was an ideal aimed at the form of self-control
essential to true happiness.
Cooking was thus still far from being emancipated from dietetics, and
had yet to give in to hedonism or become a freely inventive form of food
production entirely dependent on the palate. The idea that taste in its own
right could be a worthy goal, free of moral and dietary constraints, could
only come about once economic and social transformation had paved the
way for ideological change. At this point the statutes and practices of taste
could follow individual predilection, undergoing a process of civilization to
become a chimaera disputationum.38
Freed of its earlier obligations, taste could then become a mirror of social
differentiation, a catalyst in the civilizing process that was to invest behavior
in relation to the new historical and political conditions. As such, taste was
thus also able to influence aesthetics and formality, expressing the culture of
the church and promoting new models of behavior. Little wonder, then, that
it ultimately also came to define gastronomy and refine appetites, ushering
in the foundation of haute cuisine in the second half of the seventeenth
century.
It took a long time for taste to become independent. As Norbert Elias has
pointed out,39 the first stage in the process was slow and pervasive, reflecting
the ideology essential to the spread of good manners. Premonitory signs of
this development were already visible in the Middle Ages, at the time of the
Carolingian renaissance. During this period,

all due attention was paid to “noble behavior” and to everything that was
deemed a necessary accessory to food: a fine table with beautiful linens
and crockery; good company and pleasant conversation; music and
entertainments; elegant behavior. Such was the birth of “good manners,”
of convivial rites founded on elegance rather than strength; on forms
rather than on substance (from the dietary point of view). In court circles
of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries these “manners” began to take
shape, acting as a measure of social differentiation based less on quantity
than on quality, and on precisely how these products were consumed. The
new aristocratic culture invested not only the convivial dimension of
food, however, but also the products themselves, which had to be more
refined and elegant in their tastes, smells and colors. A correct initiation
into courtly life was not just a question of appetite (which remained an
34 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

essential attribute of the nobility), but also of discernment, the ability to

select, to distinguish between good and bad foods.40

The ritualization of good manners and refinement led to the redefinition

of food requirements and appetites. The explanation of variety and difference
increasingly revolved around social context, including rank, education and
culture, rather than innate traits, climate and season. While the precept of
the ancients, according to which food should suit the “quality of the person,”
still prevailed, individual taste was justified in terms of social rank, which
also accounted for the related norms pertaining to precisely how food
should be consumed: “the perspective began to change as the idea that the
“quality of a person” was largely a social matter gained ground. This in its
turn increasingly coincided with the social status of the individual, his or her
rank, wealth and power. (. . .) Eating certain things (prepared and cooked in
a particular way) was no longer exclusively due to habit or choice. It was
becoming a sign of social identity based on an established hierarchy whose
preservation called for due observation and respect. (. . .) Fine, elaborate
and sophisticated foods of the sort power and wealth could buy and display
were suited to the stomach of gentlemen, whereas common, rough foods
were the right thing for the stomach of peasants.”41
The dining tables of Europe required new stages, sets and choreography,
and the diners themselves became the actors in the ensuing plays. Where
once exterior show, formality and the display of magnificence had held
sway, the focus grew more personal, stimulating an ésprit de finesse that
could educate sensual perception, thereby investing something learned with
spontaneity. Taste was undergoing the influence of style, based on the idea
that what appeals is not necessarily good, whereas what is good should be
appealing. In other words, what is deemed delectable within aristocratic
circles is entirely conditioned by convention. Just who shaped the convention
depended on social prestige, and those endowed with it became models for
behavior and mentors of refinement. The ancient monastic precept (continue
to pray and faith will come of its own accord) was thus adapted to suit
etiquette: repetition, social acceptance and the spirit of emulation could all
act as remedial exercises for refining the appetites.
Far from being the natural expression of subjectivity, taste thus came to
be shaped by culture. In this way the space occupied by individual fancy and
whim was enclosed within the walls of basic uniformity. To have taste meant
to have absorbed the dictates of refinement. This transcended the mere
search for rarity, for what was precious and for over-abundance. And in so
doing it proved that taste had changed, was no longer a question of exhibiting
luxury or laxity, as it had been in ancient civilizations. In the modern
mentality that was taking shape, taste had to be good: the addition of this
attribute, intended as a synonym for “cultivated,” “fine” and “natural,” was
an evident way of excluding those who lacked it. As such it was a fundamental
innovation. To have “good taste” implied the ability to learn and appreciate
(in other words, to have digested) certain expressions belonging to the
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 35

sphere of what was considered worthy of appreciation. And these perceptual

milestones, taken all together, were what defined “style.” Thus good taste
was the mastery of a conventional repertoire of tastes, acts and words;
submission to an initiatory ceremonial established for the recognition and
celebration of a particular social sphere. In this sense, there is no good taste
at the table without concomitant rules for manners. “Courtly fashion moved
towards the proliferation of small, delicate and costly dishes; knowledgeability
and a sense of delicacy in matters of food became something of a mark of
the courtier. Now a sense of delicacy implies a degree of restraint too, in so
far as it involves discrimination and selection, the rejection as well as the
acceptance of certain foods or combination of foods.”42
The stylization of tastes was to manifest itself in a number of different
ways: in the transition from abundance to refinement in culinary preparation
as a display of self-control and sophistication in gastronomic enjoyment; in
the rhetoric of delicacy,43 as the criterion for the exclusion of vulgarity in the
pleasures of the palate; the spiral of refinement that raised the expectation
of pleasure from one banquet to the next; and the invention of the
connoisseur as a practitioner of ritual gourmandise elevated to the highest
degree of perfection.
As taste gained autonomy, the gastronomic dimension as such proved to
be the final outcome of the social and cultural processes described earlier. It
is no coincidence that it should represent the last stage of this evolution,
because what had gone before effectively prepared the ground for and
nurtured the last stage of the development.
There is, however, a persistent misunderstanding regarding the genealogy
of luxury cuisine. It is either perceived to be one of the manifestations of
courtly civilization, an embodiment of the transformation “from quantitative
display to qualitative elaboration”44 that marked the breach with the Middle
Ages and began with the Italian Renaissance; or it is explained in terms
of the emancipation of taste as a culinary art that no longer had anything to
do with dietetics and morals, which transfers the focus to the French court
during the following century. As far as chronology and place are concerned,
the point to bear in mind is that taste changed during its evolution. Through
the process of civilization, it underwent domestication, refinement,
cultivation and ritualization. In other words, it took centuries of testing and
improving before taste could settle down and establish its own identity.
Published in 1651, La Varenne’s Cuisinier François is commonly held
to be the first “irrefutable literary evidence of the birth of a specifically
French culinary style.”45 Clearly it is not a subversive manifesto written by
an isolated visionary, which means that in all likelihood it represents the first
expression to appear in print of new inclinations that were spreading
through the kitchens of the French aristocracy of the time.
In other words, the aim of this book is not to establish which country
came first in the history of grand cuisine. To do so would simply reduce the
history of gastronomy to a collection of anecdotes. This, alas, was a common
occurrence until a decade or so ago, though worse still were the various
36 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

passionate but blinkered efforts to proclaim one particular person as the

sole author of the development of fine cuisine. By contrast, what is required
is a careful reconstruction of how the various schools of cooking came
about, what their particular characteristics were and why they came to the
fore in a given period.
Jean-François Revel argued that haute cuisine owed nothing to “the specter
of the Medici” and that the only contribution of Italians to fine gastronomy
was as confectioners.46 With all due respect to the French, however, the birth
of the culinary arts did not depend on the invention of the rich creamy sauces
that for three centuries contributed to the dyspepsia of half of Europe. What
accounted for the rise of French cuisine above all others (not only Italian, but
also Catalan, which was widely acclaimed during the sixteenth century) was
the predominance of a particular style that spoke eloquently for the thirst for
power and the desire to celebrate Gallic grandeur. In other words, the French
school responded with greater gastronomic, aesthetic and rhetorical efficiency
to the demand for luxury, refinement and novelty expressed by a civilization
that had turned waste into the art of abundance.
Had they lived during the dark ages, La Varenne, Menon, Carême and the
Troisgros brothers would never have gained recognition as the founders of
a school. While they might have run a successful hostelry or even been
appointed to prepare food for the table of pope or king, it is unlikely that
they could have revolutionized cooking or reinvented gastronomy because
the demand for such actions was lacking: an audience receptive to their
creative vein had still to come about.
A totally different situation prevailed with the burgeoning of modern
French cuisine. Once aristocratic bellies were so full that there was no room
left for further indulgence, and when the inclination for refinement could no
longer be satisfied by profusion, then the only way taste could go forward was
by demanding sophistication in the way food was prepared. This was—and
still is—a sphere in which there is no theoretical or natural limit to the search
for perfection in its various successive manifestations. Indeed, the pursuit of
perfection was what gave rise to virtuoso techniques and stylistic refinement;
that is, to competition among chefs. Variety alone was able to elicit desire. An
appreciation of inventiveness, the search for novelty and delight in what is
unusual all came to the fore as signs of the new culinary taste.
From this point of view, the most effective interpreter of the new realm of
the gastronome chef, architect of taste and high priest of cooking, was not
so much La Varenne as the anonymous author of the Art de bien traiter
(1675), who signed his treatise with the initials L.S.R.
In his polemical desire to excel, to claim the superiority of his own style,
and thereby to denigrate anything his contemporaries might try to achieve,
L.S.R. repudiated tradition, which he considered a primitive—and thus
despicable—stage in culinary art, and instead pursued a double objective:
“first and foremost, to make a certain taste, relative to a particular time and
place, THE TASTE : absolute, final, possibly even of divine origin and right.
And in the second place, to present himself as one of its greatest exponents
 PLEASURES AND MORALS 37

and at the same time as its sole depositary, thereby becoming the supreme
and sublime arbiter of elegance.”47
It was not so much taste as such as the spirit behind it that marked the
advent of the new developments in cooking. Aware of their excellence and
originality, the French proclaimed themselves the proprietors of taste. In this
perspective, taste was raised to the highest degree of perfection and, like
the fine arts, was invested with a degree of elevation that allowed for a
supercilious perception of what went on down below, among those wretched
creatures forbidden such enjoyment by rank and history. Taste had lost its
earlier plurality to become supreme, universal and absolute.48
This is precisely how French cuisine managed to impose the ideological
supremacy that led to what was perceived as its technical and stylistic
superiority with respect to Italian cuisine, which still revealed the sweet/sour
element of the medieval tradition. In Sarah Peterson’s view,49 the new
perspective was fully established, both symbolically and gastronomically,
when the sugary element was removed from the main dishes and repositioned
at the end of the meal. The ubiquity of the salt/acid pair that took over from
the sweet/sour combination became a sort of taste paradigm that fitted in
with the dictates of refined cuisine, which had to whet the appetite and delay
the sense of satiety. “The French took the salad—that is, food seasoned with
salt and acid—as the framework of the new stimulating cuisine. They derived
the notion of extending the salad throughout the meal—from the ancients
and the Renaissance Italians, both of whom had served salads at various
points during their banquets.”50
Acid and salted foods were in fact served as hors d’oeuvres as early as
ancient Greek and Roman times, with the aim of stimulating the appetite.
The Italians expanded the practice, using salads as side dishes that could act
as an enticing contrast of tastes with the main dishes, where sweetness still
tended to prevail. The French went one step further, transforming the menu
into an unending succession of salted dishes. “The entire meal outside the
dessert served the function of a salad.”51
At this point a new liturgy of dining had come into being, one that was
to spread throughout Europe: “the French conceived of a salt–sweet divide.
They sundered the meal into an extended salad and dessert. For the first
time in the West salty and sweet dishes were strictly separated. The French
marshaled sugared items at the end, where their supposed power to
extinguish the appetite would shut down any further desire to eat and bring
on a feeling of satiation.”52
Unlike Renaissance cuisine, which was still permeated with magic and
health claims, French cuisine had become totally secular in the service of
frivolity and hedonism. Where the dietary precepts of earlier times had
preached temperance and health, the new culinary art exalted taste and
stimulated the appetites. Gone were the dishes based on the juxtaposition
and mixture of ingredients. In their place came recipes that tended to
concentrate flavors and particular aromas. Humors and their interrelations
were a thing of the past. This was the age of the mastery of culinary essence.
38 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

The many other innovations that were to characterize French cuisine

adhered to a similar stylistic register and tended to express the same
ideological inspiration. Spices were banned because they were seen as too
obvious and immediate. Instead of exalting the natural taste of foods they
smothered them. To add to which they were no longer fashionable, enticing,
or even particularly rare and costly. By contrast, the “Arcadian” rediscovery
of aromatic herbs underlined the element of freshness and spontaneity in
majestically structured recipes. What was evidently artificial was also
rejected: roasted fowl that were presented with the feathers stuck back on,
for instance. Even browning was deemed a form of sham to be avoided.
Instead culinary preparation had to be subtle and sophisticated: therein lay
its attraction. Fatty sauces also underwent a transformation, in keeping with
the general principle that contrast should be attenuated and flavors should
blend together. The language of gastronomy gained new terms such as
bisque, feuilleté, julienne and ragout, which emphasized refinement of
preparation and perfection of technique.
One major question remains to be answered, however: Why did all this
happen precisely in France, and in France alone? In one of the best books
ever written on the history of taste, Stephen Mennell analyzes the parallel
rise of haute cuisine in France and its coeval failure in England.53 Could it
be just a matter of difference in taste, with the French inclination for what
is more sophisticated and overstated, and the English preference for what is
quieter and more understated? After all, gardening, which is another form
of pleasure derived from shaping nature, reveals similar differences in the
two countries. To some extent this is indeed true, because the social
implications in the two countries were also very different. The displays of
magnificence typical of the French court provided forms of representation
and social cohesion that would never have worked in England. And
something analogous takes place when the subject is food. Culinary
refinement came about in France because the surrounding context was that
of the court, where the appurtenances of prestige reflected the absolutist
monarchy.
The process could only achieve completion with the civilizing of behavior,
the stylization of sensibility and the refinement of appetites. Once freed of
moral constraints and dietary precepts, taste was able to focus on the pursuit
of happiness, gradually becoming the regulating principle behind Western
habits at the outset of the modern age.
Recognizing the pleasures of the table as expressions of savoir vivre
brought a different focus to the problem: as fornication of the belly was
transformed into titillation of the palate, frenetic dining became an
expression of good taste. In other words, taste could claim to be a sphere of
sensibility analogous to that of appreciation of fine arts. And so it remained—
at least until the philosophers persuaded their readers that the pleasures of
the mind should be divorced from those of the body.
 3
The Birth of Aesthetics and the
Bifurcation of Tastes

The twentieth century provided observers with a remarkable range of

oddities that claimed to have aesthetic value. They included Dadaism,
Cubism, abstract art, monochrome painting, Op and Pop Art, body and
land art, to say nothing of artists’ excrement, torn canvases, burnt wood,
patched bags, mute concerts and exhibitions without pictures. Little wonder,
then, that the plurality and ephemeral nature of aesthetic expression have
become part and parcel of present-day cultural sensibility.
Contemporary art has focused more on provocation, on shocking
the middle classes, than on delivering an edifying message by means of
accepted symbols. The idea that art has anything to do with shared
perceptions and understanding is something of the past. Instead society has
opted for emphasis on individual taste and the multiplication of aesthetic
canons, none of which aims at transcending the limited sphere of immediate
gratification. One of the outcomes of this change is the pervasive presence
of “minor genres” that are excluded from the élite circles of art galleries,
literary circles and concert halls, despite the fact they attract numerous
aficionados and a wide public, and in so doing act as opportunities for
symbolic exchange and social encounter. Apart from the mass cult for
memorabilia (in other words, for what most people deem the only “true
art,” to be exhibited in museums, preserved in churches and performed
in theaters), such expressions of taste also include popular fiction, film,
pop music, gardening, photography and tourism (the latter two having
become a form of voyeurism in which images mediate between the individual
and contact with reality). In other words, forms of leisure activity in
which the attractions of form are interwoven with the need for fun or
enjoyment, unleashing what Kant would have called the “free play of the
imagination.”
As for taste in the physiological sense, worldwide competition has spurred
contemporary gastronomy and enology on to a previously unthinkable
degree of technical perfection, creating a platform for shared opinions and
parameters that are rather more grounded and measurable than those
pertaining to the realms of contemporary artistic trends.

39
40 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

Today it is abundantly clear that a passion for art is only one of many
potential pastimes, and not the most desirable or the most widespread of
leisure pursuits. Moreover, it is also evident that the ephemeral nature of our
current aesthetic labyrinth, replete with built-in obsolescence, is simply a
reflection of our times. In other words, artistic creation is inextricably
interwoven with cultural context, which in its turn is made up of the circle
of people who invest such products with value.

Enlightenment Tastes: Perceptions,

Contradictions and Aversions
Though this may now seem so obvious that it is hardly worthy of comment,
things were very different during the 1700s, also known as “the century of
taste”1 in view of the intense debate that revolved around two aspects of the
problem. The first was essentially political, in that it pertained to the
possibility of making the pleasures of taste accessible to a wider sphere, not
least because the extension of the rights of social citizenship implied shared
symbolic and cultural privileges. By contrast, the second was theoretical,
and involved restoring a degree of certainty to aesthetic experience following
years in which the evolution of individual tastes had undermined its
authority and accentuated the subjective, idiosyncratic nature of artistic
expression and perception.
While the Renaissance and Baroque periods had insisted on the authority
of the individual over the world, the age of the Enlightenment adopted a
very different approach based on continual dissection and analysis. To this
end, aesthetic taste was invested with an unconditional existence of its own,
free of the need to fit in with the sensorial analogy pertaining to the palate.
Buried beneath the many idiomatic expressions of everyday language, the
taste metaphor lost its spontaneous, revelatory character once and for all.
Reference to the pleasures of food as a way of understanding the perception
of beauty no longer had any efficacy or charm. Aesthetic sensibility had
acquired a dignity of its own whereby the prosaic gratifications of food and
drink could no longer be used as a simile to describe the discernment of
modern man and his cultural ambience. What is interesting, however, is the
way the attribution of autonomy to the taste for beauty led to the proliferation
of contradictions and paradoxes.
When moralists and philosophers did their best to disprove the relativity
of taste and its fickle, ephemeral character, they generally referred to taste as
a cultural rather than a natural phenomenon, despite the fact that historic
experience suggested that art was indeed an elusive, provisional matter. Like
the thinkers of earlier times, no one disagreed with the adage that gustibus
non est disputandum, which spoke for the conviction that taste was influenced
by temperament. If taste was to be understood as an “organic” phenomenon,
that is, as an expression of a natural trait, clearly it did not lend itself to
correction or cultivation. Criticism or reproof were thus entirely out of place.
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 41

The disparity of views only came to the fore when taste was considered a
form of civilization, akin to and alongside manifestations of urbanity,
courtesy and cultivated demeanor. In such situations, the term revealed a
marked affinity with the other sense that can be used figuratively, that of
touch, or tact.2 Likewise, when it was deemed a form of superior instinct for
beauty, in its own way a link between pleasure of the senses and spiritual
elevation.
The original meaning of taste was thus gradually marginalized and
subjected to mockery, to the extent that when the culinary simile did come
to the surface, it was only in negative terms, to underline the differences
between taste for food and aesthetic taste. When this latter began to resemble
the former, as it often did when the focus was on habits (for instance, the
Scottish predilection for the bagpipes and the Italian preference for the
mandolin, or the German habit for starting dinner with a soup, as opposed
to the English habit for beginning with a cold dish), the sense of beauty lost
its autonomy and standing, slipping into the purgatory of what was random
and gratuitous.
Yet what elicited discussion was not the extravagance and oddities of
taste, but the degree to which it could claim to be a shared experience. Once
the sphere of reference transcended local custom and credence to embrace
the lasting masterpieces of literature and art, it was no longer possible to
insist that taste was exclusively subjective, and recalcitrant to communication.
Common experience clearly showed that the taste for beauty implied a
certain amount of agreement, at least within a given period and among a
particular social milieu.
Granted, explaining the reasons for this agreement was altogether more
complicated, since mere statistical criteria were clearly not enough. It is one
thing to verify a shared conviction a posteriori, and quite another to
postulate a priori the existence of a necessary universal faculty that precedes
all experience. In other words, the taste enigma resides within the extreme
parameters of subjectivity on the one hand, and universality on the other.
The paradox naturally gave rise to two very different solutions: either accept
the evidence that taste is socially and culturally formed (an approach that
belongs to the relativist, sensualist perspective); or postulate a “limbo” in
which the vicissitudes of history and culture are removed to leave the field
free for aesthetic contemplation in the dogmatic, puritan sense.
The first of these two currents of thought considers taste as the outcome
of the process of civilization of customs, culture and the arts; in other words,
the expression of the highest state of evolution achieved by a given
civilization, which is how the thinkers of the Enlightenment would have
described their own period (Voltaire was convinced that earthly paradise
corresponded to the Paris of his time, in polemical contrast with those who
favored a return to nature).3 From this point of view, taste inevitably became
good taste, the ultimate goal of an evolutionary process collectively shaped,
refined and perfected by the entire history of humanity. That said, however,
setting aside the teleological assessment that attributes primacy in moral
42 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

and civil progress to contemporary society, it is evident that good taste, as a

form of savoir vivre by means of which people find the world they live in as
agreeable as possible, is in fact a question of empirical experience that is not
only short-lived and contingent, but also completely lacking in any formal
justification or raison d’être.
The second solution to the taste enigma aims at establishing a more solid,
universal and necessary foundation for the phenomenon, capable of
transcending the historic and social relativism that has beleaguered the
concept discussed above. Before taste can be said to be good or bad, refined
or vulgar, it exists as a transcendental fact; in other words it precedes all
empirical events and underlies the perception of beauty that can be
experienced by all human beings, at least theoretically. As such, it represents
an essential faculty, part and parcel of the original makeup of humankind.
Clearly this claim to universality gains ground when taste is considered
as a metaphor, as opposed to being merely a sense. According to Galen’s
theory of temperaments, within a properly balanced disposition the
constraints of the bodily sphere—in this case the appetite for food—preclude
perception of the highest manifestations of culture and nature, which pertain
to the spirit. Enlightenment ideology conceived of the sense of beauty in a
similar fashion, attributing it to all men of discernment.
Various thinkers of the past embraced the former of these two approaches:
Feijóo, Dubos, Voltaire, Burke and Hume, for example. They all perceived
taste referred to the palate as the appropriate term of comparison, with
common experience acting as a support and tool of persuasion. The confines
of likelihood to which they subscribed did not rely entirely on the fact that
the subject itself was still relatively new and unexplored. They could also
count on a fairly wide and varied audience little versed in the sophisms of
language and intellectual abstraction.
The recourse to everyday experience not only encouraged philosophers
to embrace the manifestations of custom—including those pertaining to
eating habits—within their sphere of enquiry. It also promoted the tendency
to view the spirit of the time, which embraced the phenomenon of art, within
a given historical context. At the time, even this seemed exposed to the fever
of whim and volubility: “the ideal rules of the baroque period were
abandoned, and replaced by other rules, based on an idealization that
emphasized the ‘perceptible’ features of reality. Among other traits,
sumptuous surfaces, texture, wealth of colors and the charm of gentle curves
came to the fore as characteristic of rococo. Moreover, these traits were
accompanied by a more frivolous, and possibly more superficial conception
of works of art, whereby their decorative, hedonistic nature gained ground
at the expense of their seriousness.”4
If beauty “consists in the absence of regularity, in vitality, picturesqueness
and fullness, as well as in the expression of emotions, which have little to do
with proportion,”5 then it must necessarily be considered a form of subjective
impression and a byproduct of experience, rather than a manifestation of
“nature” or an intrinsic quality of things. This implies that “all beauty is
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 43

subjective, relative and conventional.”6 Moreover, the flaring up of fashions

and the volatility of tastes have in fact infected the fine arts. Taste may not
seem to be an irrational, arbitrary phenomenon, but it certainly appears to
be contingent and fickle.
In his efforts to confute the axiom forbidding the disputation of tastes,
the Benedictine scholar Benito Jerónimo Feijóo7 distinguished between
tastes that are innate and those that are acquired: if the former derive from
temperament, the latter are the product of habit and opinion, which means
that they are motivated by “apprehension,” as Feijóo called it. In the
preferences instigated by the unconscious and governed by the mechanisms
that shape fashions, reinforce prejudice and forge habits, the primary cause
behind the establishment of taste is social convention. It is thus perfectly
legitimate to discuss and change opinions pertaining to rarity, fashion and
reputation. In fact replacing one convention (an opinion, an infatuation, a
desire) with another is a common enough occurrence.
In situations where tastes compete with each other, the “winning
contender” does not necessarily stand for value judgments subject to an
evolutionist perception of the civilizing process, as various eighteenth-
century writers maintained. Feijóo’s own cultural relativism was so extreme
that it practically disallowed the concept of good and bad taste. If the job of
taste as a faculty is to recognize what is pleasurable, “it can never commit
errors” for the simple reason that “if it deems something pleasurable, then it
reveals a taste for it, finding real pleasure therein.” In other words, if taste
entirely coincides with pleasure, it cannot be said to be bad. Nowadays, of
course, discussions concerning the relativity of tastes appear almost obvious:
“the inhabitants of Africa find the greatest possible pleasure in the song of
crickets. The Tartars eat horse meat and the Arabs eat that of camels. In
certain parts of Africa they eat crocodiles and snakes.” So if such sounds and
flavors procure pleasure to those who listen to or savor them, then taste has
fulfilled its objective and cannot be deemed bad.
So in precisely what way can tastes be subject to disputation? In the sense
that they can be “accounted for.” This implies that it is possible to discover
what governs them, which in its turn suggests they can be suppressed or
influenced by means of discussion and persuasion. As we have seen, Feijóo
proposed two explanations for the phenomenon: temperament, and
apprehension. Temperament is simply the individual nature of a person,
according to Galen’s remarkably long-lived paradigm. Half a century later,
Kant was to return to the same theories in his anthropological dissertations:
“A given temperament brings with it particular inclinations: Mores sequuntur
temperamentum, and these inclinations are accompanied by taste, or rather
the pleasure found in gratifying them: in this way the variety of temperaments
gives rise to the diversity of inclinations and tastes.”8
The second explanation regards apprehension, in other words the
immediate, intuitive faculty for perceiving, which governs the predisposition
of the subject towards the object of pleasure. In this regard, Feijóo mentions
two recurrent phenomena: the initiation to what is unusual, and the
44 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

obsolescence of what is already familiar. It is a common experience to find

pleasure in (that is, to gratify the taste for) something that once provoked
feelings of disgust or indifference. And by the same token, something that
was once considered highly desirable can later be eschewed as uninteresting.
This happens because the apprehension or the predisposition of taste can
change. Both cases underline how taste is an adaptable, impressionable
faculty that is ineluctably subject to social and cultural conditioning: “many
have no taste for a certain food at the outset, and yet develop a taste for it
later because they hear that it is fashionable, or regularly served at the table
of affluent gentlemen; others are drawn by the fact that it comes from distant
lands, or is sold at high prices. By the same token, but in reverse, although
at the outset they may find it to their taste, this predilection begins to wane
when they hear that it is a food for yokels, or common fare among savage,
barbarous people. Such information brings about a change in appreciation
and reflection that shapes taste. The same thing happens with respect to all
other kinds of pleasurable objects perceived by the other senses.”9
Feijóo’s “sociological approach” thus lucidly grasps the mechanisms that
shape and spread modern taste, especially in relation to the budding
consumer culture. Even more farsighted is his recognition of the way the
exercise of taste can contaminate the psychological image. The only form of
taste that resides in a bodily organ is that of temperament. The taste of
apprehension, on the other hand, is anchored exclusively to “the psychological
image, which can be gratified or irritated, according to the impression made
on it by what the senses perceive.”10 This explains the distaste for something
that was previously considered to be of great worth. When the Jews in the
desert began to scorn Manna, Feijóo argues, the source of their scorn did
not reside in the palate or in sight, but in the psychological image.
In view of its role within social dynamics and symbolic representation,
such variables thus help explain the enigma of the overlapping subjectivity
of taste. The confutation of the “taste axiom” thus implies two corollaries:
Where the question revolves around temperament and humors, it is clear
that there is no disputing taste: “whatever is natural and inevitable cannot
be confuted through argument, and likewise there is no reason for considering
it plausible or praiseworthy.”11 When on the other hand taste depends on
perception, since “the vices of apprehension can be corrected by means of
reason,” the discussion is not only epistemologically grounded, but also
relatively easy to conclude satisfactorily: “if someone beholds with disdain
a given food, either because is it not used in his country or because it is very
cheap, it is easy to persuade that person through reason that such disdain is
ill founded.”12
In the introduction to his dissertation on beauty and the sublime, even
Edmund Burke was ready to recognize the social conditioning that shapes
and establishes acquired tastes. If in the elementary stages of taste there
is an overall agreement that sweet tastes are pleasant and bitter ones
unpleasant, then these inclinations will evolve naturally, modifying individual
predilections and multiplying sources of pleasure: “a man frequently comes
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 45

to prefer the taste of tobacco to that of sugar, and the flavor of vinegar to
that of milk; but this makes no confusion in tastes, whilst he is sensible that
the tobacco and vinegar are not sweet, and whilst he knows that habit alone
has reconciled his palate to these alien pleasures.”13
Thus Burke too viewed taste as a phenomenon that transcended the
sphere of the senses to interfere with the labyrinth of opinions and customs
that shape the access to pleasure. The enigma of taste, in his opinion,
consisted in its hedonistic bent rather than in its sensorial essence. Though
all may agree that we like what is good, it is less easy to identify the reasons
behind such a judgment.
Certain case histories can be enlightening. Often something that is first
introduced as functional in some way will be ultimately deemed pleasant if
it becomes a habit, for such is the “opiate” nature of acquiring tastes:

thus opium is pleasing to Turks, on account of the agreeable delirium it

produces. Tobacco is the delight of Dutchmen, as it diffuses a torpor and
pleasing stupefaction. Fermented spirits please our common people,
because they banish care, and all consideration of future or present evils.
All of these would lie absolutely neglected if their properties had originally
gone no further than the taste; but all these together, with tea and coffee,
and some other things, have passed from the apothecary’s shop to our
tables, and were taken for health long before they were thought of for
pleasure. The effect of the drug has made us use it frequently; and frequent
use, combined with the agreeable effect, has made the taste itself at last
agreeable.14

Moreover, it is evident that if we are really to dispute tastes (that is, argue
in favor of the superiority of one over another), the discussion cannot be
waylaid in absolute relativism, because that would inevitably end up by
reinstating the principle of their unchallengeable nature, albeit extended to
the collective dimension. In effect, it is not sufficient to clarify the social
premises and the vacuity of the justifications supporting this or that
predilection to convince someone that said taste concerns something that is
beautiful or ugly, good or bad, as Feijóo would seem to think. Nor is it enough
to bring Burke’s theory of frequent use into play. The question is too complex
and important to accept that the song of a cricket can be equated to the music
of Handel, as the Enlightenment philosopher implied. The renewal of the arts
and their constantly expanding public, along with the general tendency
towards the civilization of behavior, are uncontestable facts, no less than the
national and historic diversity of customs and predilections. Good taste
becomes a subject for philosophers both as an empirical fact, and as a
reflection of social attitude. As such, it calls for a theoretical explanation,
which is what has led to the search for a principle of authority, or at least a
logical reason to justify the superiority of one point of view over another.
In other words, all efforts are directed towards establishing criteria for
the segmentation of the demand for refinement, one that tallies materially
46 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

and ideologically with the historical process that has been accompanied by
the expansion of the platform of consumers. In actual fact, the eighteenth
century debate on taste largely revolved around the access to, or exclusion
from luxury, especially in England. Thus the consumers themselves became
the sole measure of the common ground for taste and its communication.
Those able to exercise a comparative taste coincided not with an idealized
version of the human being, or a subject of the United Kingdom, but more
precisely with the select circle of those able to count on a special, refined
sense of beauty. In other words, those with the experience to express
judgment values. Such is the essence of what is known as “good taste,”
which is a faculty distributed unevenly among humankind.
The relevance of this faculty as part of the cultural baggage expected of
the modern gentleman went beyond the mere experience of beauty: from
Gracián and Shaftesbury on, that is from the late 1600s to early 1700s, the
question involved “a way of being and acting, a style of thought and
behavior, in other words something that invested every aspect—private and
public, moral, social and political, and only thereafter aesthetic—of the life
of an accomplished man.”15 Only later was the meaning of good taste
gradually circumscribed to the ability to recognize the beautiful and the
sublime in nature and art.
Since good taste could in no way be considered an innate faculty (a
natural disposition may favor it, but it cannot form it), to gain refinement it
must necessarily be learned (by means of suitable education), shared (that is,
belong to a particular milieu that prescribes the rules for use), and desired
(to possess and develop it must coincide with the person’s aspirations). Thus
from all points of view, good taste is a cultivated faculty, one that is shaped
culturally to fit in socially.
So the real question at this point is to decide at precisely what level of the
social pyramid it should be located. Once this is established, inter-subjectivity
finally looms into shape. In this way Shaftesbury was able to claim that the
universal canon of taste was laid down by the authors of antiquity, who
represented a shared cultural model. In other words, by defining a rule and
appointing an auctoritas, good taste was finally able to banish the concept
of relativity of tastes. The de gustibus argument could no longer apply to
good taste, because this latter was the fruit of an unambiguous definition,
which allowed it to establish the norms to which it adhered and by means
of which it claimed “universality.”
At the same time, good taste also laid down the social confines of what
could be shared and communicated: “if during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries taste had been the prerogative of the court, with Shaftesbury it
became the prerogative of the gentleman, who was still an aristocrat, but did
not gravitate around the court. A gentleman who cultivates public as well as
private virtues and, like a philosopher—who is the apotheosis of the
gentleman—‘aims at excellence, aspires to proper taste, and never loses sight
of what is beautiful and dignified.’ The gentleman-philosopher is thus the
very incarnation of the standard of taste, and as such presents himself as a
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 47

paradigm for all other men (of his class).”16 A little later, access to this
cultivated sensibility was to become less selective, and the admission
procedures more “democratic.” When Addison defined good taste as the
supreme perception of a well-educated man, his chosen audience “was not
the aristocracy, but a well-to-do middle class that aspired to being socially
recognized and legitimized as belonging to the sphere of people of quality.
Now, access to this class could not just be purchased through money
(although this did frequently occur), but through merit, which implied the
acquisition of culture and (good) taste. These constituted a form of ‘nobility’
that differed from that founded on rank and blood. Only thus could a man
become a gentleman: by taking on the ‘qualities’ that had hitherto been the
prerogative of the élite, as Shaftesbury still assumed.”17
Laying down the rules for sensibility meant elevating the contemplation
of beauty to the summit of the taste experience, making it the culmination
of the process of the refinement and civilization of customs that was to favor
the internalization of good manners. This was a sort of symbolic gentrification
imbued with its own criterion for social discrimination. As a result, taste
was to become a matter of aesthetics that provided the spiritual guidelines
for appropriate behavior shared by the élite and by those who aspired to
belong to such elevated spheres. At the same time, however, the process also
supplied the “instructions” necessary for educating the spectator, that is the
person geared to the reception of the work of art as a contemplative pastime.
This state of necessity was ratified by the fact that, well before aesthetics
became a specialized discipline in its own right, treatises on beauty moved
their main focus from rhetoric and poetics (in other words, the analysis of
composition) to the emotional anatomy of the perceiver, that is to the
conditions that make an aesthetic experience accessible and sharable. The
contemplation of beauty implies the existence of a potential viewer who is
able to derive pleasure from the simple act of looking: “this circular causal
relationship, which coincides with the one that governs the relationship
between faith and the sacred, is a characteristic of all institutions that can
only work in so far as they are founded on the objectivity of social exchange,
and at the same time relate to the subjective disposition for taking part and
getting involved in it.”18
Recognition of the existence of good taste is, of course, a cultivated
variant of the spontaneous faculty for experiencing beauty, and this
inherently implies its double: the bad taste, whether crude or corrupted, that
elicits in the refined observer a sense of disgust and contempt that is as
intense as the feeling of wonder experienced before “true” beauty. If we
admit the existence of the counterfeit coin that is bad taste, then there is no
place for Feijóo’s argument, according to which taste cannot be forced into
being, and for this very reason is always infallible and intrinsically free of all
discussion and disapproval. The very fact of naming bad taste presupposes
a value judgment and a form of punishment: that of being expeled from the
circle of people who share the privilege of experiencing pleasure before the
same external stimulus.
48 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

It is thus possible to talk about taste, though perhaps not to dispute it.
Clearly it is something that can be communicated and shared, in that it is
something felt by a number of people. As a result, recognition of the existence
of good taste does actually resolve the problem of the relativity of tastes,
though it may not be able to define the terms on which this solution is based.
And it is precisely this aspect of the problem that divides the two schools
that address the enigma.
For the first of these two approaches, good taste is simply one of a range
of worldly pleasures, a view that mirrors something of the intellectual agility
of the eighteenth century. Before being freed from the austere precepts of
strict puritanical aesthetics, the voyeur is first and foremost a viveur, who
projects his joie de vivre on the objects that surround him: “everything can
become (= be) beautiful if the idea of it is connected with the idea of
something else that, for whatever reason, is (or has been) a source of
pleasure.”19 So beauty is not an objet trouvé, an intentional experience that
makes the world of things, and thus existence itself, more pleasurable: “the
agitation of the passions (= the emotions) is in itself a source of pleasure, in
so far as it diverts the mind from the state of ‘ennui’ or boredom that is the
worst thing that can happen to us in everyday life.”20
Before being imprisoned by the liturgy of ecstatic contemplation,
aesthetics remains within the realms of the emotions, within the sphere of
the imagination that incorporates some of the privileges of leisure and some
of the conveniences of entertainment. So what exactly differentiates this
type of experience from the pleasures of the banquet or the whims of
fashion? Why should art be something more than “the Sunday of life, mere
evasion or, at best, a divertissement”?21
David Hume was the last major philosopher who dared propose a
hedonistic, conciliatory solution to this enigma; one that pertained to the
social role of pleasure and the need for providing labels.
One of his aims was to confute the conviction, common to many people
as well as to the skeptic philosophers, that “all sentiment is right; because
sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real,
wherever a man is conscious of it.”22 Although he agreed that all tastes, both
bodily and spiritual, are an essentially subjective experience, Hume was
actually trying to establish a norm that could help resolve the contentious
question regarding the plurality of tastes, so that one could be said to be
right and the other wrong. A simple mental experiment was sufficient to
prove that this was not a chimera: the comparison between two immeasurable
aesthetic entities (two works, two authors, two periods or civilizations),
which are generally recognized as being out of proportion one to the other:
“whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogilby
and Milton, or Bunyan and Addison, would be thought to defend no less an
extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as Teneriffe,
or a pond as extensive as the ocean.”23
In Hume’s view, any so-called critic with the foolish audacity to prefer
Ogilby to Milton, or Bunyan to Addison, could clearly never be taken
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 49

seriously. Instead he would be deemed out of his mind, ridiculous, or at best

extravagant. The consensum gentium thus invalidates the principle of the
equality of tastes: it is not true that all tastes are equal because certain of
them are statistically more equal than others, especially those that transcend
national borders and the sieve of history. Any deviation from the norm, on
the other hand, is tantamount to a loss of credibility.
The established criterion of empirical regularity is not enough, however.
A more sophisticated approach implies a finer palate, which in its turn
calls for a comparison that transcends the obvious and embraces the
smallest detail. The Don Quixote parable can shed light on the matter.
Take the episode in which two men tasting wine from the same barrel
came to different conclusions, one noting a slight hint of leather, and the
other of iron: it shows how the superiority of opinion of experts is not
based entirely on an act of faith, but on certain basic facts that derive
from the progressive refinement of the senses, from the ability to perceive
what escapes the layman, from what Hume defined as the “exquisiteness of
taste.”
As Sancho himself put it, “on emptying the hogshead, there was found at
the bottom an old key with a leathern thong tied to it,”24 which revealed
how the keenness of taste of the two men in the anecdote could be proved
empirically; in other words, it was possible to convince those who originally
mocked them that their claim to superior discernment was actually well
founded. There is clearly an analogy between this “emptying the hogshead”
and the realm of the fine arts: it lies in the patient, methodical work of the
critic, and the discovery and classification of the essential principles
underlying “what has been universally found to please in all countries and
in all ages,”25 identifiable through a comparative study of the works and
masterpieces of the past and present. Where such information is not
available, different levels of subtlety and perfection in taste would of course
continue to exist, but without the rule which makes them recognizable and
subject to hierarchical organization according their prestige.
So in actual fact it is not only possible, but also advisable, to dispute
tastes, since the very operation contributes to the collective refinement of
arts and customs. Critics can avail themselves of principles and examples
with which they can convince those who are less educated and articulate of
the fallacy of their points of view, or indeed the vulgarity of their aesthetic
perceptions. This naturally leads to recognition of the fact that “the fault lies
in himself, and that he wants the delicacy, which is requisite to make him
sensible of every beauty and every blemish,”26 a gift that justifies the
superiority of the expert, who at this point can help the mere amateur widen
his horizons and refine his perceptions.
At this point the culinary comparison can be seen to work as a sort of
paradigm. Although the skills pertaining to refinement are part of what
“practice gives to the execution of any work,”27 Hume does not simply take
the similarity between the art critic in relation to aesthetic taste and the wine
taster or the gourmet in relation to the palate as proof of the importance of
50 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

experience and comparison in the process of improving taste and acquiring

discernment.
When all is said and done, the fact is that they are one and the same thing.
If, as Kant was later to denounce, we maintain that “a taste judgment must
be held to be right solely because several people happen to agree with it, and
not on account of any a priori principle, but (as in the case of taste referred
to the palate) because a number of subjects happen to react in the same
way,”28 then there is no substantial difference with respect to other sources
of pleasure, as long as they also meet with public acclaim: in other words,
“beauty is reduced to pleasure, and art to cuisine.”29
In actual fact what Hume proposes is rather more subtle than a principle
of uniformity, according to whichever beauty is what most people like. By
invoking the criterion of consensum gentium, he is not just tautologically
validating the legitimacy of dominant taste. When you get down to it, what
experience teaches us is that only a limited circle of individuals is generally
thought to have superior abilities of aesthetic judgment. This mandate
invests the figure of the critic with authority. It elevates the critic to the rank
of arbiter of taste, along with other members of the learned community,
thereby providing a solution to the problem of the reciprocally subjective
nature of tastes and confirming the norm that we set out to establish.
Essential to this assertion is the demonstration that the fame underlying
the authority of the critic is not arbitrary, but culturally and physiologically
justified. To paraphrase Ferry, if beauty is simply what people like, what fits
in with the inner, almost biological structure of human beings, then the
criterion must be shaped by the most essentially human constitution, that is
by that of the foremost experts, which should possess a certain universality,
at least in theory, since it purports to be that of all men.30
That said, with hindsight Hume’s portrait of the ideal critic (“a penetrating
sense, together with delicacy of sense refined by practice, trained through
comparison and free of all prejudice”) today seems more appropriate for a
methodical wine taster like Jancis Robinson than for a fashionable art dealer
such as Larry Gagosian.
Moreover, the credit enjoyed by critics among an educated, refined élite
attuned to the canons of taste is essentially based on the voluntary acceptance
of a principle of authority, such that tastes follow pre-established models.
Clearly the underlying parameters for these models are not fixed in time,
given that they are the empirical outcome of the persuasive powers of
opinion leaders and taste makers. And nor does the system leave much space
for judgment of the judges, or criticism of the critics, in the case of
authoritative but contrasting opinions.
Hume addresses the problem by simply pointing out that aesthetic
consensus can claim greater longevity in the course of time than metaphysics
and science: “theories of abstract philosophy, systems of profound theology,
have prevailed during one age: In a successive period, these have been
universally exploded: Their absurdity has been detected: Other theories and
systems have supplied their place, which again gave place to their successors:
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 51

And nothing has proved more liable to the revolutions of chance and fashion
than these pretended decisions of science. The case is not the same with the
beauties of eloquence and poetry. Just expressions of passion and nature are
sure, after a little time, to gain public applause, which they maintain for
ever.”31
It is the degree of unanimity of judgment concerning artistic masterpieces
that suggests there might be a common predisposition among sentient
subjects. Perhaps the “inner factory” that is our neocortical structure works
in the same way for all human beings, in keeping with a recondite, and
indeed indemonstrable, predetermined harmony. The taste for beauty would
thus appear to be part of our perceptive faculties, a sort of “sixth sense,” as
it was often called in the past.32
Certain incongruities nevertheless remain: individual humors and local
customs, for a start. It is not altogether surprising that people should prefer
Ovid when they are young, Horace during their maturity, and Tacitus in old
age, for such predilections are “innocent and inevitable.” By the same token,
different ages and nations can express particular inclinations. So the
perspicacity of the critic lies in his or her ability to sympathize with an
extraneous cultural context, and identify therein what really underlies
aesthetic value. In any case, a certain degree of variability would appear to
be inevitable when it comes to taste. This is why Hume distinguishes between
aesthetic “consideration” and “predilection”: only the former is subject to
dispute, in other words to criticism. By contrast, the latter, when exercised
within a culturally accepted framework, can provide degrees of gratification
that vary from one person to another. When all is said and done, is this not
the intimate and ultimate meaning of taste as a spontaneous, subjective
experience?
Once again, “the problem is that of reconciling the freedom and autonomy
of the individual and his private realm (and what could seem more private,
free, and autonomous than taste) with the contrasting need for some
objective authoritative notion of right (commanding conformity to a more
than personal norm and thus some negation of personal freedom) so as to
insure that individual freedom and autonomy would not degenerate to
chaos and anomie.”33
To some extent the title of Hume’s essay already implies this dilemma:
talking about a “standard (social, constraining) of taste (personal, free)”34
seems more of an oxymoron than an area of research that has run aground.
In actual fact, the true grounds for cultural cohesion in the sphere of taste
pertain to the realms of ideology and politics, involving the function of art in
general more than they do the individual work of art. In other words, what
really counts is the relevance of the concept of beauty as a “luxury item”
and the conditions that define its accessibility. Essential to this approach is
the vindication of luxury typical of Whig ideology: the gratification of
pleasure does not simply involve the happiness of the fortunate few, but also
the progress of nations, in other words the growth of productivity and
wealth: “in times when industry and the arts flourish, men are kept in
52 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

perpetual occupation, and enjoy, as their reward, the occupation itself, as

well as those pleasures which are the fruit of their labor [. . .] The increase
and consumption of all the commodities, which serve to the ornament and
pleasure of life, are advantageous to society; because, at the same time that
they multiply those innocent gratifications to individuals, they are a kind of
storehouse of labor, which, in the exigencies of state, may be turned to the
public service. In a nation, where there is no demand for such superfluities,
men sink into indolence, lose all enjoyment of life, and are useless to the
public.”35
In contrast to what Kant was later to maintain, Hume was also convinced
that while taste is arguably a domesticated expression of the passions, it is
certainly not an impartial one. When Hume claims that “convenience is a
beauty,” and insists that the same principle applies not only to private homes,
but also to “tables, chairs, escritoires, chimneys, coaches, saddles, ploughs,
and indeed to every work of art; it being an universal rule, that their beauty
is chiefly derived from their utility, and from their fitness for that purpose,
to which they are destined,”36 he is not just reaffirming the conception of art
typical of antiquity, according to which the term designated any product
made with skill according to shared rules.
Though Hume’s conception of art does indeed embrace the neoclassical
ideal, it also transcends it in a vision that paves the way for utilitarianism,
whereby the maximization of yield is in itself a source of pleasure. Middle-
class comfort, with its delight in possession, in the tangibly reassuring
solidity of things, also reveals a world proud of its industriousness and
confident in its own sense of the concrete:

where any object has a tendency to produce pleasure in its possessor, it is

always regarded as beautiful [. . .]. Thus the convenience of a house, the
fertility of a field, the strength of a horse, the capacity, security, and swift-
sailing of a vessel, form the principal beauty of these several objects. Here
the object, which is denominated beautiful, pleases only by its tendency
to produce a certain effect. That effect is the pleasure or advantage of
some other person [. . .] Most of the works of art are esteemed beautiful,
in proportion to their fitness for the use of man, and even many of the
productions of nature derive their beauty from that source. Handsome
and beautiful, on most occasions, is not an absolute but a relative quality,
and pleases us by nothing but its tendency to produce an end that is
agreeable.37

Once the validation has been demonstrated and the implications

explained, what could be wrong with a final explanation of the mutual
subjectivity of taste within an ideological, political or utilitarian framework?
Nothing, in fact—apart from the irritation and disdain that such
contamination arouses in those who uphold an exaggerated form of purism:
“because Hume is unable to insist on the question of right and instead
remains ensnared within the confines of fact, surely his theory risks
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 53

prolonging the muddle between so-called ‘human nature’ and the ultimately
banal reality of middle class Scottish society in the eighteenth century?”38
Was the Kantian debate really that much more interesting?

Kantian Ascetics
“Aesthetics,” along with “taste,” “art” and “beauty,” is one of those words
that languished for many decades in a state of lexical neglect. In relatively
recent times, however, they have acquired new meaning, energy and purpose
that has rescued them from the realms of the obvious and brought them
back to center stage. As Nietzsche pointed out in relation to words pertaining
to morality, when such terms regain lost ground they often shape events and
initiate developments.
The revival of the term “aesthetic” within philosophical debate and its
progressive diffusion in common speech has led to an important change in
the history of taste: on the one hand, the word pertains to a specialist
discipline largely devoted to the experience of beauty via sight and hearing,
thereby excluding other senses and passions; on the other, it has been
adopted by non-specialists who contribute to the way it is used to describe
a discerning, shared experience of pleasure that transcends what otherwise
risks appearing to be chilly formality and detachment. Both developments
are somewhat surprising, given the fact that the etymology of the word does
not include “references to beauty, art or pleasure,”39 in other words to the
concepts that delimit its sphere of application.
The Greek word aisthetikos means “sensitive,” in the “perceptible” sense,
as opposed to noetikos, meaning “rational.” In the mid-1700s, the term
“aesthetics”40 was used to describe the new science by an obscure philosopher
whose only claim to fame is the farsighted title of an unfinished work. From
here on, the term ceased to designate a human faculty and rose to the dignity
of a theory, along the lines of logic and metaphysics. Baumgarten’s proposed
plurivocal definition (“theory of the liberal arts, doctrine of lower knowledge,
art of fine thought, art of the analogy of reason”) is nevertheless too
convoluted and soaked in archaism to be a legacy for posterity.
The “liberal arts” embrace both the art of persuasion, including the
traditional trio (grammar, dialectics, rhetoric), and what in coeval France
were rechristened “beaux,”41 or “fine” arts, which were soon to become the
only forms of art deemed worthy of aesthetic contemplation.
The “lower knowledge” intrinsic to Baumgarten’s theory pertained to
what is intuitive and emotional, thereby producing only repraesentationes
sensitivae, in other words confused and imperfect images, as opposed to the
clear, distinct perceptions that belong to the superior stage of knowledge,
accessible only through reason and the intellect.
As for “fine thought” (pulchre cogitandi), it only partly refers to what
was to be called “aesthetic judgment”: the fact that the intention was to
propose an art, rather than a theory, was because the experience of beauty
54 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

and of the sublime, as aroused by nature and by art, is simply a special

application.
It was rather in the art of common life, particularly the development of a
well-rounded graceful individual who could play a spontaneous and
articulate role in society, that aesthetics was supposed to have its key
influence as a practical discipline (itself an ars) concerning—and nurturing—
the “lower,” sensuous-sensitive faculties.42
In conclusion, the “analogy of reason” is precisely where aesthetics hopes
to establish a foothold. For this is the “mental universe” parallel to the
world of the rational faculties, endowed with workings and an autonomy of
its own, whereby the objects of perception and imagination take the place of
those of knowledge. Such a world is populated with sub-rational faculties,
including the vis aestimativa recognized by scholastic culture as something
shared by men and animals. The appetites, sexual as well as dietary, should
of course also belong here. Largely they do not, however, and for no apparent
reason.
In the end it was Kant who took on the role of adjudicator in this matter,
despite his own terminological reluctance.43 In his view, the foundation of
aesthetics called for a double delimitation of application. On the one hand,
compared with the superior cognitive faculties, cognitio aesthetica appeared
to be an intrinsically imperfect variation: first because it is inevitably
subjective, and thus unsuited to the formulation of any general rule (along
the lines of the rhetoric of poetics) that could prescribe or establish which
objects are beautiful, and which ugly; and second because it is “lacking in
concept,” in other words incapable of providing a true cognitive contribution.
On the other hand, when compared with ordinary sensibility (in particular
with taste in the palatal sense), this special sort of vis aestimativa stands out
because it is “disinterested,” in that it does not concern the object as such,
but its form and image. And it is this golden rule of aesthetics that was to
shape its historical development and social assimilation.
Granted, this was not Kant’s invention. Aesthetic experience, as it is
conceived and theorized in modernity, had already been the object of study
in antiquity, albeit under a different name. During that period, no less than
in the eighteenth century, it was seen to designate the feeling of pleasure
aroused at a distance by sight and hearing, in other words the “noble senses”
that gave rise to a sort of ecstatic rapture, or suspension of will: the
contemplative attitude, shorn of practical considerations or yearning,
distinct from greed (or the desire to possess), and also from the other animal
instincts aroused by hunger or lust. Enlightenment thinkers strove to isolate
and probe into the specific faculty of recognizing beauty. The main aspect
that distinguished it from the conceptions of Antiquity and the Middle Ages
(and even the Renaissance, permeated with Platonism) was the recognition
of its subjectivity, a condition that the taste metaphor suddenly imbued with
hedonism.
If taste is a faculty congenitally programmed to achieve pleasure, however,
in what way can it be described as “disinterested”? According to Jerome
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 55

Stolnitz,44 what in Kant’s aesthetics can appear to be a mere petitio principii

actually conceals more demanding grounds whose roots can be traced back
to morals and theology. For Shaftesbury, an “interested” or narcissistic
attitude (self-interest or self-love) is always to some extent egoistic and often
implies a desire to hoard. This thus includes all those actions and motivations
in which private good comes before the common weal, personal wellbeing
before the interests of the community. The contradictory attitude does not
appear in specific reference to aesthetics, but—more coherently—in an
ethical, religious context: the virtuous man, Shaftesbury argues, cannot
harbor a speculative love for God in the hope of reward in the next life; to
be sincere, his love should be totally “disinterested,” in other words
motivated exclusively by the “perfection of the object.” Like other English
philosophers (Alison, Hutcheson, Addison), Shaftesbury managed to shift
the same moral predisposition to the contemplation of beauty: the term
“disinterested” was used to refer to the mental state that set what was useful
and pleasurable to one side, in other words that did not take into account
the gratification of appetites.
It was Kant, however, who provided the most authoritative and widely
read theory of the ideology of disinterestedness as the cornerstone of
aesthetic sensibility: by regulating the terms for access to beauty, the Critique
of Judgment became the breviary of taste that was to shape the Romantic
age.
Kant’s argument involved four stages, essential to the ubi consistam of
aesthetic judgment. This was to be:
a. disinterested;
b. universal;
c. pure;
d. necessary.
Each and every moment and attribute simply serves to isolate and
differentiate the taste for beauty from the rude and crude original meaning
of the term behind the metaphor.
The fundamental moment is the first one, since its goal is to distinguish
beauty (or rather the pleasure that derives from it) from what is useful and
pleasurable. Kant turned to the famous story of the three iconoclasts:45 when
faced with a splendid palace, it is plausible that an Indian chieftain visiting
the Old World might prefer a Parisian hovel offering cheap alcohol and love;
that a follower of Rousseau might reflect upon the vanity of the powerful
and the poor carpenters whose sweat and suffering went into building it;
that a hypothetical Robinson Crusoe would judge it to be unsuitable as a
lodging for Man Friday. All three, however, were deemed incompetent in
their judgment, since Kant intended something else with his conception of
taste. In his view, discussions of beauty had to disregard moral judgments
and questions of preference or utility, and instead focus exclusively on the
objective description of that state of mind that is aroused by the formal
56 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

experience itself, shorn of any other consideration. This experience is entirely

different from that of the pleasure that the sensation arouses in the senses,
because not all pleasures are experienced through sensation. There are also
spiritual pleasures, or what Kant refers to as the “pleasures of reflection.”
Here Kant makes an essential distinction: what makes sensory pleasure
different to the taste for reflection is the fact that the former is aroused by
an interest that “excites a desire for objects of the same sort.”46 This aspect
of taste as an appetite implies that, unlike the sensation of beauty, the
experience of what is pleasurable cannot contemplate its own absence, but
instead produces (or reproduces) an inclination that transforms the sentient
being into a subject moved by desires. Not that this necessarily implies a
process of judgment, however, since the taste for what is pleasurable can be
spent through fulfillment, which is the quintessence of pleasure: “those who
are always intent only on enjoyment [. . .] gladly put themselves above all
judging.”47
The taste for beauty and the taste for what is good are also two quite
different things. The former is an absolute term, while the latter suggests the
individual perception of what is useful. In both cases, the “pleasure in what
is good” always implies the perception of an objective, and therefore a
practical or moral interest. Moreover, what is good, conceptually and
practically, is different to what is pleasurable, in that what arouses
pleasurable sensations (for example, “a dish that stimulates the taste through
spices and other flavorings”) may still be deemed regrettable from the
dietary point of view, which takes its later effects into account.48
Aesthetic judgment is a different matter, however: it implies the experience
of pleasure, but in a completely different way from the other two, in that it
is “disinterested.” What is good and what is pleasurable presuppose the
existence of an object, which is not the case with beauty. Here the only thing
that counts is the representation: taste judgments are formal and entirely
contemplative, referring to mere phantasmata.
The difference between the three different ways of acquiring access to
pleasure is also mirrored in the respective subjects involved in the experience.
All creatures, men and animals, can experience pleasure, whereas only
rational beings (humankind, but also the incorporeal spirits typical of North
European culture, including angels, demons, ghosts, fairies, elves and sprites)
can experience what is good. Beauty alone is a specifically human experience,
accessible only to rational creatures.
The criterion of disinterestedness is the cornerstone of Kant’s aesthetics
because, in his view, it gives rise to all the other characteristics of the
experience of beauty.
Further into his Analysis of Beauty the argument in favor of the
universality of aesthetic judgment thus simply relies on an elementary
deduction. Given that the pleasure of beauty is not based on any kind of
inclination, it cannot depend on “any private conditions, pertaining to his
subject alone,”49 and so it must be universal. Confirmation of this is to be
found in everyday linguistic usage: when someone says “I like” something,
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 57

the subject of the verb is essential to the meaning of the sentence, just as
“everyone has his or her own sense of taste.” The situation is different when
it comes to judgment of beauty, however: “it would be ridiculous if (the
precise converse) someone who prided himself on his taste thought to justify
himself thus: ‘This object (the building we are looking at, the clothing
someone is wearing, the poem that is presented for judging) is beautiful
for me’ .”50
Kant does not appear to be worried by the fact that these very examples
are cases of what is “beautiful for us,” in that they relate to a particular
historic and social context. Indeed, his argument in no way takes into
account the succession of styles and fashions, the different degrees of
aesthetic judgments, and the process of refining taste (in other words,
compliance with cultural constraints). This is no casual omission, but a
deliberate, motivated exclusion that is clarified later in the work.
Up to this point, Kant is content with observing that every aesthetic
judgment requires the same inspired involvement on the part of the others,
who must also either agree, or express disapproval. The very fact that beauty
is a question of collective belief, in other words a shared cultural model,
implies that there must be a sort of interiorized conformity of sensibility that
has acquired mutual recognition. As far as beauty is concerned, this is not
simply a matter of personal opinions. What is at stake is the affirmation of
shared judgments “supposedly generally valid (public) judgments.”51
So far this is pretty much what Hume and the other British philosophers
believed. However, Kant does differ in the way he aims at something that
goes beyond “comparative judgment”: for instance the host who refines his
judgment so that he can entertain all his guests to perfection. In a case like
this, it is simply a question of stipulating a few general empirical rules, based
on the casual frequency of similar agreements in the past. In the realm of
beauty, on the other hand, the aspiration is to establish universal rules “that
govern the judgment underlying the taste for beauty.”
In actual fact, for Kant such aims were an illusion, because rules for
beauty simply do not and cannot exist. Paradoxically—though not
conclusively—aesthetic judgment appears to be hermaphroditic: although it
is universal and necessary, it remains essentially subjective, dependent
exclusively on the state of mind of the individual and not on the particular
features of the object, as the rationalist school claimed to believe. Its
universality is thus sui generis and refractory to dispute (which means
silencing the adversary on the basis of an incontrovertible argument), and
yet at the same time questionable in view of the very fact that individual
sensations and appraisals can be modified, shared and refined.
This brings us to the third point: to be impartial, in other words universally
shared, aesthetic taste must also be “pure.” Unlike moral judgment, “it is
merely contemplative and does not produce an interest in the object.”52
Unlike what is merely agreeable, the taste for beauty is “independent from
charm and emotion.”53 Clearly this line of thought leads to a divorce between
taste and sensuality: when taste is referred to figuratively, it implies another
58 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

type of pleasure, one that is cool, calm and collected—in other words far
removed from the heat of the senses: “a judgment of taste is thus pure only
insofar as no merely empirical satisfaction is mixed into its determining
ground.”54
Such is the triumph of the rhetoric of refined feelings and noble intentions.
To safeguard the fragile paradigm of the universality of taste, to elevate it to
the highest pedestal of human illusions, to justify belief in this auto-da-fe, all
inclinations have to be tamed. The experience of pleasure itself must be
reined in and toned down until, completely isolated from the body, it
conforms to the rules of public decency. The passions require discipline and
control, so that they amount to little more than edifying, innocuous and well
behaved pastimes well suited to the hypnotic realms of received ideas.
Everything that does not belong to this reassuring world is impure, and
thus worthy of reproach or disgust. Aesthetics as the ideology of beauty
aims at teaching and spreading the felicity of faultlessness, thereby also
encouraging a degree of recalcitrance. The resulting composure rejects all
hedonistic behavior, which is deemed to be so brutish and base that it is far
removed from any form of taste, an appellative that pertains exclusively to
the superior realms of human sensibility, which is of course pure and
disinterested. “Taste is always still barbaric when it needs the addition of
charms and emotions for satisfaction, let alone if it makes these into the
standard for its approval.”55
The divergence of tastes calls for and explains the suppression of the
body, in that the experience of pleasure effectively produces nothing more
than “a pathologically conditioned satisfaction (through stimuli),”56 which
implies a deep-rooted sense of forbidden fruit on account of the obvious
affinity with lust and lechery. But even when freed of indecent contaminations
of this sort, the pleasure of the senses remains a question of impulse. As Kant
points out, since hunger is the greatest cook, the debauchee will binge on
any sort of food, with no distinctions: “such a satisfaction demonstrates no
choice in accordance with taste.”57 In such a bigoted, provincial world, the
figure of the gourmet is absent, or repulsive. Gluttony cannot be considered
a possible source of refinement of taste: only when the need has been
satisfied, Kant claims, is it possible to distinguish between those who do and
do not have taste. But the pleasures of the palate are always interwoven with
a physiological or pathological need.
And this leads us to the fourth and last part of the argument. Apart from
being disinterested, universal and pure, aesthetic judgment presents an
intimate necessity of its own: “whoever declares something to be beautiful
wishes that everyone should approve of the object in question.”58 The power
of this self-conviction is such that what is really a surrogate for feelings can
be passed off as a judgment of reality: “although it has merely subjective
validity, it nevertheless makes a claim on all subjects of a kind that could
only be made if it were an objective judgment.”59 Thus the paradox of taste
again comes to the fore, casting a spell over perceptions and misrepresenting
the meaning of reality, so that what really exists within the sentient person is
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 59

attributed to things. Kant suggests resolving this enigma by resuscitating the

quintessential classic idea of “common sense”: because we are all programmed
in the same way, we feel the same (aesthetic) sensations. His argument sounds
very much like a petitio principii: to be universally communicable, he
declares, aesthetic judgment must presuppose a feeling that is equally shared
among all men; by the same token, however, to avoid falling back on
psychological justifications, this feeling should be perceived as an a priori
principle, a necessary condition for the universal communicability of
knowledge.
In this way, the problem of the shared subjectivity of taste is dealt with in
advance, to avoid getting bogged down in all the historical, social and
cultural implications that had hindered the argument during the eighteenth
century. While on the one hand Kant’s “common sense” supports the idea of
the “inner sense” of the Greek philosophers, and the “sixth sense” of the
English philosophical tradition,60 on the other it is invested with a firm new
statute that discards all relativism in order to stake its claim among the
realm of the transcendental faculties.
It is thus posited as an ideal norm that speaks for the beautiful object of
an intimate and uncontestable pleasure: “it is required of every judgment
that is supposed to prove the taste of the subject that the subject judge for
himself, without having to grope about by means of experience among the
judgments of others.”61 Kant seems skeptical about the possibility of
educating and refining taste. Regardless of what Hume and the other taste
improvers may have had to say, “he should pronounce his judgment not as
imitation, [. . .] but a priori.”62 In fact, “I cannot be talked into it by means
of any proofs. Thus although critics, as Hume says, can reason more
plausibly than cooks, they still suffer the same fate as them”:63 that of
offering others the fruit of personal introspection regarding states of pleasure
or displeasure, thereby soliciting a similar experience, in other words a
shared perception.
The established harmony that prevails among human sensibilities is thus
the only true, natural foundation underlying the principle of the equality of
tastes: “it asserts only that we are justified in presupposing universally in
every human being the same subjective conditions of the power of judgment
that we find in ourselves; [. . .] since they are subjective conditions of the
possibility of a cognition in general.”64
Granted, even Kant admits that beauty definitely has a social dimension,
which progresses in relation to the civilization of peoples and the education
of individuals. A solitary castaway on a desert island would not dream of
growing flowers to pick for the embellishment of body or hut. Only once
human beings come into contact with their peers do they feel the need for
sharing the pleasure of beauty with them, for meeting up united by this
particular sense of universal brotherhood, “as a property belonging to
humanity.”65
If interest in beauty depends on the nature of the species of sociable
animal known as man, and on the degree of civilization he has achieved in
60 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

the course of time, then the stages of civil progress and the barriers of social
discrimination represent no more than an empirical accident that has
nothing to do with the argument pertaining to the conditions intrinsic to
aesthetic judgment. This explains the Kantian suppression of the historical
and social dimension of shared taste: “since the latter indulges inclination,
although this may be ever so refined, it also gladly allows itself to blend in
with all the inclinations and passions that achieve their greatest variety and
highest level in society.”66 So this is precisely the misunderstanding that Kant
hopes to avoid by purging the perception of beauty of its frivolous, worldly
contaminations.
This in its turn points to the persuasion that contemplation of nature is
morally superior to interest for the fine arts and the ornamental use of
natural beauty, both of which are potentially insidious sources of vainglory.
In keeping with the hoary mimesis paradigm, in Kant’s view, the ultimate
goal of the fine arts must be subordinated to the supremacy of nature.67
The model for aesthetic reception foreseen by Kant is the sort of inspired
demeanor of the beautiful soul, the ecstatic rapture of the naturalist “who
alone (and without any intention of wanting to communicate his observations
to others) considers the beautiful shape of a wildflower, a bird, an insect,
etc., in order to marvel at it, to love it, and to be unwilling for it to be
entirely absent from nature, even though some harm might come to him
from it rather than there being any prospect of advantage to him from it.”68
All things considered, the emotional contemplation of nature is thus what
distinguishes the truly sensitive spirit. Such an attitude is far removed from
the aesthetics of those who are fond of beauties that only sustain vanity and
at best social joys.69 And different yet again is the “coarse and despicable”
attitude of those who have no awareness of the beauty of nature, and who
“confine themselves to the enjoyment of mere sensory enjoyment at table or
from the bottle.”70 God forbid that this should be considered refinement!
Value judgments of this sort have an effect on the classification of the
arts, in that those that aim exclusively at pleasure are invested with lower
status than the arts that elicit the authentic perception of beauty.
The “arts of pleasure” merely procure enjoyment: those pertaining to
convivial entertainment, for instance, like the art of hosting a banquet where
the only ambition is to ensure that the guests are happy. By contrast, the fine
arts are unique in the fact that they embody their own raison d’être,
regardless of whether or not they also have secondary effects, including the
promotion of sociability among men. For this reason, Kant judges music
and embellishment to be two arts that are too “superficial” to arouse truly
“pure” pleasure; indeed, they lean dangerously towards enjoyment, which
means they are dubious or hybrid in their constitution.
The trademark and common feature of the fine arts is the fact that they
arouse a strictly spiritual sort of pleasure: what is essential to them is not
attraction or emotion, in other words the pleasure that manifests itself in
sensation. If this were the case, the fine arts would be reduced to a mere
amusement or pastime.
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 61

On account of its connection with the world of frivolity, Kant relegates

music to the lowest level of the fine arts, at least as regards its spiritual
contribution (it does rather better in terms of hedonistic performance,
however, where it gains first place).71 Music also presents another grave
drawback: its irreparable lack of urbanity, given the fact that it invades
people’s perceptive fields even when they would rather it did not.
Contemplation, on the other hand, calls for undivided attention, in other
words deliberate and sufficient aptitude of the mind, even when it is just a
question of listening. Precisely the opposite happens when someone pulls out
a perfumed handkerchief and wafts the scent around so that hapless
bystanders feel heady; or during the singing of religious hymns, the expression
of noisy and invasive devotion, when “they have forced the neighborhood
either to join in their singing or to give up their own train of thought.”72
So just what kind of pleasure comes with aesthetic taste?
A modest, quiet, solitary and austere pleasure that should never go
beyond the uncontaminated intimacy of whoever is wittingly and willingly
involved in the act of contemplation. It is thus very much a sublimated,
ascetic private pleasure; a sensorial metaphor of the moral idea “which is
not gratification but self-esteem (of the humanity within us) that elevates us
above the need for gratification.”73
To support the new ideology of art and the concept of beauty as a form
of purity, Kant thus erects his theoretical edifice with its concomitant ethical
and moral shield high above need as such, above pleasure, above the
differences between humankind, and above their natural or acquired
inclinations.

The Pleasures of the Senses Spurned

The aesthetic paradigm establishes a principle, which in its turn acts as a
rule of conduct. The apprehension of beauty must be pure, disinterested and
edifying; moreover, it must also be impermeable to pleasure and need. To
achieve this quintessential state calls for the snuffing of sensuality, a
deliberate suspension of desire, abstraction and abstinence from all those
states of arousal that underlie the concrete predilections of taste: lust,
avarice, exhibition, emulation.
This is the same paradigm that postulates the chosen beneficiary of the
work of art as the person who perceives it, thus turning him or her into
an institutionalized presence characterized by well-defined behavior and
sensibilities. The taste for beauty is the outcome of an educational process
that begins at school, continues in the academies and culminates in a
collective cult, to be celebrated in museums and galleries and spread by
means of manuals and magazine. In time this approach reaches the wider
public of amateurs and the curious who, unlike wealthy collectors, can
simply enjoy their contemplations without having to think about expanding
their possessions.
62 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

In view of the fact that the aesthetic paradigm actually invests the cult
with formal recognition, it also helps shape and organize the arts. This
amounts to a radical change of perspective, by means of which the heritage
of the past can be seen in a new light. Human history thus lends itself to
interpretation as the attainment of an immanent, free-flowing project that
evolves over time and is shaped to a greater or lesser extent by the different
periods of history. Thanks to this retrospective invention, art changes its
meaning, much as taste and aesthetics have done before. “As for sculpture,
we should bear in mind that before the sixteenth century it was never even
mentioned as such, in view of the fact that it belonged to a wide range of
different trades specialized in particular materials: there were stone carvers
(statuarii), metal workers (caelatores), wood carvers (sculptores), people
who shaped clay (fictiores), others who worked with wax (encaustic), and
they all used different methods of working (technai), and thus all belonged
to different trades (artes).”74
It is therefore hardly surprising that the early classifications of the arts
were largely articulated along the lines of the craftsmen’s corporations and
guilds. These went from the ars victuaria (meaning the provision of food) to
the suffragatoria (means of transport), or the lanificaria (clothing) and the
negotiaria (trade). By the same token, even seafaring, agriculture, hunting,
medicine, the theater and war were considered to be arts.75 Moreover, there
were classifications that referred to the different destinations of the arts,
although these did not involve any explicit mention of beauty as an end goal
for contemplation. Galen and Seneca, for example, spoke of the educational
(pueriles) and recreational (ludicae) arts. Similarly, music and painting were
generally considered to be artes voluptuariae whose function was to gratify
the ear and eye. Indeed, Bacon likened them to cosmetics and medicine, in
that he regarded them as serving a practical purpose.
Only poetry was deemed different from the other arts and therefore
worthy of greater consideration, because it was held to be inspired (in other
words individual) and irrational (or free of established rules and models),
the fruit of invention and creativity. Although it was not an art but a form
of divination, poetry was paradoxically the activity that was closest to the
modern concept of art. In poetry “the Greeks emphasised [. . .] its ability to
influence spiritual life,”76 and believed it to have an edifying, “psychological”
effect in guiding the soul: something irrational, that could fascinate, enchant,
seduce the mind,77 fire the imagination.
There was also a close tie between poetry and music: not only because the
former was always sung, and the latter voiced,78 but also because “music
and dance, unlike architecture and sculpture, lent themselves to mania, to
forms of delirium and ecstasy.”79
While poets were held in the highest consideration (to the extent that it
was believed that an arcane, mystical link connected poets and oracles),
artists enjoyed very little social prestige. Their works may have elicited
admiration, but as people they did not. There was nothing original or
exceptional about the artist, who was little more than a skilled laborer, an
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 63

operative whose job was monotonous and lacking in fantasy. What he

lacked was precisely what was to come to the fore in modern times as the
distinctive feature of the artist: individual creativity.
Only during the Renaissance were art and poetry to undergo a gradual
process of assimilation, when art was freed of its subordination to morals
and religion and acquired autonomy and cultural prestige. The discovery or
creation of beauty thus became its ultimate and exclusive end. Genius was
equated with whoever was able to arouse in others that form of “distance
titillation” that coincides with aesthetic enchantment. The manual arts that
acquired the epithet “fine” moved camp from the mechanical to the liberal
realms. Thus were “art and poetry blended into a single concept on a purely
artistic basis, without appeal to mysticism.”80
The outcome is well known: the l’art pour l’art dogma marks the
recognition of distance, of pure and abstract reception, of detached formal
fulfillment, far removed from any contamination with the kind of pleasure
that Kant declared to be unworthy of a place among the dignified occupations
of the mind. “The Faustian sense of pleasure, as penned by Goethe, is
extremely personal: ‘all that is assigned to the whole of humanity, I want to
enjoy it from the depth of my inner being.’ Today anyone wishing to use this
concept in relation to aesthetic experience would be accused of being
shortsighted, or overly anxious to satisfy consumer needs in a conspicuous
fashion, which would be kitsch. Nowadays to admit to experiencing pleasure
through art is only acceptable when it involves tourism.”81
From here it is but a short step to various forms of ascetic extremism, to
the corrective delirium expressed on occasions by Theodor Adorno:
“whoever seeks and finds pleasure in works of art is inevitably a philistine:
‘expressions such as “a pleasure to hear” are proof of guilt.’ The person who
is incapable of purifying art of the taste of pleasure is likening art to products
of gastronomy or pornography.”82
What remains to be clarified is exactly why this should be so: what are
the causes, the hidden motives, the ultimate aim? Once the taste analogy has
been established for the betterment of sensibility and manners, why should
the taste for beauty and that of the palate suddenly separate? Did this have
to happen?
Clearly the answer to this latter question can be no more than conjecture.
At all events, the difference in terms of cultural prestige between the two has
unquestionably favored the taste for beauty. As Korsmeyer has pointed out:

philosophers might have made the opposite move and argued that there
are commonalities for shared preferences in food and drink that are as
reliable as for objects of beauty. Since literal taste qualities were already
accepted as subjective and relative, however, they were left unexamined,
assumed to raise no troublesome philosophical issues. But beauty had
formerly been conceived as an objective quality, however puzzling. With
the advent of empiricism, beauty was newly subjectivized and had to be
rescued from the perils of skepticism. Both in formulating the problem of
64 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

Taste and in establishing standards for Taste, philosophers saved beauty

from relativism by showing how it must differ from literal taste qualities.
The all-important problem of Taste was not conceived to pertain to
sensory taste.83

Although there is clearly some truth in this explanation, it does not appear
to go much beyond the surface of things, which means that it fails to address
the crux of the matter. Simple though it may sound, perhaps it was not so
much the lack of cultural appeal as a shortage of direct experience that
hindered the Enlightenment thinkers from perceiving that literal taste, like
taste of the mind, can be educated and refined so that it acquires a form of
élite inter-subjectivity. Kant’s anthropological dissertations would certainly
seem to suggest that there is truth in this hypothesis.
For when Kant the moralist declares that he intends to deal with “the
knowledge of man as a citizen of the world,” in other words as a civilized
being, he is immediately establishing a distinction that mirrors his own
disdain, mixed with an evident sense of exclusion. The reasons for this lie
not only in his difficulty in perceiving the whole question clearly, which
would be little more than a methodological alibi, but also and in particular
in his total cultural obliviousness to the world of what he perceived as vain
and fatuous. “The anthropologist is in a very unfavorable position for
judging so-called high-society, the estate of the nobles, because they are too
close to one other, but too far from others.”84
A philosophical inquiry must needs aim higher, seeking what is elevated,
ethereal, detached and universal, even when in principle any chance of
“participatory observation” is clearly impossible: “the expressions ‘to know
the world’ and ‘to have the world’ are rather far from each other in their
meaning, since one only understands the play that one has watched, while
the other has participated in it.”85
This is an event in which Kant has no intention of taking part. His
remains the bookish attitude of the provincial, who perceives an obscure
harbor city as a narrow, fixed scene that is mistaken for the center of the
world: “a large city such as Königsberg on the river Pregel, which is the
center of a kingdom, in which the provincial councils of the government are
located, which has a university (for cultivation of the sciences) and which
has also the right location for maritime commerce—a city which, by way of
rivers, has the advantages of commerce both with the interior of the country
and with neighboring and distant lands of different languages and customs,
can well be taken as an appropriate place for broadening one’s knowledge
of human beings as well as of the world, where this knowledge can be
acquired without even travelling.”86
There is no point in hoping for the impossible: every man is brought up
within a given environment that shapes his mentality, aspirations, phobias
and hypocrisies. So it is unreasonable to expect a person of science, educated
in an austere, misogynous, puritan environment, to pontificate about the
pleasures of high society when these are well beyond his empirical, moral
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 65

perspective. Even the most enlightened philosopher must necessarily take

inspiration from his own experience and beliefs, as well as conform to the
rules of social decency shared by his audience. When aesthetic sensibility is
intended as a purely contemplative event, like morals it is considered as a
means for elevating the spirits. As such, it belongs to the realms of what is
deemed to be civilized by educated gentlemen who go to museums, partake
of the grand tour and attend literary salons. However, the category does
not include luxury, hedonism, lechery, or the wasteful refinement of the
aristocracy. Even Kant admitted that convivial pleasures, unlike erotic
delights, could boast an undeniable social dimension. Yet though such
experiences are not relegated to the shady sphere of private life, their
contribution to human civilization is actually irrelevant, futile and unworthy,
given the fact that they are inevitably tied to the dimension of need (hunger)
and pleasure (the palate), which constitute the lower states of earthly
existence.
Not even this explanation with its empirical, moral connotations is
entirely convincing, however. There must be a more persuasive reason
behind the imposing theoretical edifice constructed to extirpate relativism as
it threatens to spread through the realms of aesthetic predilection. And this
leads back to the enigma of the missing metaphor: why should it be possible
to establish a universal rule for the taste for beauty, regardless of the
evidently transitory, fickle nature of styles and preferences? Why insist on
seeking an undeniable, transcendental definition of an ineffable, transient
experience: the experience of the perception of beauty? Why should every
other form of delectatio (not only of the culinary variety) be separated from
those forms of “lesser knowledge” (Baumgarten’s gnoseologia inferior) that
are the very salt of life? Why indeed should the address largely focus on
distance and disinterestedness?
According to Eagleton, the reply to these questions should be sought in
the contribution involuntarily made by aesthetics to the construction and
the spread of the very forma mentis that was to develop into the bourgeois
vision of the world and social relationships. According to Eagleton, aesthetics
predisposition suggests “the very secret prototype of human subjectivity in
early capitalist society,”87 nurturing the future liberal democratic ideology.
“With the growth of early bourgeois society, the ratio between coercion and
consent is undergoing gradual transformation [. . .] Like the work of art as
defined by discourse of aesthetics, the bourgeois subject is autonomous and
self-determining, acknowledges no merely extrinsic law but instead, in some
mysterious fashion, gives the law to itself. In doing so, the law becomes the
form which shakes into harmonious unity the turbulent content of the
subject’s appetite and inclinations. The compulsion of autocratic power is
replaced by the more gratifying compulsion of the subject’s self-identity.”88
In the spontaneous and voluntary claim that my own feeling for beauty
must necessarily be entirely shared by others, aesthetics comes across as a
real paradigmatic model for what is ideological.89 The ecumenical creation
of consensus, the unconstrained acceptance of rules, the harmonization of
66 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

difference, the toning down of privilege, indeed the consumer view of the
world90 place aesthetic judgment, along with ideological assumptions,
within the cozy limbo of worthy feelings, well protected from the asperity
and bias of what is true and false:

the universal quality of taste cannot spring from the object, which is
purely contingent, or from any particular desire or interest of the subject,
which is similarly parochial; so it must be a matter of the very cognitive
structure of the subject itself, which is presumed invariable among all
individuals. Part of what we enjoy in the aesthetic, then, is the knowledge
that our very structural constitution as human subjects predisposes us to
mutual harmony. It is as though, prior to any determinate dialogue or
debate, we are always already in agreement, fashioned to concur; and the
aesthetic is this experience of pure contentless consensus where we find
ourselves spontaneously at one without necessarily even knowing what,
referentially speaking, we are agreeing over. Once any determinate
concept is removed from our grasp, we are left delighting in nothing but
a universal solidarity beyond all vulgar utility. Such solidarity is a kind of
sensus communis [. . .], ideology purified, universalized and rendered
reflective, ideology raised to the second power, idealized beyond all mere
sectarian prejudice or customary reflex to resemble the very ghostly shape
of rationality itself.91

Other authors argue that aesthetic predisposition is in fact the symbolic

transposition of bourgeois affluence, a social honor that speaks for privilege,
emancipation from need. Many people pursue this privilege, but for different
reasons:

the middle class, driven by the necessity to meet standards of “good taste”
in order to justify pretensions to join the higher reaches of humanity; the
leisure and hypercultivated who have the time (and the money) to devote
themselves to the pursuit of “objects of taste and refinement” guaranteed
for them by “connoisseurs” of these rare (and rarified) objects, the
aesthetes, whose delicate sensibility, aroused only by encounters with
“ethereal things,” must not be disturbed by passion or impeded by the
intervention of moral imperatives. So “taste” and “good taste” have all
the earmarks of a bourgeois invention, an arbitrary standard reflecting
only a class detachment from life and labor, a conventional badge of
status functioning to separate the social herd from the dominant, parasitic
social goats in sheep’s clothing, a disguised morality pretending to identify
approval pursuits and worthy performances by “correctness” of
appearance and external form.92

According to this interpretation, to be in possession of taste is simply a

form of interiorized social acceptance, a theory cogently expressed by Pierre
Bourdieu. In an important book devoted to the sociology of taste,93 Bourdieu
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 67

demonstrates, with all due empirical evidence, that social stratification is

always reflected symbolically by means of interiorized and adopted cultural
conventions, most evidently those pertaining to taste preferences. In
Bourdieu’s view, the symbolic capital of individuals consists in their claim to
cultural nobility, which is preserved within the bulwarks of social structure
and economic interests.
As a tool of mutual recognition and cohesion (for the members of a
certain social circle), taste essentially acts by promoting discrimination
towards those who are excluded: among the prosperous classes, possessing
taste means, first and foremost, feeling disgust for the system of common,
vulgar predilections shared by the lower strata; only later does it also come
to involve the recognition of what is worthy of appreciation.
Here Bourdieu reconstructs the genesis and outlines the function of pure
taste, which tends to coincide with “social benefit,” in the discriminatory
sense described above.

“Pure” taste and the aesthetics which provides its theory are founded on
a refusal of “impure” taste, of aesthesis (sensation), the simple, primitive
form of pleasure reduced to a pleasure of the senses, as in what Kant calls
“the taste of the tongue, the palate and the throat,” a surrender to
immediate sensation which in another order looks like imprudence. At
the risk of seeming to indulge in the “facile effects” which “pure taste”
stigmatizes, it could be shown that the whole language of aesthetics is
contained in a fundamental refusal of the facile, in all the meanings which
bourgeois ethics and aesthetics give to the word; that “pure taste,” purely
negative in its essence, is based on the disgust that is often called “visceral”
(it “makes one sick” or “makes one vomit”) for the everything that is
“facile”—facile music, or a facile stylistic effect, but also “easy virtue” or
an “easy lay.” The refusal of what is easy in the sense of simple, and
therefore shallow, and “cheap,” because it is easily decoded and culturally
“undemanding,” naturally leads to the refusal of what is facile in the
ethical or aesthetic sense, of everything which offers pleasures that are
too immediately accessible and so discredited as “childish” and “primitive”
(as opposed to the deferred pleasures of legitimate art).94

The class struggle between oppressed and oppressors thus lends itself to
cultural translation into the contrast between “instinctive” tastes that are
visceral, crude and embarrassing, and “cultivated” tastes, which are of
course elevated, edifying and exclusive. To refer this to ideal types, on the
one hand there are those who cling to natural needs and do not know how
to go beyond basic gratification, and on the other there are those who raise
themselves above the status naturae, flaunting self-control of their instincts
and appetites so that they affirm “their legitimate claim to dominate social
nature.”95
Nevertheless this still fails to explain why the taste of the palate, once it
has undergone refinement and become civilized, cannot also take part in the
68 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

process of social aesthetic elevation. Bourdieu himself, in providing an

empirical classification of the tastes of the French, observes close links
between cultural and luxury consumption, especially when it comes to food.
And yet this is precisely the opposite to what was argued by the philosophers
of the second half of the eighteenth century, when “purity of taste” was
founded at the expense of sensorial pleasure.
So why should the analogy between gratification of the palate and the
sense of beauty underlying the taste metaphor be abandoned? What explains
this exclusion?
A glance backwards will reveal that the enigma connected with aesthetic
experience consists in the principle of indetermination (randomness,
fickleness, relativity), which undermines its spiritual and cognitive value.
Value lies only in worth, as measured according to a shared criterion.
Although it may be clear why what is fickle (de gustibus) should be
differentiated from what is mutual, it is not as evident why a pleasure can be
shared only at a distance, that is in a disinterested fashion, excluding a priori
all that arouses the senses or produces some extraneous utility. The
underlying tenet is that interest, be it hedonistic or utilitarian, is always
something subjective, and thus, by definition, transitory, whereas in fact
interests can be shared, ritualized, desired and cultivated within a given
social circle. So the problem in this case is not that the pleasure experienced
be individual (when in fact it is not); but rather that this sensation should be
temporary, debatable, circumscribed to a given moment in time or a
particular social environment. At which point it becomes a whim, something
akin to fashion, to amusements that are in vogue, where there is no hope of
emulating the aristocracy or sharing their privileges.
According to the sociological explanation, distance from the body is a
way of sublimating emancipation from need, a symbolic celebration of
affluence achieved, a social marker indicating privilege. Yet clearly this is
largely apocryphal. Though it may have contained some truth in Bourdieu’s
France of the 1970s, it certainly did not apply to the Enlightenment period,
or to Kant’s intentions—even those he was unwilling to confess.
In a similar fashion, Eagleton’s approach is reductionist when he claims
that “only those with an interest”—in eighteenth-century usage, meaning
possession—“can be disinterested.”96 In terms of discrimination, Hume
adopts an approach that is more élitist and indeed effective. He sees good
taste not as a social privilege masquerading as nobility of the mind, but as
an explicit expression of advantage. In fact he posits that this requires a
process of learning, which includes visiting museums, and sharing certain
cultural interests that are “subliminally” instilled by the social environment.
Nevertheless, within the great framework of taste as glorified by Hume, the
pleasures of luxury goods are fully respected and comprise those of the
palate, including the refinement of convivial behavior.
As a result, Bourdieu is unable to account for the fact that Kant’s
dogmatic, puritanical solution should have prevailed over Hume’s hedonistic,
conciliatory approach. Nor does he explain why the idea of “pure taste”
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 69

should ever have risen to acquire cultural hegemony when quite clearly
styles have always been transitory. This is particularly curious, because the
very dominance of such an idea has circumscribed imagination, fettered the
institutions of art, and relegated to the purgatory of frivolity all other tastes,
including most refined worldly pleasures. The underlying question is, of
course, just why the taste metaphor should have been dismantled.
The idea that taste is simply the symbolic representation of social rank,
the emblem of freedom from the constraints of necessity, is thus not a
historically acceptable explanation. If anything, precisely the opposite is
true, bearing in mind that the Kantian paradigm of pure reception, of
emotional candor, of the continence of desire, implies that the aesthetic
faculty is accessible to all civilized beings, regardless of class privileges or
monopolies of “cultural capital.” This explains the emphasis on universality,
on the search for what is transcendental, and the mutilation of hedonism.
Far from discriminating downwards, Kant actually promotes upwards
integration, but only in the spiritual sense. All hedonistic contamination and
emulation were carefully avoided, for these were realms he deemed
unworthy.
The reason behind the bifurcation of taste is thus basically ideological,
even though this may not coincide with Eagleton’s inscrutable meaning. For
what it all boils down to is essentially “political,” which is precisely why it
is so persistent.
What the Enlightenment philosophers were looking for was an ethical,
epistemological foundation for shared sensibility. Speaking in the name of
“mature” civilized humanity, their focus was the attainment of a particular
social model, which was claimed to be legitimate in the name of reason. The
surrounding context was no longer that of the court, with its ostentation and
license. Conventions, decency and measure return to the fore, no longer
regulated by appearances, but adopted in order to shape individual morality
so that it would work within a society that had little in common with the
unrestricted gratifications of the aristocracy. Little of the luxury of the upper
echelons of society trickled down to the parsimonious daily habits of the
bourgeoisie, where food was nutrition more than refined gastronomy. All
things considered, democracy is simply a form of self-control practiced
throughout a given society. The utopia of sensibility reflects an evident moral
intention: in this sense, elevation towards beauty relates to crude sensuality
much as a sense of measure, modesty, temperance and respect relate to
promiscuity, abuse, impudence and prevarication. The banquet of the senses
is thus inaccessible to the middleclass observer, and all he can hope for is the
pleasure of contemplation, which is tame and socially inoffensive on account
of the very fact that it can only be activated at a distance, with no need for
material appropriation and thus without depriving others of anything.
The Enlightenment social project focused on the dream of universality,
and called for an anthropological counterpart in reality. To admit that taste
was socially shaped amounted to saying that because aristocratic sensibility
was born of greater wealth, better schooling and refinement, it was inevitably
70 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

finer, more educated and more receptive than that of the regular bourgeois
citizen. This, however, would have meant invalidating the principle of
universal rights and mutual respect on which the desired model of society
was founded. Aesthetics was born and prospered within a program of
egalitarian social anthropology. It did not accommodate élitist rituals that
were deliberately intended as evidence of social rank, and hence of exclusion.
Having discovered that taste can contain a radically individualist criterion
of appropriation of reality, the thinkers of the late 1700s then came to the
conclusion that the consequences might have been dangerous when such
unprecedented liberty trickled down from the top of the pyramid to the
lesser reaches of democratic brotherhood. At which point a new morality
came to the fore to replace the freethinking, sensual spirit of the aristocracy:
namely, that of middle class romanticism and puritanism. This meant re-
establishing a social discipline in the use of pleasure that did not clash with
the ethics of productivity and reciprocity. Clearly all desires had to be
compatible with the new social contract, with coexistence on an equal
footing, with the rules of civil society.
In this the Enlightenment proved to be despotic and totalitarian: “in
Kant’s perspective there is still no model for pluralism. He believed in the
primary need for developing principles that could regulate thought and
action, from the point of view of the bourgeoisie, capable of addressing a
religion supported by feudal powers and meeting with the favor of society
as a whole.”97
This explains why he felt such disdain for “interested pleasures”: “Kant
aimed to exclude any connection with the appetites, which do not count as
a basis for determination. His aversion for the concept of interest related not
only to his systematic cogency, but also to the latent political function
implicit in “disinterested pleasure.” Indeed, this was directed against the
ideas of luxury and everything else that seduces the perceptions as a desirable
commodity.”98
At this point it is possible to sum up the tormented evolution of the taste
metaphor. In the bodily sense it refers to the organ entrusted with the task
of recognizing pleasure. It is taste that must decide, instinctively and once
and for all, whether or not something is agreeable. Initially the problem is to
understand why a given item gives pleasure, and to work out to what extent
the phenomenon is cogent or temporary, thereby establishing the conditions
and constraints of the experience, and the rules and exceptions. However,
this “state of innocence” does not last long, because it soon becomes clear
that morals motivated by sensual pleasure would lead to Epicureanism and
dissipation, thereby undermining the foundations of a much more ambitious,
elevated project: within the nascent perspective of Enlightenment political
and social intentions, a hypothetical supremacy of taste evoked the threat of
a licentious and indecent world that would distract humanity from its social
progress, its scientific efforts and its economic productivity.
It was thus clear that a certain prudery of sensibility had to be established:
for the honest man of the eighteenth century, with his strong moral
 BIRTH OF AESTHETICS AND BIFURCATION OF TASTES 71

convictions and a new sense of democratic citizenship, it was edifying to

visit museums and go to concerts, to admire cathedrals and paintings, even
though this meant shaping the members of society along similar lines. By
contrast, it was far less acceptable to take part in refined banquets and
thereby to reach the empire of sensuality.
“Good taste,” for its part, was supposed to be a rule for behavior that
would regulate and promote socially correct demeanor. Yet it was clearly
too generic and biased to rival “pure taste” in the hope of gaining the
ideological upper hand. Moreover, when developed to excess (for instance,
when it became a form of unnatural affectation, a pantomime of mannerisms),
it also proved to be politically unacceptable in view of the very fact that it
was based on the model of life of the aristocracy, which by definition meant
excluding all others.
As for good taste at the table, although Flandrin has expressed doubts
concerning the use of the term in gastronomy before it appeared in the
sphere of etiquette and aesthetics,99 it was not a socially sharable model:
good taste in food was the exclusive privilege of a particular society (those
who appreciated cultivated cuisine), and possibly a nation, that of France,
where it was born and prospered. It was not until the apotheosis of the
grand restaurant in nineteenth-century Paris that similar pleasures could
become accessible to the middle classes.
72
 4
The Arts of Happiness:
A Journey Through
Impure Tastes

The ideological primacy of the taste metaphor shaped how people felt and
thought until well into the eighteenth century, when the social and cultural
climate evolved through plenty of lively debate. One outcome was the
divorce between what pertained to the mind, and what to the body. For
although the term “taste” was still used to refer to both spheres, in actual
fact “taste” meaning the sense of beauty increasingly distinguished itself
from what had become a sort of bizarre synonym: taste as referred to the
palate, which was soon relegated to the irrelevant and intemperate ranks of
human sensitivity.
This was a major shift in focus that was to revolutionize perceptions and
behavior, forging cultural organization anew and redefining what was
deemed to be socially presentable. At the same time, however, the pseudo-
science of gastronomy also began to take shape, albeit quietly and without
occupying center stage. Initially relegated to the realms of what was
considered futile and frivolous, in time gastronomy came to be viewed as a
manifestation of savoir vivre, which in its turn invested the palate with some
degree of respectability. So while Romantic culture preached the sublimation
of taste and the ensuing degradation of sensuality, the nascent cult of the
gourmet was initially hardly a subject worthy of deep discussion.
Just why was it that an aesthetics of gastronomy built along the lines of
eighteenth-century art criticism and philosophy was unable to gain ground
and legitimacy within the cultural debate of the time? After all, it did not
need to claim an equal footing with subjects requiring intellectual depth and
academic dignity. And why should none of the writers who devoted their
attention to food have acquired acclaim? Why indeed should writings on
gastronomy have been considered a lesser literary genre in Western culture?
Apart from the manuals and recipe books aimed at cooks, apprentices and
housewives, why is it that publications on the subject enjoyed much the
same status as society chatter? Why indeed was it not until the anthropologists
and semiologists of the second half of the twentieth century contributed to

73
74 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

a change in overall attitude that estimable thinkers such as Lévi-Strauss or

Barthes should deign to elevate with their intellectual attention a humble,
“minor” subject such as food and cuisine? And even when this did finally
come to pass, why were these matters still considered to be less worthy than
other disciplines, which admit of their existence merely as a way of providing
examples, and possibly a few anecdotes, without ever getting involved in
discussions of hedonism and the perception of pleasure? Why indeed should
famous writers such as Revel or Aron, who do devote some attention to
cooks and recipes, appear to do so as though this were a relaxing pastime,
far removed from their more valid intellectual pursuits? These are just some
of the questions that this chapter addresses and hopes to resolve.

Gasterea: The Ventriloquist Muse

The history of gastronomy belongs to the entire 1800s, first appearing right
at the beginning of the century under the auspices of an obscure bucolic poet
by the name of Berchoux.1 During the course of time, however, its
implications and connotations underwent change, ushering in different
usage and mentors.
What helped bring about this development was without a doubt the
invention of the middleclass restaurant: fare removed from the world of
taverns and greasy spoons, which were famously cheap and ill-frequented,
the restaurant became the new temple of good taste that housed the daily
celebrations of the culinary arts. Thanks to this institution, what was once
the conspicuously exclusive privilege of the aristocracy became accessible to
a much wider public, thereby allowing a class on the rise to enjoy tangible
recognition of the wellbeing it had acquired and to take part in what was
shortly to become one of the foremost expressions of French culture, the
object of considerable national devotion.
Restaurants started to come into being in Paris a few years before the
Revolution, and it was this event that actually spurred their spread.
According to an authoritative witness, “in putting the old proprietors on a
diet, the Revolution made all their best cooks penniless. At which point
these latter chose to exploit their talents differently, by turning themselves
into merchants of culinary excellence under the name of restaurateurs.”2
Zeldin has calculated that less than a quarter of a century after the fateful
year of 1789, in Paris alone the number of restaurants had proliferated from
fifty to three thousand.3 Grimod de la Reynière himself also noted that
during the same period restaurants outnumbered bookshops in the capital
by a ratio of one hundred to one.
There is no doubt that the sudden success of this commercial set-up
brought about a revolution in eating habits, promoting the national cult of
good food as defined by gastronomy, its high priest, advocate and magistrate.
And like all forms of worship, the cult of good food availed itself of evocative
terminology, plenty of heart-rending inventive flair and a panoply of
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 75

initiatory formulae. The use of fantastical terms to shape the sensitivity of

the palate and arouse the desire for certain tastes was to become the rich
humus that nurtured the seeds of gastronomic discourse.
The idiom itself grew and was enriched within the restaurants by means
of the protocol and rituals that preceded and accompanied the serving of
food. This meant words designed to conjure up desirable images, shape
appetites and ensure that the experience remained printed in the memory.
Reading a menu became a sort of sacred genuflection, a manifestation of the
desire to partake of an enticing universe, of enthrallment before a lofty style
and such inspired poetics. This is precisely what Aron tellingly described as
“the rhetoric of the sublime”:

great dishes call for names that measure up to their nobility, such as
Chicken Supreme Paris Fashion, or Chicken à la Villeroy, or Tournedos
Maréchale. As often as not the origin of these expressions is entirely
fortuitous: the name of a famous customer, or of the inventor of the dish,
or the fruit of a cook’s or a hotel director’s imagination. The anecdote is
less important than the syntax. To say that a Le Mans capon is stuffed
Demidoff fashion with truffles is enough to free the creature from the
farmyard and provide it with wings for flight, ennobled with the insignia
of the Russian prince who married Matilde Bonaparte. The outcome
leads to a revision of zoology as applied to cuisine. The capon is no longer
a cock fowl deprived of its male attributes, but a god in the elevated
company of pigeons bag-roasted à la D’Uxelles or the fillets of rabbit
Conti style. It is a question of dressing up regular products in prodigious
disguises.4

The construction and the popularization of the imaginary universe of

gastronomy underwent further developments outside the restaurant dining-
rooms.
This was due to the pens of a new generation of writers, who discovered
an irresistible vocation for elevating the inclination for gluttony. From the
cultural point of view, the main novelty that came with gastronomy was the
invention of a literary genre, or rather the conquest and definition of a locus
cogitationis that was unprecedented in Western history. “Grimod was the
first exponent of the new culinary literature, which differed from the existing
handbooks and treatises on account of its ‘appetizing eloquence.’ Grimod
did not so much provide information about cooking as attempt to create a
culinary style that associated gastronomy with writing. This toothsome
literature was to become a genre that was an artistic event in its own right,
moreover one that embodied a degree of perversity because, in Grimod’s
view, the gourmet was a man of letters, a libertine and an aesthete.”5
According to Flandrin,6 the gastronomic “fact” actually existed before
the terms coined to describe it. This is certainly true if the gourmet is
considered to be a refined connoisseur of the palate, a person endowed with
such heightened perceptions that he can distinguish the precise provenance
76 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

of seafood, the very strip of coastline, rather as certain ancient Romans liked
to do; or, as Brillat-Savarin declared, tell from the taste whether a partridge
drumstick belonged to a bird that had been shot in flight or when roosting.
If this be so, then gastronomy dates back at least as far as the history of
luxury foods, whose forerunners would have been the legendary delectations
of the Sybarites.
The focus of this study is somewhat different, however: the literature of
gastronomy, with its concomitant theories and reflections regarding the
pleasures of food. For while there were indeed plenty of writings on food
and drink in Antiquity, their focus was diet or education, like recipe books
or the manuals on home economics of more recent memory. The desire to
write about the pleasures of the palate in a manner that would be perceived
as irresistibly enticing only came to the fore in the 1800s, most significantly
in France. “Gastronomy becomes the language of the aesthete gourmet. It is
he who possesses the word that resolves all issues. This was the era of official
counts and artists’ readings. Compared with the Encyclopédie, there was a
decline in interest for art and an increase in the arcane complexity typical of
the gourmet. It was no longer a question of practical skill, but of faith in
gastronomic essence, in the absolutes of taste. The jury delivered sentences
that established culinary culture, which gained further acceptance by means
of a specific and highly detailed protocol: the endless formalities were not
aimed at indulgence and enjoyment so much as providing the institution
with structure.”7
The choice of a name always implies a degree of destiny. Why did these
writers consider themselves gastronomes rather than, say, “culinographs”?
The choice is telling, because it reveals how experts and fanatics of all things
culinary and food-orientated conceived of their mission. A gastronome was
a person who laid down the law, absolved and condemned, rewarded and
punished, exercising his competence not in order to improve cuisine,
agriculture or animal husbandry, which would have been essentially a
service and extraneous to his interests, but in the name of the intimate and
inscrutable gratification of the stomach. His intention was never really to
spread the word or educate. Instead the goal was to select, classify and
appraise. Even the most impartial gastronomic account always conceals a
judgment, which ultimately relies on the incontestable verdict of the palate.
“Aesthetic judgment and the rules of savoir-vivre are both based on the
tyranny of detail, and both share the same intent to ‘teach life’ rather as one
learns a lesson by rote, especially when the content is not fully understood.
In synthesis, it was a question of translating the habits of society’s opinion-
makers into indisputable axioms. At the outset, this was not really anything
new, but the remarkable range of fields of application and the variety of
channels by means of which such convictions spread brought about a
hitherto unheard of degree of amplification.”8
There would appear to be two founders of this doctrine: Grimod de la
Reynière, who was a militant critic and a gourmet extra litteram, rather as
Kant had been for aesthetics (which he developed without ever mentioning
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 77

it in what was to become the accepted meaning of the term);9 and Brillat-
Savarin, the bon vivant theoretician who turned out to be a sterile prophet
of a discipline without disciples or imitators.
The backdrop for all of this was the spectacular evolution of the culinary
arts, nurtured by the peerless myth of Antonin Carême, the last high priest
of the splendors of the Ancien Régime. For it was Carême who managed to
persuade at least the corporation of artisans that culinary skill was as worthy
a form of craftsmanship as the applied arts, thereby providing the purveyors
of monumental patisserie with the sculptural illusion that their creations
could overturn transience and withstand the tests of human appetites and
time.10
Of the two devotees of gastronomy, it was Brillat-Savarin who enjoyed
the greatest success as a writer. Yet later generations of gastronomes were
more inclined to elect Grimod de la Reynière as their point of reference.
Grimod was the true forerunner of the food critic, the tireless sampler who
took on the role of arbiter of tastes and mentor of the pleasure-loving
community. Indeed, he embodied the perfect equivalent of the art critic
invoked by Hume: an individual endowed with particular sensibility and
encyclopedic tasting experience to whom gourmands could look for
guidance in the labyrinth of palatal pleasures and the refinement of their
perceptual faculties.
The recipe books and culinary manuals of the time were aimed at cooks,
whereas the gastronome wrote for an audience desirous of discovering
exactly what it should experience, prefer and appreciate. His aim was thus
to rule over the appetites of others, to shape them in his own image, to
extend his own sphere of influence over other people’s inclinations. By so
doing, his own particular independence became a widely accepted rule of
life, a standard for preference and for a hierarchy of values that no longer
depended on bodily needs, social conditioning or the habits inculcated by
tradition. Those who were unsure of their own palates could thus rely on a
system of regulations established by the gastronome acting as a supreme
judge of table manners and good food. All the would-be gourmets had to do
was follow suit.
Such ambitions probably owed much to the surrounding political and
social context. Grimod was writing during the period that followed the
destruction of elegant dining brought about by the French Revolution, and
what he essentially suggested in his Manuel des amphitryons (1805) was the
restoration of a certain savoir faire, which he hoped would be adopted by the
new middles class. While the restaurant was where the taste for luxury and
pleasure could be extended to a wider circle of people, it was in the homes of
the new bourgeoisie that hospitality came to imply courtesy and strict
etiquette. Granted, the gourmets and their sphere also subscribed to principles
of liberty, equality and fraternity when it came to their appetites, but only
within the circle of the initiates anxious to save culinary splendor from the
Spartan rigors of the Jacobin diet. A new structure of manners thus came into
being, whereby a few discerning gourmets endowed with cultural awareness
78 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

and perceptual refinement ultimately replaced the dynastic aristocracy whose

financial means had once assured them the very best. Although it voiced the
spirit of the age, gastronomy also had a distinctly nostalgic side to it that
mourned the passing of the culinary magnificence of the Ancien Régime.
Chefs may have freed themselves of servility by bringing about the birth of
the bourgeois restaurant and imposing their tastes on others, yet in the eyes
of the gastronome they were nevertheless subordinates in the service of
pleasure. Thanks to the variety of choice and the independence of taste, the
gastronome could hope to regain the privileged position of arbiter of taste by
promoting the symbolic restoration of the host over the cook.
This explains the sense of sovereign cultural and social superiority of the
gastronome in relation to the sweat and fumes of the kitchen, which
remained a sort of workshop devoted to humble, repetitive actions aimed
at transforming foodstuffs. By contrast, the gourmet’s ability in identifying
the ingredients of a given dish, like the sommelier’s skill in recognizing a
cépage or the exact bouquet of a wine, was a way of exercising judgment
and showing off unparalleled sensorial discernment. The gastronome’s
realm did not extend to the capacity for turning raw ingredients into sources
of pleasure, which was the cook’s sphere of action. Indeed, the former’s
culinary ineptitude matched the art critic’s inability to paint. The gastronome’s
vocation was not to cook, but to eat. His only interest was to use his personal
taste to sample and pronounce pitiless judgments from the height of his self-
appointed office. At the very most, like Grimod, on occasions he may have
extended the experience to a jury of kindred spirits, thereby transforming
the pleasure of eating into a collective experience.
There is something clinically delirious and culturally visionary about
claiming to regulate other people’s desires. As an overall gastronomic design
it involves imposing correctional norms based on purely hedonistic premises
and subordinating culinary knowledge to one’s personal tastes. This in its
turn implies the creation of a sort of cosmology of gluttony that comprises
infernal circles, limbos, purgatories and paradises. Perceiving all that is
edible as a form of individual privilege is a sort of parody of academia in
which “all that pertains to the system of literary awards, rewards and rolls
of honor is transposed into the realms of gastronomy.”11
But was art criticism really the model from which gastronomy took its
cue? The metaphor is not entirely convincing. The essential difference
between a work of art and a culinary delicacy lies in the fact that only the
former is truly a monument, in the sense implicit in the etymology of the
word: from the Latin monere, meaning to warn, to remind. A work of art is
a product consigned to eternity, a one-off item that is born of the artist’s
inspiration and bears his stylistic stigmata. As such it is likely to appeal to
different people in the course of time. Cuisine, on the other hand, deals in
ephemeral miracles that are repeated daily, albeit with slight differences;
multiples that are produced in order to be demolished. Tasting is a form of
gratification that involves seduction, but no form of admonition: a tasty
morsel is not a vehicle for memory, but rather a fleeting experience; at the
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 79

most accompanied by a hint of nostalgia for the sensations experienced

during the act of savoring it. The only unicum thus lies in the immediate
pleasure deriving from individual taste, intensified but not extended by the
gastronome’s rarely acknowledged discernment.
The whole exercise essentially amounts to a sublimation of oral fixation
through a vindication of the palate that eschews universality (gastronomy is
founded on the pleasure of diversity), but goes to great lengths in the pursuit
of detail. So there is no disputing tastes, not least because the gastronome
himself is convinced of the unique value of his own discernment and skill.
But there is every reason to criticize and indeed describe the dishes served in
a restaurant. Taste thus becomes a sort of ghostly presence lurking beneath
the surface of gastronomic literature.
The focus of attention thus became the system of delicacies that could
arouse passions and induce ecstasy, which were the two gourmet versions of
beauty and the sublime. In this sense, unlike aesthetics, gastronomy was far
from providing a phenomenological study, or a comparative, rational
account of the individual or shared states of mind aroused by the stimulation
of the palate. The desire to impose an “authoritarian vision of things, to
make others learn rather than make them understand,”12 ensured that
gastronomy would always be tied to a “pre-Kantian” stage of development,
constrained by the over-classification of foods, recipes and restaurants,
without ever managing to explain precisely why any given item should be
perceived as good. This was a task left to physiology. Gastronomy did not
even contemplate the manuals and recipe books aimed at teaching those in
the trade how to transform raw ingredients into tasty dishes. Instead it
provided devotional instructions, canons of gastronomic worship, rules for
what to expect and how to behave at the table. In other words, it was a
“science of nothingness,” to use Portinari’s caustic but apposite expression.13
In its urge to compile, taste and describe in wordy detail, gastronomy
confined the appetites within the sphere of sentences, reducing what should
have been sensual to a state of imaginary gratification. In this sense it offered
something of the consolation of pornography.
Like the pornographer, the gastronome evoked voluptuous experience,
titillating the taste buds and promoting lubricious salivation. Gastronomy
was not a branch of philosophy, as Brillat-Savarin lamely tried to argue, but
of erotic literature, a form of arousal that shared plenty of common ground
with the wealth of lasciviously detailed accounts of the many variations on
the theme of copulation. “The sexual metaphor is a semantic perspective
that prevails in gastronomic literature. When connotations help turn what is
essentially culinary into something sexual, the tone becomes libertine. This
is no longer the traditional vein of intemperance, but a form of oral
transgression that indulges in linguistic perversity. Grimod brought about
every possible commutation between the erotic and the gastronomic,
combining deliberate crudity with sophisticated literary effects.”14
Gastronomy acted as the vade mecum for gourmands, expressing the
morals of dissolution and the art of dissipation. Like sexual obsession, the
80 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

preoccupation with food achieved visionary seduction and sublimated

satisfaction in the literary genre it produced. The idealization of desire and
gratuitous gastronomic fulfillment are worlds apart from the aesthetics of
disinterestedness. They achieve gratification in the act of consumption,
which is unrelated to need. Clearly the analogy with eros, with sexual
activity freed of the desire to procreate, is more fitting: “the exercise of a
desire that is totally pointless.”15
The pleasures of food, like those of sex, eschew repetition and are
constantly changing. Obsessive in their constant search for gratification,
both the gourmet and the erotomaniac desperately sought variety, distraction
and caprice. Though they may have originated in the same conditions or
pertained to the same event, the pleasures of the senses seemed irresistibly
different from one occasion to the next, all the more so if they were the fruit
of meretricious exchange (the services of a prostitute or a cook, in a brothel
or in a restaurant).
Gastronomic experience relied on the literature of enchantment to spread
the word. The outcome was thus far removed from the prudish but edifying
embrace of aesthetics. The world of the senses offered Dionysiac euphoria,
which meant there was no need for philosophical legitimization: “the
gastronomic tradition is not founded on knowledge, but on the mythology
of pleasure.”16
Indirectly this accounts for the eccentric orbit of Brillat-Savarin’s fleeting
appearance in the gourmet firmament. Apart from their common passion
for food, his ambitions differed from those of Grimod. In the history of
gastronomy, Brillat-Savarin’s role was more that of the ideologue than the
historian: he saw himself as the pundit of a discipline on an equal footing
not with art criticism, but with aesthetics, as a general theory of beauty.
Brillat-Savarin openly declared his intentions in his only publication, the
masterly Physiology of Taste. His goal was both epistemological and moral:
on the one hand he wished to “determine the root principles of gastronomy,
so that it may take that rank among the sciences which undeniably belongs
to it”;17 and on the other he hoped to celebrate gourmandise, the “rational
and passionate” cult of good food, as opposed to the inclination for gluttony
and intemperance, within the genteel sphere of socially accepted manners.18
The epistemological foundation of gastronomy drew inspiration from the
circle of philosopher scientists, known as the Idéologues, who were the
forerunners of modern human sciences. Among these Idéologues was Pierre
Jean Georges Cabanis, whose treatise On the Relations between the Physical
and Moral Aspects of Man exercised great influence over Brillat-Savarin.
Cabanis’s fundamental aim was to overcome the dualism perpetuated by the
metaphysical philosophers that divided the intellectual faculties from those
of the body. Corporeal reality cannot be separated from the life of the mind
because both were functions of the same reality: the human being.
Observation of such phenomena led the author to conclude that cerebral
activity “secretes ideas,” just as the stomach secretes gastric juices. The
sphere of the intellect and affections that pertained to “morality” thus arose,
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 81

he claimed, from the original activity of the sensitive organs, and thus from
the “physical” sphere: “the study of vital phenomena and the methodical
search for the way in which they are related must ultimately come to physical
sensitivity. This is the final or the most general outcome of the analysis of
intellectual faculties and the affections of the soul.”19
In the rehabilitation of the body promoted by the Idéologues, Brillat-
Savarin found the solution to the problem that had tormented him:
attributing cultural dignity to his life’s passion. The paradigm established by
Cabanis obligingly provided him with the reductionism that allowed him to
entrust physiology with the task of “explaining the sensations of taste in
rational terms.”20 While the Idéologues opposed Descartes’ cogito with a
form of Ur-sensitivity (sentio, ergo sum, or “I sense, therefore I am”), Brillat-
Savarin overturned the same principle in a mocking “edo, ergo gaudeo” or
“I eat, therefore I take pleasure,” that allowed him to develop the “moral”
approach to the phenomenon, along with his leisurely leaning for anecdotes
and aphorisms.
As for the “transcendence” invoked in the subtitle to justify the learned
gentleman’s chosen perspective for gastronomic “science,”21 it had no claims
to mysticism or metaphysics. The term was simply used for “whatever is
susceptible to the widest generality”22 on the basis of a protracted, methodical
and dispassionate observation of the facts. Alas, the outcome was pathetic:
Brillat-Savarin lacked the authority and the curiosity of the historian (his
Meditation XXVII dedicated to the “philosophical history of cuisine” is
embarrassingly superficial). Moreover, he did not even have the spirit of
observation of the anthropologist, even though Volnay, founder of human
geography as a discipline and one of the most eminent Idéologues, could
have provided him with a convenient model for inspiration: his approach to
the relationship between a given geo-climatic condition and the inclinations
of the population; in other words, between physical and anthropological
reality. In his study of land, climate and demography, he sought connections
between the customs, ideas and characters of the inhabitants, and the ways
in which they influenced each other.23 To create a comparative study of
eating habits along the same lines should not have been difficult. Yet nothing
of the sort is to be found in Brillat-Savarin’s “moral” gastronomy, whose
epistemological foundations are about as stable as a soufflé. In his chaotic
inventory of curiosities, the search for causes and explanations is entirely
delegated to physiology. Far from revealing a scientific bent, the author
showed no interest in the observation of what was primitive or exotic: he
avoided any instructions de voyage not because he lacked direct observation
(unlike Volnay, Brillat-Savarin was not attracted by travel), but because he
eschewed the journey and got straight down to arrival. Hardly surprising,
his gastronomic thesis was resolutely teleological and France-centered, with
the main focus on a couple of districts in Paris.
Although Brillat-Savarin called himself an “amateur physician,” he paid
no attention whatsoever to the study of food pathologies and aberrant
eating habits, despite the fact that here again he could have looked to several
82 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

authors for inspiration, not least Philippe Pinel, an eminent specialist in

mental illness.24
Granted, Brillat-Savarin did devote a couple of chapters to obesity and its
remedies, classifying the tendency towards extreme corpulence as one of the
rare drawbacks of gastronomic civilization. But this digression, like those
devoted to dreams and exhaustion, smacks more of a would-be doctor’s
desire to sound scholarly25 than it does of any real desire to understand why
people indulge in convivial excess.
The fact is that, despite the smattering of science, the Physiology of Taste
is not a treatise on food, but simply a manual for gluttony. Brillat-Savarin
cared little for the philosophers’ pleas for temperance, or the laws aimed
at curbing luxury passed by despots, or the church’s condemnation of
gastronomic indulgence. Instead he argued in favor of the right to binge, not
least because he saw that over the centuries the desire to guzzle had survived
all social upheavals, to the extent that during his own time “the art of the
table grows more florid every day.”26
The maze of different disciplines that he had announced as being the
cornerstone of gastronomic science (a mixture of natural history, physics,
chemistry, culinary art, trade and political economy)27 thus remained an
impromptu declaration of intent that others could disentangle, if they felt so
inclined. Even the “gastronomic tests” that Brillat-Savarin invented by way
of a “dynamometer” adjusted to the different social classes to register the
physiognomic reaction of banqueters stimulated by hearing a succulent
menu read out loud28 come across as a farce rather than the basis for an
empirical method.
The hoary taste enigma revolving around why people like what they like
could not be resolved by gastronomy, whether this was deemed an art or
proposed as a science. The one essential difference between these two views
mirrored the divergence that separated Grimod and Brillat-Savarin. The
former asserts, judges and lays down the law without having to explain
anything; while the latter attempts an explanation, but in vain, to the extent
that his legacy to posterity amounts to little more than a few somewhat
obvious aphorisms: “tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are,” for
example; or “dessert without cheese is like a pretty woman with only one
eye”; or “a man becomes a cook: but he is born a roaster of flesh.”29 Would-
be gastronomic science, neglected by academic culture, was thus reduced to
a series of anecdotes: for the next one and a half centuries, the only people
to write about it would be journalists, not scholars.
One point that remains to be addressed is just why the subject should
have eluded serious inquiry, understanding and explanation. Why was
gastronomy caught within the sphere of the passions, rather than becoming
part of a comparative study of people’s customs and nutritional predilections?
And why did it not aim at transcending mere ingestion, instead of trying to
resemble a theory of taste?
In this regard the cultural evolution of taste is instructive: if gastronomy
was unable to produce a form of culinary aesthetics along the lines of the
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 83

philosophy pertaining to art, and if food writing was considered a minor

literary genre, this was because the final aim of the discipline, as Brillat-
Savarin himself admitted, was the social promotion of its practitioners,
“give them the position in society which is their due.”30 Gastronomy simply
aimed at being a vade mecum for good manners: the best use of the most
comfortable of possible worlds. To this end, the parameters for judgment
could be somewhat hazy, since simply sharing a hedonistic experience
implied no need for speculation or theories. Arguably it was from this point
of view alone that gastronomy resembled, or was inspired by, aesthetics:
both aimed at celebrating the moral progress of human civilization that had
relinquished primordial instincts and achieved an entirely gratifying degree
of refinement.
The rest was shrouded in silence. It was as though latent anguish
incapacitated the gourmet’s conscience, muted by an unexplained state
of embarrassment disguised as leisurely wit. If gastronomy concealed
pathologies, aversions and cultural relativism, it was to exorcise the sense of
emptiness that undermined it from within.

Like an abyss, the stomach threatens the bourgeoisie, which produces

comestible edifices to satisfy its demands. I perceive in this silent threat to
the deep stomach at the outset of the nineteenth century the first signs of
another abyss: the Freudian subconscious. Who, after Freud, would
disagree that the cavity of the subconscious is based on that of the
sexualized stomach? Everything begins from the lower stomach: the
symbols, dreams and neuroses that are food for the soul. The bourgeoisie
invents its own absolute, that of gastronomy, perhaps the only answer to
the fears expressed by an insatiable stomach, just as psychoanalysis lent
itself to addressing the lonely torments of the mind, following the demise
of religious certainty and hopes. The gratification of demonstrating self-
satisfaction is rooted in the preoccupation with appeasing the stomach.31

The two possible approaches to the taste problem are thus either a defense
of gluttony, or the study of food predilections. Both embody mutually
incompatible opposites: two poles that exclude each other. But then much
the same thing happens within the sphere of erotic experience. An ars
amandi and a scientia sexualis will inevitably come to different conclusions,
and it is logical that only a clinical perspective could lead to a theory of
sexuality. By contrast, far from claiming scientific objectivity, a libertine
writing about sexuality would simply be voicing his own freedom of choice
to what he defined as pleasure.
Eroticism as a literary genre may give rise to pornography, or even poetry,
but it cannot produce a rational explanation of its own essence. In
erotomania, as in bulimia, there is no questioning the urge towards the
object of desire. It is a raw fact, a compulsive gut sensation, even though it
may express itself in the most refined perversions of taste. Describing its
progress and listing the sources of satisfaction are both possible, whereas
84 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

there is no revealing its origins. Taste is inexpressible, the inexplicable drive,

the unending urge that belongs to fixation, something that cannot be reduced
to a convenient formula to be studied in a laboratory. It is a compulsion that
pertains to the individual who experiences it and obsessively tries to share it
with his audience, with his imaginary companions in unspeakable antics,
whose resulting erection or salivation are secondary effects of the real
pleasure to be found in copulation or crapulence.
By contrast, scientific method and clinical inquiry call for detachment, for
an impersonal, impartial approach to the given subject. Research into the
origins and causes of gourmandise would thus have required abstraction
from the vortex of the senses, a muting of instincts and reining in of passions:
all of which would have been extremely difficult for Brillat-Savarin. Had he
but tried to understand the appetites rather than absolve them, had he truly
wished to plumb the depths of the stomach instead of disputing in its name,
gastronomy would have had to deal with the miseries and anxieties of
bulimic civilization. At which point, the learned gentleman would have
found himself drawn towards an abyss of obscure and ominous impulses,
and this would have undermined his proud belief in a world that needed to
establish certainties in order to build up its own identity. The true mission of
gastronomy was to advocate the role of fine living and good food in acquiring
pleasures and fomenting appetites. For all its edifying aspirations, clearly
there was no place or potential audience for a “Critique of Dietary Reason.”
“In the nineteenth century imagination, the rotund figure of the gentleman
engrossed in his own inner world replaces that of the lithe knight gazing
heaven-wards in his search for God. Sancho Panza ultimately overthrows
Don Quixote and snatches the reins of history from him. The servant
becomes the master, turning into the middle-class man who strokes his own
fat belly, basks in the arms of his mistress and makes a show of his material
success: life is a pleasure, to which gastronomy bears witness.”32
At which point the only option available to the founder of the discipline
is to take refuge in the consolatory canticle of a fictional muse, Gasterea,
whom Brillat-Savarin invoked in his last meditation as the patron of the
pleasures of taste and the hallucinatory idol of an imaginary science. The
backdrop for his delirious descriptions of the goddess’s sanctuary was a
utopian gourmet Republic conceived as a “vast refectory” resounding with
the “general mirth” of jubilant citizens; in other words, a lyrical version of
the Land of Plenty, an obsessive dream of a constant, unflagging banquet.

Ephemeral Frenzies: The Feminine Aesthetic

In a footnote33 that emerges from his misty prose, Brillat-Savarin made at
least one observation that calls for comment: “I observe with pride that
coquetterie and gourmandise, these two excellent transformations of our
most natural needs brought about by extreme sociability, are both French in
origin.”
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 85

Coquetry and gluttony are thus both interpreted as essential human

needs, thanks to the contribution of French genius. Human behavior has
thereby benefited from a process of refinement and concentration. Earlier in
the book, Brillat-Savarin had established that the concepts themselves owed
their existence to the French language, which therefore governed their
rightful use. “The gourmandise, as the Professor34 has defined it in this
chapter, has no name but in French language; it cannot be rendered by the
Latin gula, nor the English gluttony, nor the German Lusterheit; and
therefore we counsel those who may be tempted to translate this pithy
work35 to retain the word unchanged; so have all nations done with la
coquetterie and the words derived from it.”36
An intriguing parallel that is full of implications, though perhaps not
wittingly. Although the term is feminine (a male coquet would be as
embarrassing for high society as a gourmande woman), coquetterie no less
than gourmandise is recognized as being a quintessentially French disposition,
a trait that can promote collective passion until it becomes the subject of
national pride: just as gourmandise nurtures the cult of fine dining, so
coquetterie furthers the cult of appearances.
Both derive from hedonistic bodily experience: from the perception of the
body as a machine for assimilating a pleasure that becomes part of the inner
self; or indeed the body as an extension of the inner self, the center from
which conspicuous pleasure is projected outwards as a vehicle for social
relationships.
The fact that they inhabited the same corner of the world implied their
common origins, which in its turn bore witness to the conviction that
refinement of appetites and attire arose from a single cultural source and the
same social habitat: the splendor of Versailles, that peerless theater of
affected taste where elegance, aestheticism and vanity vied with each other
in constant competition.
The parallel development also reveals other affinities. Gourmandise and
coquetterie are also both part of the history of costume, in particular of the
chapter concerning the discipline of pleasure and the workings of superfluity.
In this sense, they represent cultural genres that cannot claim to be on an
equal footing with the prestigious model of the fine arts. Instead they rank
as paradigmatic expressions of “impure” taste (to use Kant’s dichotomy),
because they do not represent an end in themselves: by furthering a tendency
towards vice, be this gluttony or vanity, they cannot claim to be the object
of “disinterested” contemplation, but are rather part of the vortex of luxury,
regardless of whether or not they deliberately adopt this heading.
Taste for the superfluous represented the purgatory of brutish sensibility,
a realm of indulgence and, at the same time, a sort of correctional center in
which the rules of social behavior and distinction were made to apply. Here,
the whole point of refinement of attitude and conduct was to act as a
parameter for the maximization of earthly happiness. In this regard it clearly
differed from the edifying, ecumenical objectives of aesthetics. Nineteenth-
century Paris, the mecca of fashion and gastronomy, appeared to the
86 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

prosperous West as the best of possible worlds: it was here that the last
puritanical doubts aimed at opposing the seduction of worldly pleasures
crumbled and gave way to collective veneration.
Granted, gourmandise amounted to more than the obsessive, ecstatic
sampling and ingesting of the finest foods: wines, liquors and tobacco were
also part of the enticing picture, and special terms to describe it all were also
coming to the fore as part of the initiate’s privilege. Along similar lines,
coquetterie could not be confined within the ample realm of a constantly
renewed and expanding wardrobe. It also implied the whole apparatus of
bodily ornament, from makeup to perfumes, hairdressing, accessories and
jewelry, as well as questions of how to behave in public, including posture,
voice, look and general bon ton.
That said, however, the two arts of living did effectively establish their
respective centers of gravity and main source of pleasure in food and attire.
And this does suggest that the spheres of haute cuisine and haute couture are
in some respects related. As an expression of collective aspirations (shared
by a community that became less discerning as it grew wider), gourmandise
and coquetterie came to embody increasingly widespread social demands,
whose satisfaction called for the invention of two commercial formulas that
were destined to play an enormous role in the future developments of
“impure” tastes: the luxury restaurant and the fashion house, both of them
spheres in which France managed to exercise a world monopoly for the
following one and a half centuries.
The institutionalization of these two forms of enterprise represents an
essential chapter in the history of taste. By transferring creativity and
originality as values from the art market to trade in luxury goods, fine dining
and fashion became vehicles of the principle of personal style that two
centuries before had freed the artist from the impositions of the patron. This
principle also underlay the stipulation of the taste metaphor, conceived as a
way of endorsing individual sensibility that was thus ultimately to invest a
far wider audience.
As the scions of lesser artisans previously relegated to the outer edge of
social prestige, the great chefs and tailors of the nineteenth century
transformed their obsequious trade into an inspired art: Antonin Carême
and Charles Frédérick Worth were the great forerunners of the celebrity
chefs and fashion designers who were to take center stage during the second
half of the twentieth century.
The appearance of these new professional figures reduced the potential
for individual caprice and eccentricity that had previously been the privilege
of any gentleman wishing to show off his refinement of taste. Such personal
performance was no longer necessary, since there were professionals to hand
who generally did the job better: not critics or tasters, as Hume had predicted,
but simply specialist suppliers who were hailed as public celebrities and
deified as creators of a new style. This pointed in the direction of predictable
forms of taste, predilections that were originally conceived as shared rather
than individual, designed to appeal to a range of potential buyers who were
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 87

free to choose the best offer available. Such tastes were short-lived, however,
since they could easily be replaced by other, more seductive commodities, in
keeping with the growing plurality of options that had become the rule.
This remarkable change revealed the enormous importance of the
supplier’s name and fame, which was a byproduct of the increasing
democracy of affluent society. However, it also showed that when taste is
applied to all forms of luxury consumption as a criterion of preference, in its
own right it becomes the most valuable commodity the market can offer.
“Luxury costs less than elegance,” wrote Balzac:37 by shaping people’s
fantasies and stirring up their desires, stylistic surplus took over from
refinement of materials in the perceived value of a product.
Popes and sovereigns were no longer the only people to vie with each
other for the possession of rare resources such as the inspired works of
the great Renaissance masters. On a more modest scale, the well-to-do
gentleman, his spouse and mistresses, could also indulge in the luxury of
a sumptuous banquet or fashionable attire. In both cases, the principle
depended on the fact that there was a supplier who towered above the others
because he embodied a collectively recognized style, to be sought and
rewarded as a model of refinement and object worthy of collection.
Although both derived from and were inspired by court society, haute
cuisine and haute couture were more expansive in their outreach, producing
formulas that could be emulated by increasingly wide swathes of the
population, and thereby furthering the spread of rules for social conduct.
The stylization of behavior as regards food and clothing was thus a facet of
social dynamism, initially that of the court, and later of affluent society in
general. Gourmandise and coquetterie became expressions of savoir vivre,
which in its turn implied sensorial etiquette. The ideals of earthly happiness
and the ensuing economy of superfluity characteristic of mass society were
only a few steps away.
In a civilization that encourages and rewards private gain, promising
dreams that come true for all pockets, an increasingly large segment of
consumption consists of items that are desirable, but not strictly speaking
necessary. Food and clothing are typical of this tendency, in that they are no
longer basic requirements, but luxury options. In this way the line that
separates the means for subsistence from the ethereal universe of aspirations
and gratifications moves forward continuously.
Sets of jewelry and gastronomic delicacies are not the same thing,
however: while the consumption of food is generally gratified within the
home and the private sphere, anything that pertains to elegance is, by
definition, a public event. The very existence of fashion depends on the
presence of a social stage suitable for exhibition: the agora of antiquity, the
Renaissance court, secular festivities and religious ceremonies, fairs and
theatrical events, salons and even cities have all hosted, in one period or
another, ways of flaunting fine appearance. Such venues were recognized as
places in which people could observe others and be observed, introducing
new customs and costumes, and encountering new tastes.38
88 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

It is precisely here that fashion can play its part in shaping and spreading
sensibilities. Fashion, like the palate, deals in an ephemeral form of creativity
that is far removed from the major arts, be they pure or decorative. Unlike
these latter, the products of fashion and gastronomy do not produce “durable”
commodities. Yet they play a decisive role that transcends that of other artistic
spheres in their ability to construct widespread and highly influential forms
of self-image. Described as “the most loquacious of social facts,”39 fashion
has unquestionably proved to be the most conspicuous and captivating
manifestation of taste. This was particularly true between the seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries, when its visibility and resonance were especially marked.
Within this sphere there are two factors that come significantly to the
fore: the first, which also belongs to the world of dining,40 is the principle of
individual choice, which in its turn is related to the dynamism and acumen
of suppliers; while the second factor, which pertains only to fashion, is the
remarkable appearance and spread of taste among women.
At this point it is worth underlining the fact that the bourgeois fashion
orchestrated by the great maisons, described by Lipovetsky as “the hundred
years of fashion,”41 was actually born of the “Great Sacrifice.”42

The stiffness, austerity, and asceticism of his attire would thereafter

totally differentiate male from female. The bourgeois drew these elements
from an ancient tradition, which can perhaps be traced back to the tightly
buttoned, strict dress that appeared at the Spanish court under Charles V
and Philip II , then spread to Flanders after the sixteenth century. Adopted
by Protestant reformers, by Cromwell’s followers, by Puritans and
Quakers, it became a point of reference and a symbol for the English
bourgeoisie who espoused this elimination of color to repudiate the
multicolored splendor of fabrics and finery identified with aristocratic
idleness and sumptuousness. Dark greens, blues, grays and especially
black denied colors, and with it the distinctions that color emphasized.
The extinction of color was a political signal that a new social order had
come into being. It also signaled the onset of a new ethic based on will,
self-denial, thrift, and merit.43

The iconoclastic severity that came in the wake of the great political
upheavals did not affect women in the same way, and this was to be of great
importance for the future developments of fashion. From this period
onwards, fashion became a typically female passion, with Paris as its chosen
capital, while London became that of the new, austere version of male
elegance. A similar division of spheres came about in the field of furnishings,
which is a further manifestation of self-image. From the nineteenth century
on, home furnishings became the female domain, well separated from
furnishings for the work place, which was a male universe.44 This division
between private and public was not simply a reflection of the social roles of
men as opposed to women; it also defined the areas and types of expression
that could give rise to opposing aesthetics.
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 89

Fashion was nevertheless the most significant phenomenon, not least

because it managed to elude the future complaints of the architects and
decorators who berated womankind for its love of excessive decoration,
ornament, drapes and gaudy colors in the field of furnishings. Although
fashion continued to make wide use of the same stylistic elements, it
was unassailable, immune to academic debate, a quintessentially female
prerogative based on that gender’s supposed love of caprice.
Another aspect of the disparity between the underlying ideology of
fashion and that of the fine arts lies in the fetishism surrounding commodities
that are perceived as beautiful. Because fashion pertains so closely to the
individual that it can turn that person into the object of admiration, it tends
to lack the “contemplative distance” that Romantic culture considered a
requirement for the fruition of works of art. An aesthetic commodity, be it a
painting or an ornament, is always an object in itself, with its own inanimate,
independent existence. By contrast, clothes cannot elicit “pure” contemplation,
and scarcely exist at all when they are not being worn. What is decorative for
the home acts differently from what serves as an ornament for the body.
Back in the eighteenth century, the authors of the Encyclopédie pointed
out that fashion is the fruit of the desire to please, thereby also fulfilling a
certain frivolity of spirit. It is thus hardly surprising that the Great Sacrifice
should have tightened the close relationship between fashion and coquetry.
The only option that remained open for men was to withdraw from the
tournament of appearances, entrusting their wives and mistresses with the
task of public representation by means of jewelry and ornament. As for
the women themselves, they were not just the opulent vehicles of their
menfolk’s social status: the very fact that fashion was identified with
femininity meant that they had a space of their own in which they could
decide, reward, ratify or reject; a free zone for self-expression devoted to
“the time-honored portrayals, values and predilections of femininity”45 and
the relative concepts of beauty.
In this regard it is worth pointing out that the birth of fashion, during the
early Middle Ages, was explicitly linked to the erotic potential of attire. This
regarded both the female sphere, with the introduction of plunging necklines,
tight bodices and long skirts, and the clearly distinct male sphere, in which
short jackets and clinging hosiery prevailed.46
The different conceptions of taste and morals that have come to the fore
in the course of time have all had to address the ineluctable question of just
how the earliest forms of aesthetic experience embodied the expression of
sexual attraction.47 For though this may have been mutual, the two sides
involved were not mirror images of each other. Indeed, they nurtured
different visions and ideals in the course of time, in relation to gender, genre
and object.
In Ancient Rome, for instance, there were two different types of beauty:
the virile and austere beauty described as dignitas, and the perturbing
feminine beauty that went by the name of venustas. The very etymology of
the word beautiful, along with the Italian and Spanish bello and the French
90 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

beau, actually reveals signs of this subtle differentiation. All three words
derive from the Latin bellum, an abbreviation of bonellum, which is a
diminutive of bonum. The neologism bellum only came into fashion during
the Renaissance, when it was “initially only used in reference to the beauty
of women and children; later the use was extended to the entire sphere of
beauty, so that it ended up by replacing the word pulchrum,”48 which had
once been used, along with the Greek word kalòn, for “invisible” beauty of
the intellectual or moral sort. The evolution of these words thus suggests
that the history of beauty returned to the origins of sensuality, and it is no
coincidence that the taste metaphor came into use during the same period.
In his disquisition on the causes that incite love, Hume himself did not
hesitate to admit that the first “impression or passion” to arouse him was
the pleasurable sensation provoked by bodily beauty.49
With the Great Sacrifice, however, female beauty and its various
appurtenances ceased to be considered (or indeed stigmatized) as tools of
sexual attraction. Instead they acquired a symbolic autonomy of their own,
which became the basis of a new conception of taste. It was here that female
sensibility was finally able to give free rein to its originality.
This amounted to the institution of a sphere of aesthetics parallel to that
of the predominant male universe; a sphere that had its own basic principles,
aims, forms of communication, expressive syntax and ephemeral monuments.
In an essay written in 1905, Georg Simmel drew attention to the fact that
coquetterie as an art of pleasing (with greater emphasis on the former of
these two concepts) was bound to end up as a self-referential, gratuitous,
formal performance, even in the most elevated sense of the term: “coquetry
stops being a short-lived middle ground and acquires the status of an
ultimate value. In so doing, it accomplishes to the full the definition provided
by Kant for the essence of art: “finality without an end.” The work of art has
absolutely no “end,” but its parts seem connected in such a meaningful,
necessary way that they appear to contribute to a perfectly determined
end.”50
For all that it acts as a means of materialization and gratification, fashion
cannot, however, be reduced to coquetterie. It expresses more than the
simple desire to embellish the body, or the ritualization of sexual enticement,
or the exhibition of refinement.
With respect to the earlier tradition that revolved around female vanity,
the revolutionary contribution of fashion, perceived as a spectacular
manifestation of modernity, lies in the way it impacts on the evolution of
individual predilection, in other words on the history of taste. Fashion has
always been a forerunner of this history, intersecting with it and injecting it
with a degree of irrationality and volubility that accounts for the on-going
but uneven appearance in the course of time of new styles and their sudden
declines. Fashion has corrupted the morals of this history, undermining its
ability to provide a solid foundation for the changeable nature of taste, and
thereby disappointing generations of philosophers. Fashion celebrates the
triumph of conspicuous display, eccentricity, unpredictability, the rejection
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 91

of accepted rules and norms, and the ultimate capitulation to the female
universe in all that pertains to the handling of this inscrutable hemisphere of
sensibility. The outcome is a domain that contends culturally and symbolically
with male taste based on a conception of timeless beauty that is everlasting,
edifying, monumental and celebratory.
To exorcise the threat to their wavering primacy, men no longer turned to
sumptuary laws or ecclesiastical censure, but instead tried to enclose what
perturbed them within the confines of a cultural ghetto, so that they could
then look down upon it from their lofty moral and intellectual vantage
point. This explains why Voltaire denied that fashion could have anything
significant to do with taste: “taste is arbitrary in many things: in fabrics, in
jewelry, in attire, in all that does not embody the stature of the Fine Arts. In
this sense it can aptly be described as fantasy. Indeed, it is fantasy and not
taste that produces all these new fashions.”51
Kant was of the same opinion. In his view, fashion derived from an urge
to imitate, which it represented as an evident social phenomenon: “fashion
therefore belongs under the title of vanity, because there is no inner worth
in its intention; and also of foolishness, because in fashion there is still a
compulsion to let ourselves be led slavishly by the mere example that many
in society give us.”52 So, although it is widely believed that “being fashionable
is a question of taste,” in actual fact this is not the case. As often as not,
fashions degenerate into eccentricity in order to be deemed expressions of
good taste; moreover, the subjective, instrumental nature of the phenomenon
is evident in the way the higher echelons of society drop a given fashion the
moment it is adopted by members of the lower ranks, who are thus
excommunicated once and for all from the universe of taste. In Kant’s view,
fashion was not really a question of taste (because it could go entirely
contrary to good taste), but of vanity, of the desire to be pointed out and to
do better than the next person.53
Kant perceived luxury as something different, however, defining it as an
excess of social wellbeing mixed with taste and spread throughout ordinary
life.54 This involvement is essential: when luxury (luxus) is not underpinned
by taste, it breaks down into profligacy (luxuria). While the former brings
elegance and to some degree refines the sensibility of beholders (for instance,
at a ball or a show), the latter simply squanders overabundance and variety
(as in the case of a Lucullan feast).
As for Schopenhauer, true to his deep-rooted misogyny he expressed even
more radical theses regarding the sensibility of women. In his opinion, the
fair sex could simply be described as “non aesthetic,” in that women were
incapable of understanding and appreciating the fine arts, and could at the
best ape what others said.55 Moreover, the innate vanity of women led them
to appreciate only material benefits (unlike men, who naturally gave due
value to “intelligence, learning, courage”), thus making them squanderers
by nature.56 As for their limited intellectual faculties, in view of their inability
to rise above the particular, womankind was deaf to the universe and could
hope for no more than the pursuit of interest in novelty and attraction for
92 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

what is extravagant: what women aspired to was thus curiosity, not real
knowledge.57
There is no arguing with fashion, wrote a resigned William Sumner at the
beginning of the 1900s,58 redeeming the medieval adage pertaining to the
irrational nature of tastes that generations of philosophers had struggled to
confute. Since women had been able to say their own and act accordingly,
the history of taste had indeed changed. Not only had it suddenly gathered
pace, it had also acquired ubiquity. Both were one-way processes that were
to be hugely influential.
The role of fashion on the formation of contemporary sensibility was full
of fundamental implications. It introduced a period of cyclical infatuation,
putting the mechanisms of detached enthusiasm, the cult of the superfluous
and the fever for frivolity to the test, thereby preparing the way for what
was to become consumer society. In the pantomime of semblance, where the
stylized self could wear beauty like a second skin, fashion actually began to
shape personal identity. Like a form of collective seduction, it injected social
values with a touch of worldliness that colored the present, challenging the
ethics of duty with the morals of pleasure. By rallying the aspiration to
elegance as a model for aesthetic gratification, fashion directed people’s
desires towards a certain ideal of beauty, and in so doing paved the way for
the aesthetic framework of everyday life that was to become a feature of the
following century.
To many observers, the frenzied rhythms typical of the episodic fortunes
of fashion seemed like a capricious succession of dictates that called for
obligatory compliance. Those who failed to obey were excluded from social
and symbolic exchange. But then this is true of all societies and in all ages:
regardless of how long they may resist, all past customs were once norms.
The oddity of fashion with respect to traditional societies doesn’t stem from
the fact that its canons of elegance are transitory, that customs change
continuously and that the fever for novelty spurs on inventiveness and
originality. What really counts is rather the fact that fashion affects the
community as a form of irresistible seduction, as the collective enchantment
of taste, as the appeal of ostentation and surprise, and as an aesthetic
constraint. This is precisely why fashion is bound to be changeable, indeed
capricious: it is furthered and spread by a peculiar predisposition of taste.
This cult of the ephemeral revolves around the short-lived state of grace to
which the individual, under a constant onslaught of heady stimulation, can
hope to aspire.
For such is the female universe of taste. Philosophers and sociologists
have long done their best to ignore the originality of this sphere of aesthetics,
seeking instead to explain the fashion phenomenon as the fruit of conflicts
of prestige born of the tendency to emulate the higher ranks of society.
Granted, emulation is not necessarily a “vertical” occurrence, in which
people lower down the scale try to imitate those above, who in their turn
invent new conventions to distinguish themselves from those on their way
up (Spencer, Tarde, Veblen, Simmel). It can also be “horizontal,” in the sense
 THE ARTS OF HAPPINESS 93

that it concerns only the ruling classes who vie with each other for symbolic
supremacy (Elias, König, Bourdieu). But in either case, the explanations
provided all speak through the voice of men: they unfailingly adopt the male
perspective, which is blind to the specific dynamics and cultural importance
of fashion, with the partial exception of how it effects husbands, lovers and
partners. This means paying no attention to the fundamental role that
women and female sensibilities have played in furthering the appeal, the
satisfaction and the omnipresent taste for the ephemeral.
Gilles Lipovestsky was perhaps the first sociologist who emphasized
the crucial and active role of individualism to explain the spread of the
fashion phenomenon. For as long as tradition, society, social group and
environmental condition decide for us, fashion cannot exist. Rather than
social and symbolic rivalry, what really counts in the creation and furtherance
of volatility in fashion are “the awareness of being an individual with a
specific destiny, the desire to express an original identity and the cultural
celebration of personal identity.”59 In his view, increasing social mobility and
the ensuing battle for appearances would not have been enough to sow the
seeds of such volatility in the Western mentality. “What was required was a
revolution in the representation of individuals and their view of themselves,
such that traditional mentality and values would be overturned. The unique
nature of individuals was thus exalted, and as a result social promotion
came to be identified with the ostentation of difference.”60 Interestingly, it
was arguments of this sort that brought about the taste metaphor as a way
of explaining the individual nature of the expression of sensibility.
This is more than mere similarity of intent. For it is fashion that catapults
taste onto the social stage, establishing it in the middleclass mind as
the crossroads between reality and fiction, perception and imagination,
enchantment and habit. Essential to the creation of such acquiescence and
the ensuing devotion to stylish products has long been the predominance of
the female sensibility. This had led to the adoption of an aesthetic radar
system that controls all aspects of surrounding reality. The outcome has
been the pursuit of happiness and the underlying sensuous morality of a
society fired by material desires.
94
 5
The Economy of Taste in
Consumer Society

Paris in the nineteenth century was not just the capital of luxury in the fields
of cuisine and fashion. It was also the high temple of taste regarding
everything that had to do with renewal in trade, the invention of sales
techniques that are still in use today, the unrestrained profusion of goods,
and the rampant yearning for what was superfluous among increasingly
widespread strata of the population. Paris was the city that first introduced
department stores, thereby bringing about a revolution in the landscape and
symbolic meaning of consumption.

Bewitching Commodities
In 1883, Émile Zola provided a lucid account of the heady increase in
temptations that dazzled the Parisian middle classes, undermining what had
become time-honored habits. In this he was a forerunner of the moral
judgments that were later to accompany the chronicles of the inexorable rise
of consumer society.

As though he were divulging a secret of the sort men sometimes like to

share with others of their kind, he finished his explanation of the
mechanisms behind modern department store trade. What appeared to
be at the very top of the whole edifice was the exploitation of women.
Everything came down to this: the constant renewal of capital, the system
of piling up commodities, the “good market” that works well, the price
displayed that reassures the purchaser. It was women that the stores
strove to attract by means of competition, women who could never resist
those special offers, especially once dazzled by the shop windows. In the
female bosom they had awoken new desires, flaunting tremendous
temptations to which women were bound to succumb, first giving in to
necessary purchases, and later to mere whims, to consuming obsessions.
As they increased sales tenfold, bringing luxury within the reach of wider
circles, the department stores exercised an irresistible urge to spend,

95
96 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

thereby ruining the family economy and fomenting the increasingly costly
madness of fashion.1

The person expounding such wisdom is Octave Mouret, a ruthless self-

made man who owns the department store that provides the novel with its
title. One after another, Mouret’s store puts the dusty, family-run shops in
the district out of business. Towards the end of the story, he falls in love with
a recalcitrant, virginal shop assistant from the provinces, the granddaughter
of a traditional mercer whose business folded on account of her suitor’s
merciless commercial acumen. A melodrama for modern times, with a happy
ending that only slightly sweetens the bitter pill of the effects of trade on
human relationships. Though Mouret himself may be a figment of the
author’s imagination, he stands for a category on the rise, his store clearly
alluding to Bon Marché, a highly popular institution in late nineteenth-
century Paris. Zola had studied the evolution of the phenomenon carefully,
illustrating its development with tabloid-style sensationalism rather than the
detachment of the novelist.
The remarkable success of the new model of distribution did not come
about overnight. There were forerunners in the shape of the passages and
the magazins de nouveautés.
The former began to spread through Paris between the second and the
third decade of the 1800s. An illustrated guidebook of the time described
them as follows: “These arcades [passages], a recent invention of industrial
luxury, are glass-roofed, marble-paneled corridors extending through whole
blocks of buildings, whose owners have joined together for such enterprises.
Lining both sides of these corridors, which get their light from above, are the
most elegant shops, so that the arcade is a city, a world in miniature.”2
The new commercial spaces called for attractive display to emphasize the
seductive power of commodities, and this in its turn boosted a form of
voyeurism that revolved around the urge to acquire. To be seen and thus
become desirable, an object required window-dressing. The outcome was
shopping as a socially shared pastime.
The arcades of Paris aimed at seducing the beholder and thereby gaining
custom. Gas lighting, which was first used in these passages, provided
increased and extended visibility, as well as a gratifying sense of progress.
The urban landscape was thus enhanced.
In a famous pamphlet on the subject, Walter Benjamin drew attention to
another innovative aspect of the development: the use of iron in construction,
initially in the arcades themselves, and later in other “transit buildings” such
as railway stations or exhibition halls. An intrinsic part of modernity, this
new technique also embodied the experience of mobility that was a feature
of the age.
The itineraries provided by the arcades were psychological as well as
topographical, underlining a principle that was to become an essential tenet
of consumer society: the fact that the desirability of commodities could
become an event in its own right, a show capable of arousing individual
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 97

fantasies within an irresistible collective experience that involved the entire

civilized population (in other words, the nascent middle class).
The theatricality that ran in the veins of modern trade gave the new stores
hypnotic powers that furthered the mirage created by commodities. Things
were brilliant and full of wonder, as though the waving of a magic wand had
brought about a new mixture of ideology and make-believe, cultural display
and sensorial stimuli, prestige and representation. Such was the contribution
of the passages, and their apparent showiness. “The arcade is a street of
lascivious commerce only; it is wholly adapted to arousing desires. Because
in this street the juices slow to a standstill, the commodity proliferates
along the margins and enters into fantastic combinations, like the tissue in
tumors.”3
By erecting their own aesthetics and promoting their own mythology,
commodities took on a dream-like aura that projected them, once and for
all, onto center stage. And the department stores represented the apotheosis
of this development.
The magasins de nouveautés that took root in Paris between the 1820s
and the 1830s further paved the way for the triumph of the department
stores. While the novelty of the passages lay in display, the outstanding
feature of the magasins de nouveauté was the range of products they stocked.
Trade had traditionally taken place in specialized shops that focused on
the sale of one type of merchandise. To go into such a store meant buying
something that satisfied a specific need. Moreover, the choice of both the
shop and the item to be purchased took place without the customer having
any preliminary idea of the prices, which ultimately were the result of a
certain amount of bartering between shopkeeper and customer.
With the advent of the magasins de nouveautés all this changed radically:
a wide range of goods were suddenly available under one roof, and each
bore its own price tag. To add to which, commodities could be returned and
exchanged, and potential customers were welcome to have a look around,
without necessarily having to buy anything. In this way real need was no
longer the reason for entering the store. Instead, those who ventured in were
likely to feel drawn, first and foremost, by the delectable contemplation of
what was displayed.
When need was no longer the reason for shopping, to wander in and out
of stores became a form of self-indulgence, a quiet luxury, especially when
the store in question promised a proliferation of “novelties.” For varied
supply was able to arouse impelling needs and insuppressible sensations
that tended to lead to demand. The desire for fashion, born of visual
stimulation and the ensuing powers of suggestion, was the fairy godmother
of commodities in all their ostentatious splendor.
The glorification of whatever was new grew apace, changing and
transfiguring what people thought about things, and thereby shocking
generations of philosophers and polemicists, who saw in all this the signs of
wasteful obsession: “Newness is a quality independent of the use value of the
commodity. It is the origin of the illusory appearance that belongs inalienably
98 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

to images produced by the collective unconscious. It is the quintessence of

that false consciousness whose indefatigable agent is fashion.”4
With the birth of the department stores, this trend came into its own: the
theatrical nature of the arcades married with the vast range of products
typical of the magasins de nouveauté, thereby creating a phenomenon of
enormous impact. In next to no time, the Bon Marché stores, the first of
their sort, became the diorama of desires spread before the rising middle
classes, who were thus happily able to invest in their appearance.
In people’s minds, the overt splendor of the goods displayed in the shop
windows replaced the aristocratic ostentation of wealth that enhanced the
splendor of the court. The department store thus promoted and extoled
what Zola defined as the “democratization of luxury.” Anyone was free to
enter, indeed was explicitly invited to do so: there was no need for coats of
arms, for social pedestals or the exercise of carefully refined sensibilities.
Inside the emporium all the goods had already been selected to appeal to
everyone, as though displayed in a museum of ephemera. Once an inaccessible
sphere that required initiation, luxury had become available to everyone, an
ecumenical phenomenon based on the heady rhythms of fashion. Supply
preceded demand, which it fashioned in its own image: thus consumer
society came into being.
Bon Marché was not just the arbiter elegantiarum for the masses on their
pilgrimage towards material grace. Apart from selling commodities, the
store helped shape a view of the world, which it delivered along with the
instructions for use. It thus became a secular cathedral whose consecration
lay in the catechesis of consumption.

The Bon Marché came to serve essentially the same role as the Republican
school system, at least for those of middle-class means or middle-class
aspirations. It became a bourgeois instrument of social homogenization, a
means for disseminating the values and life style of the Parisian upper
middle-class to French middle-class society as a whole. It did this by so
lowering prices that the former’s possessions became mass-consumer
items. But it also did so by becoming a kind of cultural primer. The Bon
Marché showed people how they should dress, how they should furnish
their homes, and how they should spend their leisure time. It defined the
ideals and goals for French society. It illustrated how successful people or
people who wished to be successful or people on their way to becoming
successful lived their lives. In its pictures and in its displays the Bon Marché
became a medium for the creation of a national middle-class culture. Thus,
through the Bon Marché, Paris and the countryside became more alike.
The millions of catalogues mailed from the center to the provinces carried
the message of a set way of life, much as the textbooks the Ministry of
Public Instruction sent to the communes carried a set vision of society.5

Advertising, which began to be used widely in order to promote the

department stores, also made an essential contribution to developments,
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 99

acting as a dress rehearsal for the fundamental role it was shortly to play in
the construction of the consumer mindset and imaginary sphere. In this
sense, it was also, and from the outset, distinctly innovative. Thanks to
advertising, even when people were actually unable to see the goods in
question, they could at least imagine them thanks to the contribution of
newspapers, magazines, postcards, flyers, almanacs and calendars. Moreover,
alongside the engraving that portrayed the desired item, and the trademark
that identified it, there was also a symbolic corollary interwoven with images
and slogans aimed at lubricating the memory and stimulating desirability.
By means of such “appeal at a distance,” the magnetism of goods became
insistent and pervasive, like a recurrent chimera.
The universal exhibitions completed the process of transformation.
Reassuringly reminiscent of popular fairs, they promoted the collective
celebration of what Benjamin criticized as being “the enthronement of
commodities with the surrounding halo of distraction,” in an age when the
entertainment industry was still in a seminal state. “World exhibitions
glorify the exchange value of the commodity. They create a framework in
which its value recedes into the background. They open a phantasmagoria
which a person enters in order to be distracted. The entertainment industry
makes this easier by elevating the person to the level of the commodity. He
surrenders to its manipulation while enjoying his alienation from himself
and others.”6
The trade in inexpensive items promoted by the department stores clearly
furthered the voyeuristic tendency implicit in consumerism, it was the
universal exhibitions that took this trait to hitherto unimaginable heights.
Window-shopping became a leisure activity in its own right, a popular cult
that revealed the veneration of commodities implicit in consumer aspirations.
The overall show was designed to dazzle observers. Human eyes had
never previously beheld such an impressive aggregation of goods in one
place. This was the deliberately designed high temple of trade. Even the
containers, fittings and furnishings devised for the purpose helped reshape
the urban landscape by creating futuristic settings: in 1851, the vast Crystal
Palace built in iron and glass in London; in 1889 the soaring Eiffel Tower in
Paris; again in Paris, the triumph of electrical lighting that gave new brilliance
to the French capital in 1900, suggesting the proud epithet of Ville Lumière.
Moreover, starting with the 1867 Universal Exhibition in Paris, the goods
displayed spoke eloquently for the triumph of industry and technology, an
accomplishment that was to shape the coming years, forging people’s
perceptions and imaginations. As consumption and progress began to mean
much the same thing, these spectacular events gave resonance to the ideology
of prosperity that was to culminate in mass society.
The outcome of all these astounding novelties heralded the arrival of a
new age. Thanks to the arcades, the department stores and the universal
exhibitions, pleasure and consumption, dreams and commodities, trade and
leisure pastimes interweave and affect each other. Unleashing the imagination
no longer means succumbing to the enchanted worlds conjured up by the
100 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

arts of suggestion: literature, music, the theater. Taste as a system of shared

preferences becomes the perfect tool for self-identification.
The idealization of commodities was the key event of the late nineteenth
century, because it nurtured people’s tastes by providing them with concrete
stimuli and fulfillment. To possess something, to be able to buy it rather than
simply gaze at it from a distance, was decidedly more gratifying and reassuring
than the “disinterested” participation promulgated by the aesthetics of
Romanticism. The attractions of symbolic compliance with established
privileges faded as people began to realize that accessibility to the world of
ownership was gradually expanding, and would soon become inclusive.
As desires became commodities, the relationship between available funds
and shared aesthetics underwent a process of symbiosis that redefined and
established in measurable terms the value of things. Under the bewildered
gaze of the Marxists, commodities underwent a metaphysical transformation,
accompanied by the liturgy of frivolity.

Once escaped from the hand of the producer and divested of its real
particularity, it ceases to be a product and to be ruled over by human
beings. It has acquired a “ghostly objectivity” and leads a life of its own.
“A commodity appears, at first sight, to be a trivial and easily understood
thing. Our analysis shows that, in reality, it is a vexed and complicated
thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.” Cut
off from the will of man, it aligns itself in a mysterious hierarchy, develops
or declines exchangeability, and, in accordance with its own peculiar
laws, performs as an actor on phantom [. . .] The commodity has been
transformed into an idol that, although the product of human hands,
disposes over the human.7

When commodities began to cast their spell over people and consumer
society first established itself as a way of life, the “democratization of
luxury” also came to mean the democratization of tastes, which was a much
deeper, more radical phenomenon. The consumer myths were naïve and
sickly-sweet in their rhetoric, with terrible stylistic blunders and plenty of
disarming vulgarity. Yet their development also ushered in an unprecedented
novelty: for the first time in the history of Europe everyone suddenly had the
right to desire.
By rapidly increasing the range of individual aspirations, mass society
shaped itself around desire: the desire to consume, and the freedom to desire.
Desiring something that had hitherto been out of reach meant not being
resigned to acceptance of the status quo: aspiring to improving one’s lot,
regardless of one’s origins; pursuing greater expectations. This was the age
of opportunity, which egged on social mobility. Both were the fruit of the
widespread, compelling urge that derives from the taste for what is
superfluous. The taste for wellbeing was something everyone could enjoy.
Luxury certainly fueled taste, but taste did more than simply drive
capitalism, which it had done since the twilight of the Renaissance. At the
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 101

dawn of the twentieth century, it also became the focus for the urge to
consume, and in so doing gave modern democracies their cohesion and
consistency. As far as the aims of this book are concerned, it is sufficient to
observe that the conquest of desire automatically gave rise to a system of
preferences that redefined in aesthetic terms the relationships between
people and things.
When taste expresses itself in consumption, it conjures up fantasies,
adopts a stylistic universe of its own, and is sensitive to the power of
suggestion. Harris has identified the main categories of the consumer
aesthetics shared by the American middle class at the end of the twentieth
century. Cute, quaint, cool, romantic, zany, futuristic, delicious, natural,
glamorous and clean describe the stylistic repertoire of everyday normality,
“a kind of collective aesthetic unconsciousness, a psychic realm that serves
as a storehouse for faint memories of the extraneous designs on trash cans,
jelly jars, and milk cartons.”8
A century earlier, in the department stores of London and Paris, it was the
idea of “the exotic” that held stylistic way. Of this obsession Williams writes
in Dream Worlds:

To criticize the chaotic-exotic style as “bad taste,” a frequent condemnation

even around the turn of the century, misses the point. As a quality of
aesthetic judgment, taste does not apply to transient décor whose purpose
is “to attract and to hold” the spectator’s attention. Why the reliance on
fake mahogany, fake bronze, fake marble? Because the purpose of the
materials is not to express their own character but to convey a sense of
the lavish and foreign. Why the hodgepodge of visual themes? Because
the purpose is not to express internal consistency but to bring together
anything that expresses distance from the ordinary. Exotic décor is
therefore impervious to objections of taste. It is not ladylike but highly
seductive. In this aesthetic demi-monde, exotic décor exists as an
intermediate form between art and commerce. It resembles art, it has
recognizable themes and stylistic traits, its commercial purpose is wrapped
in elaborate visual trappings; yet it does not participate in traditional
artistic goals of creating beauty, harmony, and spiritual significance. This
hybrid form is an illusion of art, a so-called artistic element posing as the
genuine article.9

With its mechanisms of solicitation and enticement, its overt avowal of

intent and its immediate accessibility in monetary terms, the stimulation of
taste in the service of commerce came across as radically different to the
aesthetics of solemnity pertaining to the fine arts. For in this latter sphere it
was the ascetic paradigm of contemplation at a distance that held sway.
Far from standing aloof, taste was involved in the new arts of entertainment
that helped shape popular culture in the twentieth century: movies and
photography (especially snap shots and postcards featuring photos), light
music and video clips, light reading and comics, television and advertising,
102 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

holiday villages and theme parks: in all these cases, immediacy of enjoyment
was more important than any claim to artistic content. It was inevitable that
the Kantian dichotomy between pure taste and taste as a pleasure should
return to the fore. These two different aesthetic inclinations naturally gave
rise to contrasting artistic products: Le Corbusier, Picasso and Schönberg, as
opposed to Disneyland, Hollywood and Madison Avenue.
On the one hand, there was the taste of the élite, refined by expertise and
inclined towards a coldly formal approach to the perception of aesthetic
stimuli. Such a stance viewed any involvement relating to immediate, sensorial
pleasure with disfavor, condemning it as “impure” and to be contrasted.
Entirely serious and intellectual, the pleasures of contemplation required
detachment, and devotion to patient cultural apprenticeship.
On the other hand, plebeian taste was spontaneous, coarse, heady, full of
cheap emotions and inclined to dwell on the sensorial roots of a metaphor
that had begun its life as a corporeal preference, before being elevated to the
lofty realms of the spirit. Little wonder that any show of uneducated taste
was likened to gluttony or lechery, as though spontaneous preferences of
this sort were unable to rise above the status naturae:

“vulgar” works, as the words used to describe them indicate—“facile” or

“light,” of course, but also “frivolous,” “futile,” “shallow,” “superficial,”
“showy,” “flashy,” “meretricious,” or, in the register of oral satisfactions,
“syrupy,” “sugary,” “rose-water,” “schmaltzy,” “cloying”—are not only a
sort of insult to refinement, a slap in the face to a “demanding” audience
which will not stand for “facile” offerings [. . .]: they arouse distaste and
disgust by the methods of seduction, usually denounced as “low,”
“degrading,” “demeaning,” which they try to use, giving the spectator the
sense of being treated like any Tom, Dick or Harry who can be seduced
by tawdry charms which invite him to regress to the most primitive and
elementary forms of pleasure, whether they be the passive satisfactions of
the infantile taste for sweet liquids (‘syrupy’) or the quasi-animal
gratifications of sexual desire.10

The contrast did not only consist in the division of the spheres of
sensibility, according to social circumstance and condition. Cultivated taste
did not oppose the predilection for what was trivial, commercial, obvious
and common with an exhortation to undergo the aesthetic initiation of
formal contemplation, which would have been unpalatable and anyway
practically impossible for simple souls. Instead it pinpointed the objects of
popular taste and inveighed against them. While unrefined taste delighted in
sugary, melodramatic effects and excess, cultivated taste expressed its
distance by means of disgust and contempt, deeming such vulgar realms to
be nauseating and intolerable. Where cultivated taste became most belligerent
was not within the esoteric labyrinth of modern art, however, but in the
crusade against bad taste. Inevitably kitsch, the overwhelming rise of mass
taste was deeply offensive and called for outright rejection.
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 103

The appearance of a new taste with widespread appeal, commercial

intrusiveness, semantic cacophony and obtuse enjoyment was bound to
meet with opposition. Cultivated taste organized some energetic resistance:
the rights and privileges of the intellectual caste had to be defended, and this
meant stemming the rising, malodorous river of consumer aesthetics. Such
was the battle that was to underlie the phenomenology of taste in the
twentieth century.

Ease and Progress

As taste came into contact with the artificial paradise of consumerism, the
elective supremacy of personal preferences expanded beyond measure as
regards both the universe of the goods themselves, and the realm of those
who possessed them. From this point on, taste became the yardstick for
individual sensibility, thereby directing the redistribution of social roles.
Increasingly a person’s position in society could be defined in terms of his or
her system of predilections: people were what they consumed, and they
consumed what they desired, and desired whatever fascinated and bewitched
them. Taste thus became the cornerstone of the process of aestheticization of
social identities.
Central to this development in post-war years was the concept of
“lifestyle,” which spread throughout Western society and behavior. Coined
by sociology and spread by marketing, “lifestyle” soon found its way into
everyday language, thereby explaining the system of ramifications underlying
what Kant had described as the “taste for what is delightful.” In actual fact,
taste was not a singular phenomenon, because tastes proliferated with the
spread of their possible applications, as did the preferences of single
individuals. The outcome was more like a patchwork of arbitrary choices
than the cogent emanation of an inner faculty.
Understanding a person’s tastes thus came to mean keeping tabs on his or
her spheres of interest: favorite shows (cinema, concerts, plays, television),
musical preferences, what he or she liked to read, his or her dream car—or
more realistically the car that would ultimately be bought, choices of food,
holiday destinations, favorite sports, most visited websites, hobbies and
leisure activities. Taste had become as extensive as leisure, mixing with it as
the passing generations expressed their rites and fashion imposed its whims.
As Pierre Bourdieu pointed out in his famous study of 1979,11 the regularity
and correlation of tastes to be found within the same social group increasingly
had less to do with a common social background and more to do with
membership of the same aesthetic tribe. In this sense it had become a criterion
of social aggregation; one that was to disintegrate towards the turn of the
millennium as myriad sentient but disconnected individuals anxiously tried to
pinpoint their own faltering preferences, overpowered by the growing
obsolescence of objects and desires. At this point the consumer schedule could
no longer reflect a cultural background, be this inherited or acquired through
104 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

education, shared values, existential aspirations, ideological orientation or

religious beliefs. Instead it had become the fluctuating consequence of the
constant and ever increasing onslaught of commodities.
To put it briefly, taste became a prosperity detector and a compass of
leisure, marking out the time devoted to personal wellbeing rather than to
work. The society of desires thus revealed its hedonistic soul, and its
individualistic, utilitarian bent. The commercial success of commodities and
services increases in ratio to the intensity of the promised happiness: such is
the laconic moral of consumer civilization. For this is a civilization in which
taste is no more than the sensation that urges us towards something that is
supposed to give us intrinsic pleasure, a form of enjoyment that does not
depend on anything beyond immediate gratification. And this, in its turn, is
the paradoxical reversal of the enlightened aesthetics of “disinterestedness”
that many people find to be deeply disturbing.
Granted, this equivalence did not come about overnight. Instead it
developed gradually, once it had saturated the desire to hoard and the urge
to acquire the goods that stand for social preferment and membership of the
society of wellbeing, well removed from any earlier state of need. In this
context, the democratization of luxury foretold by the critics of consumerism
proves to be no more than an oxymoron. Luxury is, by definition, something
rare, available only to the élite. Its status has little to do with the materials
or workmanship involved, because it ultimately depends on the distribution
of wealth, in other words on limited availability in relation to a virtually
unlimited demand.
Although luxury as such cannot be available to everyone, faking it is
within most people’s means: “this is alchemy reversed, whereby gold is
turned into iron pyrite, silver into nickel, leather into pleather, tapestry into
upholstery, painting into lithography, lace into tulle, substance into
ornament, solid into veneer. This is the rising tide of what is similar, pseudo,
bogus antique; of boundless imitation that fears no excess, since it is making
up for earlier deprivation that focused on junk, or faux items, or even unique
objects that mass production has abolished, or the original model that is out
of reach anyway.”12
All of this has devastating effects on the rules of elegance, upsetting its
significance, ruining its ceremony, and provoking horrified reactions on the
part of those who reject imitation because they have the discernment to
recognize the value of the original. Rather than making privilege available
to a wider segment of society, the “democratization of luxury” thus represents
the spread of that sense of satisfaction (it matters little whether this is
illusory or fake) that comes with the availability of commodities. The idea
of comfort, which began as a yardstick or excuse for such goods, soon
proves to be closely related to the figurative meaning of taste.
At the same time, however, comfort also ratifies the legitimacy of desire:
the desire for what is superfluous, for what is pleasurable, and surplus to
real requirement. In this sense, it actually has something in common with
the aristocracy’s love of luxury. Moreover, comfort also lends itself to sensual
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 105

gratification. It arises less from pride of possession than from a particular

and distinctly more intimate gratification that derives from the mixture of
wellbeing, reassurance and familiarity that we obtain from the objects that
surround us, from the environment in which we live, and from the clothes
we wear.
The current meaning of the word “comfort” dates back to seventeenth-
century England. In earlier times, the term was used to signify something
closer to its Latin origins: to “give comfort,” meaning to “restore strength”
to a body or spirit tried by fatigue. Apart from giving rise to the concept of
the “restaurant” with its focus on gourmandise, this restoration not only
offered “comfort,” but also adapted its meaning to embrace the growing
civilization of society, acquiring independence from the sphere of material
needs and increasingly tending towards that of luxury.
In Italian there is an expression that translates this modern sense of the
term effectively: “sentirsi a proprio agio” means to feel at ease, whereby the
faculty of feeling (sentirsi) blends with the assurance of comfort that derives
from financial wellbeing (agio), and with the sense of intimacy that brings
these two connotations together into a single concept (proprio—self).
Comfort is thus poles apart from the impersonal exteriority of decoration,
which inevitably smacks of decorum and respectability; in other words, of
duty as opposed to pleasure, and of outer as opposed to inner wellbeing.
There is even an aesthetics of comfort manifest in the furnishings and
appurtenances of the home. Far from being pure, cold and disinterested, this
form of aesthetics pertains to a realm of gratification that transcends the
functional purpose of things. Function was only to recover some of its earlier
importance during the 1900s, with the mechanization of daily life. By contrast,
during the nineteenth century, it largely regarded the aesthetic and the
symbolic sphere, commemorating the past rather than heralding the future.
“The psychological comfort provided by familiar, reassuring motifs in the
home was fundamental to the image of domesticity which, in turn, was linked
to the idea of virtue and respectability. These meanings were also communicated
through the level of comfort provided to ease the body as well as the mind.
The “Victorian” interior was characterized by a preponderance of upholstered
furniture, and by a liberal use of draped textiles to increase a sense of privacy
and to soften the environment, both visually and to the touch.”13
The fragmentation of tastes unleashed a surge of unregulated eclecticism
that succumbed to the wildest desires, stimulating and gratifying regressive
instincts by proposing vulgar imitations of models from the past as though
they were the ultimate cornucopia. As a result, the high priests of cultivated
taste reacted across the board, promoting rectification for the deplorable
degeneration of “bourgeois taste.”
What was denounced was not so much the advent of a new style, or
indeed its regrettable decline, but rather the lack of coherent taste, the
chaotic dispersion of the applied arts in a thousand pointless rivulets, and
the want of an authoritative model that could act as a mentor for a new age
and turn the tide of the spreading commercialization of beauty.
106 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

The nineteenth century was the century of ugliness: our parents, our
grandparents, and we ourselves have lived and still live in surroundings
more ugly than any before. I repeat: look at everything with unemotional
eyes, and when you have compared what we have today with what was
there in earlier times, you will become convinced that not one of the
objects used by our parents and ourselves today can be called beautiful,
whereas those that still look attractive tend to come from an earlier
century [. . .] A certain consecration of life is lacking, ultimately a lack
not of education—for we are more educated than our predecessors and
no longer have funeral pyres, inquisitions, or slaves—but of culture,
which is something quite different. For is not culture the accord between
a spiritual core, the result of communal aspiration, and its reflection in
material form, that is to say, art? Humanity, seen as the community, no
longer has an ideal. Personal interests have replaced mutual, spiritual
interests and have assumed a purely materialist form—money.14

The real threat was not the prospect of seeing unruly hordes undermine
the privileges of the well-to-do. During the 1900s, there was no automatic
relationship between refined taste and social prestige, since the two were
often in open conflict. The spread of mass taste and the so-called artistic
production that was supposed to gratify this taste was not experienced as a
symbolic attack on the upper echelons of society: indeed, in the eyes of the
lower classes the ostentation of luxury on the part of the wealthy continued
to be worthy of admiration and emulation. What was more significant was
the loss of authority experienced by those who felt their education and
learning should have made them absolute arbiters of taste. It was the
architects, designers and academics, in other words all those who considered
themselves the rightful creators and custodians of true beauty, who felt their
role begin to vacillate and their declarations go unattended. Disconcerted
and discomfited by the relentless proliferation of decorative excess, they
had visions of having to bow their heads once more. Following the
momentous emancipation of art that characterized the Renaissance, they
now found themselves having to pay lip service to the foibles of clients, most
of whom were philistines whose lack of taste went hand in hand with their
extravagance.
All of this was not far removed from the bitter polemics and total
contempt expressed regarding ordinary people’s tawdry desires, the dogmatic
attitude towards those who refused to toe the line, the iconoclastic fury with
which the privileged few tried to reshape the present, and their visionary
despotism applied to the future. The outcome was the excommunication of
what was seen as the vilest abomination of taste: ornament.
It was the Viennese architect Adolf Loos who unleashed this particular
crusade. Having adopted the principle that “form follows function” from
his American colleague Louis Sullivan, he was unable to contemplate the
idea that form might actually have something to do with the simple
gratification of the senses, and instead set out to indoctrinate the Old World
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 107

with a formula that soon became an evident and powerful dogma for the
Modernist Movement. Granted, the basis of this theory was distinctly
ideological, since its very cornerstone was a concept that required further
definition: the exact meaning of “function,” and of the underlying idea of
comfort. The cult of modernity and the ideology of progress rooted in
rationality gave rise to an ethics based on efficiency and profit, and this
inevitably breathed new life into the concept of the “use value” of objects as
a criterion for mass produced desires: in the efficiency-oriented world of
industrial productivity, there was no longer room for whim and fantasy,
which were deemed the despicable waste products of a world in dissolution.
The gradual emancipation from the “slavery of ornament” soon turned
into a Darwinian criterion of cultural selection among the various stages of
humanity, regulated according to its degree of civilization—a concept that
embraced the moral as well as the aesthetic sphere:

in the womb the human embryo passes through all the development
stages of the animal kingdom. At the moment of birth, human sensations
are equal to those of a newborn dog. His childhood passes through all the
transformations which correspond to the history of mankind. At the age
of two, he sees like a Papuan, at four like a Teuton, at six like Socrates, at
eight like Voltaire. [. . .] The child is amoral. To us the Papuan is also
amoral. The Papuan slaughters his enemies and devours them. He is no
criminal. If, however, the modern man slaughters and devours somebody,
he is a criminal or a degenerate. The Papuan tattoos his skin, his boat,
his oar, in short, everything that is within his reach. He is no criminal.
The modern man who tattoos himself is a criminal or a degenerate. There
are prisons where eighty percent of the inmates bear tattoos. Those who
are tattooed but are not imprisoned are latent criminals or degenerate
aristocrats.15

In this context, Loos theorized, the tattoo was considered emblematic of

a need felt by primitive peoples to camouflage their bodies and products
because they were not content with showing them and using them for what
they really were. Ornament was thus simply the transferal of this impulse to
architecture and furnishings. Modern times had emancipated humanity
from this naïve desire, however, making such activities seem like a symptom
of cultural or indeed mental backwardness. Loos was finally able to show
the world that “the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of
ornamentation from objects of everyday use.”16 The ineluctable march of
progress thus heralded the advent of a new era characterized by the
elimination of superfluity, whereby “the furnishing of a prison cell by the
royal upholsterer Schulze or by Professor Van de Velde17 will be considered
an aggravation of the sentence.”18
The predilection for shapes with sharp corners, for smooth, polished,
monochrome surfaces, for unaffected clarity, for the aesthetics of sobriety
and containment implicit in the tenet less is more, could not be entirely
108 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

reduced to the battle for progress. It was also a battle between the sexes
charged with misogyny: the taste to be established in the name of modernity
derived from the measured and austere demeanor of the industrial
bourgeoisie that stigmatized (or at the best excused) women’s enjoyment of
the frivolity of fashion as an expression of incurable fatuity. Clearly such
short-lived, wasteful tendencies were blameworthy in their effects no less
than in their intentions: “if I falsify an object by decorating it, I limit its
duration because, through being subject to fashion, it is condemned to die
earlier. This waste of good material can be justified only by womanly caprice
and ambition, for ornament in the service of woman will live forever. Objects
of limited durability such as fabrics and wallpaper remain subject to fashion,
and therefore to ornamentation. [. . .] Ornament in women substantially
corresponds to that of the savage, and is erotic in essence.”19
To counteract all this was the aesthetics of “modern man,” who
relinquished all desires for ornament on reaching the age of reason: “a man
of modern sensibility has no need for ornament, indeed is disgusted by it. All
those objects that we call modern are free of ornament. From the French
Revolution on, our clothes, our machines, our leather items and all objects
of everyday use have been unadorned. Except the objects that pertain
exclusively to the realm of women.”20
From the cultural and anthropological point of view, the advent of the
Modernist Movement and its enormous influence on the world of design
amounted to a celebration of the “Great Revenge” of male taste, following
the previous century’s “Great Sacrifice” to the fair sex in the sphere of attire.
A new division of competence and sensibility thus informed the design of
the home and shared perceptions: the world of technics, efficiency and
productivity in contrast to the world of feelings, protection and care.
The rivalry between the architectural and decorative styles of the early
years of the century can largely be attributed to a dispute between the two
sexes. It was not simply a question of traditionalists opposed to innovators.
The competition between the schools that voiced the pressing need for
radical stylistic renewal also expressed the dichotomy between taste
conceived as contemplation and taste conceived as enjoyment. This naturally
widened the cultural divide between the two archetypes of aesthetic
sensibility: on the one hand what was formal, Apollonian and masculine;
and on the other, the sphere of all that was sensual, Dionysiac and feminine.
The contrast between Art Nouveau and the initiators of what was to
become the Modernist Movement made this contraposition quite clear:

not convinced by the notion that hard edges and plane geometry were the
components of an elemental and “honest” vision, the various contributors
to the Art Nouveau delved, instead, into the polymorphous sensuality of
some imagined, primordial life [. . .] Rational modernism was an appeal
to the cold and distant eye. It was the product of a deliberate calculation.
Art Nouveau, on the other hand, evoked the more intimate and
provocative senses of taste, touch, and smell. Rational modernism pointed
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 109

toward a mathematically synchronized social order; Art Nouveau spoke

to the impetuous hungers of an inner, private realm. Rational modernism
drew its inspirations from the metallic and uniform properties of the
machine; Art Nouveau drew the visual metaphors from a pre-civilized
conception of nature [. . .] Against the predictable symmetry of rational
modernism, the netherworld of Art Nouveau was irregular, tantalizing,
protoplasmic. If rational modernism represented the arenas of work and
production, Art Nouveau was languid, sensual, organically reproductive.
Its sense of motion did not mimic the forward-driving pistons of the
locomotive, but of the uncanny, damp of post-orgasmic repose.21

The cultural message that underlay these two aesthetic factions also
spoke for their different spheres of influence. The sensuality of Art Nouveau
permeated a number of different countries, acquiring different names as it
spread: Art Nouveau in France, Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in
Austria, Liberty in England, Floreale in Italy, Modernismo in Catalonia,
Tiffany in the United States. In becoming a worldwide fashion, it was
applied to a wide range of products (buildings, furniture, lamps, jewelry,
everyday objects), enjoying great success among the public in a relative short
timespan. Indeed, it provided the first heady celebration of the wedding of
art with trade.22
The genesis and fortunes of the Modernist Movement could not have
been more different. Right from its polemical outset, the movement was a
distinctly academic phenomenon involving the sphere of intellectuals. It
advocated a “superior” sort of taste that neither met with nor catered to
public acclaim. Instead it preferred to acquire critical endorsement.
The adepts of the Modernist Movement expressed disdain for what was
“fashionable” in the architecture and design of other schools, and this went
hand in hand with their aim at spreading their own unshakable aesthetics,
even among the vulgar ranks of the uncivilized. What they were promoting
was not an airy-fairy imaginary future, but the ideology of modernity in the
making, of a present that could be shaped in relation to designs for the
future. Le Corbusier’s concept of the Ville Radieuse was not supposed to be
a futuristic utopia, but an ideal model to be adopted in order to solve the
problems of urban development.
The Modernist wished to overcome the chaotic, anti-economic world of
crafts production, and instead to design what was “rational,” along the lines
of mass production. The idea was to stop mass society from allowing all
sorts of styles to proliferate and compete among themselves, as they had
towards the end of the 1800s. In an age dominated by progress and
technology, a “Taylorization” of desires was required in order to rein in and
align tastes. To achieve this, according to Le Corbusier, the retrograde
figure of the architect, with all his romantic myths, could not become the
champion of the Great Revenge. This was the task of the engineer, who was
free from stylistic fetters and fatuous ornament. He alone could “make
human products resonate with the order of the universe,”23 overcoming the
110 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

individual foibles and the conditioning of history. Glorifying in the a-

temporal pleasure of geometrical figures, the engineer could at last bring
about the complete suppression of style, negating the very existence of
comfort and the value of individual tastes.
This was tantamount to a radical turning point in the history of twentieth
century taste. The apostle of the Modernist Movement had absolutely no
interest in trying to arouse or convert the general public in their leanings. It
was of little importance that the pavilion designed by Le Corbusier for the
1925 Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts attracted very few visitors. There
were loftier things at stake, because the role of the new aesthetics was to
attend to the birth of a new era, an age marked by progress, by technics and
reason. This redeeming mission underlay its claims to being infallible, its
intolerance and the attitude of visionary paternalism that the acolytes of
functionalism adopted when dealing with the philistine inclinations of
simple souls.
The devotees of Modernism fought the good fight to “integrate the
industrial proletariat into the urban community”24 (such was the underlying
ideology of the Bauhaus) in the name of “economic efficiency and
instrumental rationality,”25 in keeping with the dictates of the International
Style that had found great favor in the United States. The basic idea was
always the same: complete rejection of the regressive desires of ordinary
people, and instead the enforcement of their own view of beauty, and the
world in general.
The enlightened taste of the few was expressed in vitriolic terms against
the wretched taste of the masses. There was no point in trying to attract or
convert the vulgar; and no need for diplomacy in what amounted to a war
of religion. The aesthetics of the Modernist Movement were thoroughly
authoritarian, unheeding of ordinary people’s ideas because their very
desires and gratifications were considered deplorable.
It was a dialogue of the deaf. In the querelle between enlightened and
vulgar taste the question was not the right to possess certain commodities,
but their aesthetic accessibility. Desire and imagination could easily
overcome any material barriers, so these were not central to the debate. In
their place, however, there were well-traced cultural boundaries dividing
unrefined tastes from those upheld by the Modernists, which would have
appeared totally incomprehensible and unacceptable to those not “in the
know.” The supporters of refined or educated taste made no effort to win
over the “unenlightened,” and instead focused their attention on achieving
spiritual supremacy. The important thing was to exercise control over the
education of taste and the production of style: in other words, the universities
and academies, where the Modernist Movement was to exercise a crushing
ideological supremacy.
As Hume had predicted, in mass society the arbiters of taste were to be
few in number: architects, designers, gallery owners, art critics, fashion
designers. To exercise and perpetuate this oligopoly, they had to impose
their role as the high priests of beauty and make others feel like lesser beings.
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 111

Wherever people were free to choose for themselves according to their own
predilections and foibles there could only be bad taste, in other words items
so far removed from the lofty echelons of the enlightened that they necessarily
belonged to the wretched sphere of shameful hideosity.
Such was the aesthetic paradox of the 1900s. By challenging common
opinion and trampling on most people’s sensibilities, educated aesthetics
rejected shared tastes and established a distance between itself and the naïve
but reassuring world of what people actually claimed to like, transforming
its symbols and undermining its intrinsic scale of values. This radical divide
became a feature of the entire century, with highbrow culture taking a stand
as far removed as possible from the noisy vulgarity of the hoi polloi.
For a long time, the middle classes as well as the petite bourgeoisie looked
upon the bare, spare taste of modernity with the utmost suspicion, preferring
traditional styles for their own dwellings. Indeed, the new aesthetics only
began to gain in impact when architects started persuading builders to adopt
Modernism as the most “rational” way to shape metropolitan development.
The tyranny of Modernism was thus responsible for the concrete and glass
tower blocks that housed not only factories and offices, but also people’s
homes, thereby disfiguring cities and creating horrible outskirts without
ever managing to tame and manipulate people’s tastes.
The aesthetics of Modernism were dull, desolate and repetitive in their
linear purity, better suited to hospitals and prisons than to real people’s
homes. Yet they held sway in a remarkable fashion, purporting to embody
an abstract Platonic ideal that everyone was supposed to embrace. It is hard
to explain just how a series of hideous buildings, uninhabitable houses,
unlivable districts and furniture better suited to mutants can possible have
influenced generations of architects and designers so deeply. Interior design
had come to mean products for “men redesigned as cubes, and women
redesigned as spheres.”26 Or equipment for masochists such as the chairs
that “hold the human frame as if in permanent traction; they bruise human
skin each time one skirts too closely to them,” 27 rip the clothes of whoever
uses them, and require the help of a physiotherapist when the unfortunate
sitter finally decides it is time to get up. To say nothing of the back-breaking
beds that challenge human physiology and patience, the “modern clocks and
watches that captivate the eye, but don’t tell the time; the educational toys
that our children hate; water pitchers that titillate your visual perception
while wetting your pants.”28 How on earth was it possible that a taste utopia
of this sort managed to take root in society, redesigning our everyday reality?
The Modernist Movement gained ground thanks to the shock that came
in the wake of the democratization of luxury, the desire to defend artistic
independence and the prerogatives of the intellectual caste, the determination
never to give in to the meretricious matrimony between art and mass society.
Yet this is still not sufficient to explain the degree and extension of the
success of Modernism.
Architects could easily have adopted a different approach to further their
taste supremacy. Without putting themselves to too much trouble, if they
112 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

had simply manipulated traditional elements of style in order to create

impressive make-believe environments, even on an industrial scale, they
would have elicited enormous admiration on the part of potential clients
and those who looked on from afar. Indeed, this was precisely what a few of
their fellows did, drawing critical sneers from those in the know, and
enthusiastic acclaim on the part of the public: forty years after its
construction, the picturesque lakeside village of Port Grimaud, designed by
the prophet of “vernacular architecture” François Spoerry, is still one of the
most visited “monuments” in France.
So why did the Modernist Movement choose a more difficult path,
challenging the dominant taste of the time and eliciting general
incomprehension? The obvious answer would seem to be that Modernism
by definition could hardly have chosen a different route.
The essential ingredient of the Movement was the myth of progress,
which fueled the underlying ideology and pumped up its visionary impact.
The idealization of technology and the absolute faith professed in reason
both seemed to point towards a glorious future, one in which town planners
would provide the key to untold possibilities and important change. All this
was very much part of the cultural design of Functionalism, to the extent
that “it would have been inconceivable without modern technology just as
Christianity would have been without the symbol of the cross.”29
Le Corbusier himself invited the unseeing architects of his day to admire
the imposing mechanical totems of the modern age: airplanes, steamships,
automobiles. Even people’s homes were considered machines à habiter,
thereby underlining the irrelevance of any criterion that was not strictly
related to the efficiency required by the pressing needs of progress.
Yet among the aesthetics that heralded the future, the aerodynamic style
of streamlining that met with widespread acclaim in the United States
between the 1930s and the 1950s not only competed with Modernism on its
own ground, but also proved to be infinitely more eloquent and incisive in
the way it contributed to the idea that objects fashioned in a particular style
could actually embody and promote the popular cult of progress.
Unlike Modernism, streamlining was fortunate in appealing to everyone
right from the outset. But then it was designed to gratify and be successful,
by stimulating consumption following the Great Depression of 1929. Those
who promoted streamlining were very different to the Modernists in
background: as a designer, Norman Bel Geddes was an eclectic visionary
who came from the world of advertising, which offered rules and guile that
could be adopted and adapted to understand and cater to people’s tastes.
Far from being an academic indoctrination conceived along the lines of
the Bauhaus, streamlined design was the art of salesmanship mixed with
the aesthetics of profit, “an alliance between popular mechanics and the
psychology of advertising,”30 in which form no longer derived from function,
but was used to transform the product by means of attractive packaging.
The aerodynamic lines of the product were simply a stylistic expedient,
often completely lacking in any functional justification, which invested
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 113

industrial products, from steamships to pencil sharpeners, with the seal of

progress. And this was enough to spread the myth further and wider.
The American dream to which everyone paid happy tribute was projected
in the tailfin of the Chevrolet, in the rounded fronts of locomotives and
toasters, in the streamlined outline of motorboats and irons, and in the
convex casing of the jukebox and the Vespa. According to the collective
illusion, the there was nothing to stop people shaping the future, furthering
progress and improving their own social condition. Why be happy with
what you are, with what you have and what you know? Mass individualism,
that strange oxymoron, was there to forge the destinies and desires of the
industrialized Western world of the twentieth century.
Both Modernism and streamlining affected a very wide range of everyday
objects, some of which acquired their intrinsic identity by means of such
stylistic elements. The Modernist Movement drew special inspiration from
the chair, that simplest and most Spartan of everyday objects. By contrast,
streamlining achieved its apotheosis in relation to the product that best
embodied dreams of future happiness, or indeed social envy: the automobile.
The chair did at least respond to a physiological need, and was in one way
or another already part of ordinary households, without necessarily
suggesting idleness, luxury or waste. But the automobile was something
very different, a “compensatory fetish” that fueled exhibitionism and
competitive emulation, symbolizing opulence, aggressiveness, narcissism
and sexual prowess.
For the Puritan spirits of functionalism, the gleaming, streamlined
automobile bodywork fashionable in America in the 1940s and 1950s
represented the most despicable depths of consumer hell, a metal leviathan
that the advocates of good design chose to condemn outright: “In its
monumental size and showy shape, the customized car, a monster of luxury
and speed, was the very symbol of kitsch.”31 Streamlining paid exclusive
homage to the seduction of what things looked like, to increasing a product’s
exchange value. By suggesting what was futuristic rather than harking back
to the past, it thus ratified the restoration of ornament in everyday objects.
Discerning taste could never accept the fatuous nature of streamlining,
denying that such objects could belong to the selective sphere of design.
Streamlining was no real industrial art, but simply a form of styling that had
nothing to do with functional requirements.
Yet styling ultimately proved to be the meeting point between modern
design and popular taste, a repository full of desires that was poles apart
from the rigors of Functionalism. In the history of design, it represented the
payback of the market, promoting an aesthetics of the present with which
the consumer could identify. The concept of comfort was thus recovered,
modernized and invested with symbolic and psychological values so that it
could act as a gauge for desired and acquired wellbeing.
To Modernist Movement diehards, all this sounded like utter blasphemy.
In their view, functionalist design was to streamlining what ethics was to
cosmetics. The cult of “beautiful form,” the seduction of appearances, and
114 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

gratification of the eye all took design back to the dark age of Mannerism
and ostentation, sinking what had been a noble project in the slough of the
“commercial arts,” like futile fashion shows. Indeed, styling was but a
capricious imitation of fashion characterized by similarly facile, short-lived
appearances.
This explains why it was rejected by critics and never really managed to
compete with Modernism in terms of cultural stature. Streamlining was too
emphatic, too commercial and too easy, just as certain music—especially
jazz—was judged to be too catchy. Indeed, streamlining was a parody in bad
faith of the austere aesthetics of true design, the very apocalypse of good taste:

for quite a while, the principle of streamlining was extended, as though it

were a principle of modernity, to shape totally immobile objects such as
radios, irons or hairdryers. Over and above any considerations regarding
mass communication, much of the styling that changed the shape of
objects went only skin deep, and aimed solely at promoting consumption.
In so far as manufacturers and designers continued to consider product
design as a form of publicity rather than an intrinsic design process,
ornament and bodywork maintained the upper hand, often giving rise to
a triumph of chrome parts and blinking lights that projected the image of
a status symbol that built-in obsolescence was soon to banish to the
realms of kitsch.32

Thus the myth of progress is not enough to explain the Modernist

Movement’s aesthetic fundamentalism and icy composure. Nor can it account
for the pulpit from which the Modernists expounded their cultural hegemony,
unheeding of the congregation’s evident disinterest. Only the Modernist
Movement was invested with aesthetic authority, an acknowledgment that
was denied to the promoters of streamlining, or indeed to the supporters of
Art Nouveau and Art Deco, despite their efforts to make products more
appealing to consumers.
The criticism leveled at “consumer aesthetics” revolved around the fact
that they were contaminated by desires, by values that had nothing to do
with appropriate form. In this sense they were impure, justifying the
application of the conventio ad excludendum that already held sway in
the fine arts: to appraise an industrial product, instead of turning to
stylistic analysis or critical judgment, the point of reference became the
phenomenology of taste. This alone could decide whether the object in
question belonged to the realms of good design, or should instead be
relegated to the realms of inferior sensibility, with no claim to artistic merit.
This in its turn depended on how the object elicited pleasure: as the result of
an aesthetic judgment, which implied the presence of “true,” and thereby
pure, contemplative beauty; or as the fruit of the taste for pleasure, which
was no better as an appetite than the desire for bingeing or fashion.
The ideological supremacy of the Modernist Movement was able to hold
undisputed sway through to the last quarter of the century33 on account of
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 115

the fact that it paid due homage to this principle, the only one still fashionable
in the applied arts.
Despite the declarations of intent pronounced by its gurus, Modernism
was far from saving money or the environment. Indeed, it was responsible
for economic waste and ecological failure, founding not a science, but an
ideology. As a result, it promoted an aesthetic, but not a technique.
Far from banishing beauty, the preconceived rejection of ornament was
supposed to provide access to it, to a world that was diaphanous and
purified, in keeping with the precepts of Romantic culture. This was deemed
to be the only way to rescue industrial objects from their everyday
ordinariness, and to imbue them with an aura of art.
In a famously critical essay, Peter Blake takes a close look at the premises
and illusions underlying the ideology of Modernism.34 The myth of
purity, which Blake considers the third axiom of the Movement, could
never have acted as the inspiration for an applied art if it had not been
able to rely on the solemn paradigm relating to the sublimation of taste
and the eradication of pleasure. By availing itself of its well-established
prestige, the dreary aesthetics of the Modernist Movement were able to
attract proselytes and claim cultural superiority over all competitors. At
the same time, however, the myth of purity was to compromise its own
future by imposing a number of strict restraints: to rise above the vulgarity
of trade, to escape the stylistic obviousness of consumer culture, to repress
the desire to succumb to the market, all products had to be carefully
“decontaminated” and cleansed of the desire for hoarding. Cool, detached
contemplation was the only answer: a curious approach to objects made
to be sold.
If any of the prophets of Modernism had happened to read Kant’s
Critique of Judgment, they would no doubt have agreed with the
philosopher’s adage according to which the ultimate end of beauty is to
arouse “the self-esteem . . . that raises us above pleasure.” Suffice it to replace
the term “pleasure” with “comfort,” in the sense of private ease and public
vanity, to find the perfect moral and theoretical justification for puritanical
paternalism applied to industrial design.
Modernism thus brought about the most rigorously Kantian aesthetics
ever applied to everyday objects, pursuing an ideal of beauty that was
spectral, lofty, unattractive and lacking in any purpose other than the
abstract beatification of function. Any aesthetic gratification deriving from
this state of affairs could only be formal and detached.
Clearly the influence of Le Corbusier contributed to this state of affairs,
especially in the thoroughly Kantian distinction between the pleasures of the
senses and the feelings of the intellect. To add to which there was also the
banishment of color. “Every human manifestation requires a certain
quantum of interest, especially in the aesthetic field; this interest is sensorial
and intellectual in nature. Decoration is a primary sensorial experience,
like color, and as such is well suited to simple peoples, to peasants and
savages. Harmony and proportion arouse the intellect, drawing the attention
116 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

of the educated man. Peasants like ornament and paint frescoes. Civilized
gentlemen wear English suits and possess easel paintings and books.”35
This explains why two centuries after the invention of aesthetics, the
division of tastes continued to exercise its draconian influence over
discrimination between predilections, where beauty is contrasted with
desire, pure with commercial, plain with comfortable.
According to the egalitarian ideals of the Enlightenment, “contemplation
at a distance” was supposed to guarantee the universal separation of
aesthetic pleasure from the actual possession of the commodities, in other
words from social rank. But this tenet was then turned upside down when
distance became the means by which the social and cultural élite could
separate themselves from the vulgarity of common taste.
The aversion towards the deplorable leveling of tastes was to be even
more dramatic in the sphere of the “fine arts.” Indeed, in the twentieth
century the term itself came to be considered archaic.

The Gallery of Iconoclasms

In the history of taste, no battlefield has been more ferocious, cruel and
devastating than that of modern art. No other expression of culture has
exceeded the avant-garde art movements of the twentieth century in
disconcerting the common conception of beauty by inflicting outrage,
derision and invective. It was a battle of tastes that proved to be uniquely
traumatic, dismissive and venomous.
The production of art in the twentieth century brought about a drastic
caesura with respect to all earlier ages. The sacrificial victim and target of
polemics was the Enlightenment idea of socially shared beauty, such that
taste, that particular sensation able to activate and appraise aesthetic
perception, was belittled, derided and excluded.
In mass society, taste migrated from the fine arts, where it was born and
nurtured, to the arts of what was pleasant, shaped by commerce, show,
emotions and amusement. As for good taste, that self-satisfied privilege of
being able to refine one’s capacity to recognize valuable commodities, it was
turned upside down: the stolid, dreary pleasure of agreeing with the general
perception of what was deemed “beautiful” was transformed into acclaimed
disgust. Art refused to have anything to do with the commercialization and
mechanization of beauty, rightly perceiving that it was no longer able to
operate according to its own traditional precepts.
The extraordinary but inevitable consequence was that art divorced from
aesthetics, which was relegated to the attic: only one and a half centuries
after its invention, it had become obsolete and useless. When art was no
longer able to arouse the sense of beauty, or rather deliberately refused to do
so, aesthetics became pointless, unable to understand the inner workings
and cultural impact of a new, alienating form of artistic production. In what
was later to be described as the “civilization of the image,” the cult of beauty
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 117

was to be celebrated elsewhere, largely through photography and television.

What came to be worshipped was a certain ingeniously projected image of
the human body, as personified by movie stars, top models, bunny girls and
Miss Whatevers. In consumer society, beauty began to show itself in puerile
forms, at least according to the defenders of highbrow culture, even in the
pre-packaged emotions of the entertainment industry. Art would have
nothing to do with all of this: it was not concerned with the fate of beauty,
but had other things to keep it busy. As for aesthetics, it was to become a
branch of archeology, an approach to studying the vestiges of earlier ages
and civilizations, or a way of thinking about individual choices.
Once alienated from aesthetics, the art of the twentieth century was no
longer the object of collective devotion, and instead became an initiation rite
that was to discriminate against the tastes of the masses, to challenge people’s
ability to comprehend, and to mock their primitive sensibilities. In an age
dominated by communication, modern art expressed itself through events
rather than works. Scandal, paradox, profanation and enigma became
central to its being. No longer a moment of celebration for society, it turned
everything upside down by means of criticism: the critique of the values,
aesthetic conventions and ideological premises that had hitherto glorified
the great artifice of beauty.
Unique in its historical development and aims, modern art was born with
the explicit intention of not pleasing, of being a sight for sore eyes, of
offending the sensibilities of the average beholder, denying the common
sense of what art was all about. Since the invention of the figurative meaning
of taste, people had believed that aesthetic experience was the ultimate goal
and purpose of works of art. Secularity had triumphed as art gained
independence, so that sacred subject matter had begun to waver. As a result,
the social function and ideological justification for art revolved around
spiritual elevation achieved by means of the gratification of the senses. This
was the edifying paradigm rejected by the modern school, which opted to
spread its own word by means of a utopia based on desecration.
Therein lies the “scandal” of modern art: in the rejection of outer beauty
as ideal inspiration and in the denial of its value as a shared criterion for the
transfer and validation of works of art.
Ordinary people from ordinary backgrounds with ordinary tastes began
to feel they could not understand art already in the 1800s. The term “avant-
garde” was borrowed from military usage to refer to the most recent trends
in art, the works that went well beyond what was obvious, reassuring, tried
and tested. It was nurtured by the myth of the bohemian artist whose life
was governed by his creative demon, a figure unheeding of the opinion of his
contemporaries because his gift to posterity was visionary genius. Thus Van
Gogh came to symbolize the painter-hero, scorned in his own lifetime and
hugely admired following his death. At more or less the same time, the
phenomenon of Kitsch first came to the fore, a source of naïve pleasure for
common people and an abomination of taste for more refined palates. What
was Kitsch was cheap and obvious, something that catered to those whose
118 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

sense of the aesthetic was non-existent or underdeveloped. Art thus ceased

to be a single, coherent, consolidated and shared heritage. Even among the
prosperous classes, it came to signify something that was complicated and
difficult, the object of violent passions and bitter polemics.
The criteria for appreciating works of art inevitably began to vacillate.
One of the most emblematic chapters in this development regarded the
querelle concerning what was “finished.” During the nineteenth century, the
art market spread to embrace “a large and undiscriminating public, interested
only in small pictures, either of genre or depicting an affecting story, and,
above all, highly ‘finished’ .”36 Meticulous definition of detail thus became
the guarantee of “painterly work,” a sort of instructions sheet attached to
the artistic product: “the fini, or ‘finish,’ provided evidence of work, and
work was what appealed to the newly enriched middle classes as opposed to
the spendthrift aristocracy; moreover, ‘finish,’ by reducing the role of the
imagination and the part required of the spectator, was a safe, easily
verifiable means of judging the value of a work of art (aesthetically as well
as financially) for those without educated taste.”37
At this point clearly there were two conceptions of art, according to
whether an individual claimed to be tekhne or poeˉ sis. The former implied
naivety and backwardness, meaning that the painter was still considered
simply an artisan endowed with a manual technique that called for practice
and effort. Thus a portrait or a landscape could be no more than ornamental
objects, the product of well-established rules and parameters. The latter, on
the other hand, involved élitist sophistication, and a perception of the artist,
like the poet of antiquity, as a person imbued with supernatural inspiration
who could transfer their creativity to his canvases. Collectors thus acquired
items that embodied true originality, products whose value was proportionate
to the stylistic distance separating them from earlier works. In essence, the
work of art was merely an imperfect projection of the artist’s genius, which
made it secondary in relation to the personality of the artist himself.
During the 1800s, however, this contraposition still responded to the
traditional dynamics of “emulation/differentiation” that turned up in many
other spheres as well, especially that of fashion. A taste for what was strange
and original was deemed to be the proper inclination of the connoisseur, the
educated mind able to appreciate an elevated aesthetic order, in other words
true beauty, in advance of ordinary people. Granted, the masses were likely
to catch up later, as the enormous success of Impressionism, despite its
distinctly innovatory character, went to show.
Only during the 1900s did avant-garde art take on the role of preconceived
rejection of aesthetics as an obligatory approach to the reception of art.
Repellent in form, disconcerting in content and irreverent in style, the
modern genre came up with the same line time and again in its efforts to
provoke scandal, appear inaccessible and undermine the aura traditionally
recognized as belonging to works of art: “the decadence of the bourgeoisie
was accompanied by rapture, which became an asocial school of behavior
in contrast with amusement. In effect, the Dadaist manifestations allowed
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 119

for distinctly violent amusement, turning the work of art into a scandal. The
work of art was supposed to satisfy a need: that of arousing public
indignation.”38
The manifesto of this spirit of desecration was a carefully organized event
that was designed to shock: Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, exhibited under the
title Fountain in 1917. The then 30-year-old Duchamp was considered by
his older brothers, who were well-known artists, to be so little gifted as a
painter that they tried to discourage him in his efforts to make a career for
himself in this field. What he lacked in talent, however, he made up for in
temperament, and an indomitable spirit of revenge that led him to send a
urinal purchased from a plumber’s hardware store as his entry for the Salon
of Independent Artists in New York under the pseudonym Richard Mutt. At
the time Duchamp was also part of the organizing committee, and when his
fellow committee members rejected the work, judging it to be a practical
joke,39 Duchamp actually resigned. Moreover, he later published an
enthusiastic critique of the work in the review The Blind Man, of which he
happened to be the director.
Without this providential media redemption, the “scandal” would
probably have passed unobserved, as indeed did the original work, which
ended up in a public waste dump. In this Duchamp proved his worth, at
least as a forerunner of future trends. Having moved in artistic circles, and
being a natural showman, he managed to turn what was basically a flop into
a “case,” recovering the item from the cemetery of cultural trash and turning
it into a totem of contemporary art. From this moment on, the resonance of
a work of art became part and parcel of its value. Henceforth, for a
contemporary artist “the worst setback was not to be insulted, rejected or
mocked, but to be ignored. True discredit was no longer measured in terms
of scorn, but in terms of silence and disregard.”40
With Duchamp the legend of the rebel artist gained momentum, the
image of the visionary hero who took the mickey out of the establishment,
thereby initiating a completely new way of conceiving art. This was a matter
of breaking “the rules in order to introduce derision as an artistic value, and
iconoclasm as a creative tool.”41
Duchamp’s Fountain was an artistic event in the mocking shape of a
paradox that was both aesthetic and intellectual. It amounted to a hugely
important statement that was to have enormous repercussions in the art
world, contributing more than any other single work of the early twentieth
century to undermining the conviction that the only validation principle of
art should be aesthetics. If it was sufficient to take the lowliest of everyday
objects, turn it end upwards, sign it, date it and give it a title in order to place
it as a sculpture in an exhibition, then the value of art was irreparably
illusory, conventional and fictitious. Clearly what turned an object into a
work of art was not the skill of the artist, but the eye of the duly indoctrinated
beholder. In a word, as Duchamp himself was to declare, “it is the beholder
who makes a picture,” and taste is no more than “a habit, the repetition of
something already accepted.”
120 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

This “demonstration” nevertheless contains a shaky premise: the urinal

can pretend to be a sculpture, but is obviously not one in point of fact. “It
was apparently shown that aesthetic contemplation and gratification implied
nothing other than an act of faith. Once this demonstration was over, the
conviction itself inevitably proved to be self-destructive. To know that a
snow shovel is a work of art simply means being informed of the fact. But
to believe it is absurd, because it means acknowledging the magic of the
artist and succumbing to the enchantment of the fetish.”42
And yet, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right from the outset Duchamp
acted as though he were a sort of Midas capable of turning pottery into
gold, an anonymous, mass-produced object into a masterpiece. It was not so
much that anyone really had to believe in it, but that everyone should behave
as though it were true. As in many other episodes of modern art, what really
mattered was the echo of the scandal, which had got off to a slow start and
only later proved its worth.
Part intellectual game and part aesthetic provocation, the diabolical,
defiant seduction of Duchamp owed much to the way he rallied unceasingly
with new expedients and contrivances. He set himself up as the doyen of
profanation and rebellious ecstasy, a man capable of turning the concept
of painting upside down, of professing aesthetic nihilism with a touch of
excremental, necrophilic hyperbole,43 of making outré statements as an act
of liberation and an expression of the myth of the maudit artist. Duchamp’s
scorn for manual talent with brushes and color (which he described as
“olfactory masturbation”), his mocking pity for works that tried to elicit
sensorial pleasure (ars retinica), his gratuitous delight in puns and wordplay,
his view of creative sterility as voluntary exile from the world of art, his
pseudo-scientific charlatanism regarding the pictorial portrayal of the
“fourth dimension” and the esoteric wit of his main works all contributed
to the fact that his ineffable monuments to nothingness actually lasted for
the whole of the twentieth century, like impregnable fortresses that resisted
the assault of interpretation. Such was the legacy of the man some considered
a genius,44 and others deemed an impostor45—a paradox common to much
of the art of the twentieth century.
The unpopularity of avant-garde art was part and parcel of its iconoclastic
nature. It deliberately created an abyss between the wide world of the
uninitiated and the select circles of those in the know, a divide that was to
grow deeper and wider in the course of time.

Before Dada it was the experts—art critics, painting juries, academic big-
wigs—who decried the anathema of the whatever in modern art and
judged in outrage that it didn’t deserve to be called art. The public at
large—the crowd of laymen—for the most part abstained from such
legislating judgment (for which it didn’t have the political means anyway),
but it showed through its interest that it perceived some of the social
issues at stake in modern art, and thus, that it by no means held modern
art as just anything whatever. After Dada (or after its reception, its
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 121

“recuperation”), things were reversed. Since the experts—at least those

who legislate over current artistic practice—proselytize ceaselessly their
interest in contemporary art, whose name “art,” they seek to justify on
the basis of all the qualities that make it anything but whatever. And the
public at large has lost all interest in art. Deaf to the explanations of
the experts, it persists in seeing in contemporary art a huge whatever to
which it remains indifferent.46

Duchamp called his works “ready-mades” because they did not require
any manual input on the part of the artist, apart from the mocking
“corrections.” Like the famous urinal, they consisted of objects selected
from the prosaic world of functional products removed from their original
context, so that their intrinsic function became entirely useless. The idea
was to disorientate viewers, undermine their aesthetic “superstitions” and
accentuate the degree to which convention guided all judgments of taste:
“Ready-mades are of greater critical and philosophical interest than they are
of sculptural importance. It would be useless to discuss their beauty or
ugliness: they are beyond beauty or ugliness. They are not works of art, but
question marks or denials placed before these works.”47
Official hagiography has underlined the demystification implicit in the
ready-made, claiming that Duchamp used three-dimensional paradoxes to
make fun of aesthetic conventions, thereby denying the role of contemplation
and taste in the enjoyment of art.48 In rejecting the reification of art,49
Duchamp refused to gratify the sense of beauty,50 and instead transformed
art into intellectual anagrams.51 Certainly no artist of the 1900s had greater
impact on the anti-aesthetic tendency of modern art.
Granted, once the outré art of Duchamp had pulled the chain52 on the
age-old ideal of Beauty, what remained was disconcertingly sterile. Following
extended exile from the art scene, his work became electively hermetic,
solipsistic, deliberately incomprehensible and intent only on provoking
objections on the part of those very viewers who were supposed to “make
the picture.”
And yet, as the inventor of the ready-made, Duchamp earned himself a
place in history as the high priest of the iconoclasts. It was they who allowed
him to overcome the barrier of anonymity and acquire miraculous powers
that were far beyond what he could have hoped for as a lesser exponent
of the widely scorned “retinal” art. In his conceptual ascent, Duchamp
inaugurated a new genre founded on collective autosuggestion, on witting
mystification and paradoxical tautology. “According to Duchamp, the artist
was no longer defined by the nature of his works, but because he was
recognized as an artist, a being able to make an object artistic thanks to the
power of his signature, invested with belief in his artistic nature, just as—
according to Mauss—the witch-doctor was not defined by the nature of his
deeds, but thanks to the fact that he was recognized as a sorcerer, a being
able to make a given deed efficacious solely in virtue of the power of a ritual,
invested with credence in its magical nature.”53
122 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

With its witchcraft, its “black masses” that defy naïve feelings regarding
beauty, modern art thus ended up by resembling a modern theology,54 which
developed and spread thanks to sectarian logic. Like religious creeds,
aesthetic conviction depended on oracles and prophecies, relics and exegesis,
dogma and inquisition: “it is not only a question of accustoming the eye, but
also of converting it.”55
The repulsive heresies of the avant-garde (Duchamp’s urinal, but also
Malevitch’s Black Square or Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon) set fire to
the myth of Beauty: the Platonic, edifying, “disinterested,” timeless beauty
that Western culture had pursued for the previous twenty-five centuries. Yet
modern art did not arise from the ashes of this particular bonfire.
Aesthetic vandalism merely paved the way for the founding epic, adding
to the impact of the legend among acolytes and imitators. Modern art could
only really get off the ground once the canonization procedures were under
way. Before the rules of art, its communication, its shared terms and values
could undergo any radical change, iconoclasm required museum status,
with all due beatification of the heretics.
The cultural paradox of modern art consisted in the very transformation
of iconoclasm into objects of iconolatry. How on earth was it possible that
a product deliberately chosen to repel aesthetic perception should become
an object of veneration? What explains the spread of an ideology that
managed to introject iconoclasm as the only presentable new orthodoxy
short of the absurdity of Kitsch?
In actual fact the few heartfelt critics of modern art who did raise their
voices tended to be self-professed reactionaries (for instance, Ortega y
Gasset, Coomaraswamy and Sedlmayr),56 which meant that they were soon
censured by modernist conformism. As for “politically correct” literature, it
was only prepared to admit that in recent decades contemporary art had
been excessively exhibitionist and academic, thereby losing edge and
inventiveness.57 To question the legends of Dadaism, Cubism, Abstract Art
or Surrealism would have been a taboo. No one is apparently prepared to
admit that the dissolution of modern art actually began one hundred years
ago, when iconoclasm first burst onto the art scene. It is still there to this
day, which explains the thread that ties Duchamp to Warhol, Klein, Arman,
Christo, Burri, Fontana and Manzoni.
It is not the object of this book to provide a succinct account of these
events. As far as the history of taste is concerned, however, what is interesting
is the way the triumphal march of modern art gathered widespread
acceptance. Just how did it come about that Western culture began to
adulate something that set itself up as a severance, a breach, transforming
what was supposed to be the negation of aesthetic indulgence into an object
of cultural veneration?
The justification of iconoclasm involved an initial legitimation that was
entirely ideological. Over and above any sporadic alliances with political
movements (Suprematism and Bolshevism, Futurism and Fascism), in
cultural terms the artistic avant-gardes of the early twentieth century shared
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 123

the revolutionary ferment typical of that period. This explains the irreverent
tone, the anti-bourgeois thrust and the anti-conformist impetus. It was but
a short step to the aura of heroism and martyrdom attributed to those who
fell in the name of a noble cause.
In the end, it was not so much the scandalous exhibitions that provided
the avant-garde with its place in history as a derogatory show organized to
denounce such art by the Nazi regime: “ironically, the century’s most highly
attended exhibition of advanced art was mounted as an attack on the new
painting and sculpture. Over two million people visited the Exhibition of
Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) in Munich, with crowds averaging more
than 20,000 a day during the exhibition, which lasted from July 19 to
November 30, 1937, extended from September due to the popular demand.
Some came to see old friends, works confiscated from museums and marked
for elimination. But most came to view the mental and moral degeneracy
that National Socialism sought to eradicate, art so shocking that no children
were allowed into the show.”58
To compensate for this cultural holocaust, the guilty conscience of the
West beatified modern art to a far greater degree than the artists themselves
could ever have dared to hope. The success of the movement, both ideologically
and commercially, owed a great deal to this moral stance. Once it had divested
itself of its earlier revolutionary intent, the avant-garde kept up its aura
of rebellion, but with little underlying substance. The outcome was a sort of
self-referential hortus clausus that was politically innocuous, though not
neutral: during the Cold War, in fact, it stood for the Western world.
Serge Guilbaut provides us with a meticulous reconstruction of the
ideological and political background that allowed New York to oust Paris
as the international art capital. “The unprecedented success on the national
and international scene of the American avant-garde was not only based on
aesthetic and stylistic phenomena, but also (and perhaps largely) on reasons
that could be described as ideological resonance. I do not wish to claim, as
certain authors have insinuated, that the post-war American avant-garde
was incongruous or totally manipulated. Rather, that in the wake of the
general enthusiasm, critics often neglected the aesthetic and political matters
at stake in the definition of this style of painting.”59
For the construction of the new American cultural identity, the imported
myth of a rebellious, proud avant-garde that had become a victim of
totalitarianism came in very handy. It was well suited to the image of a
young, energetic, victorious nation that had finally freed itself of its earlier
inferiority complex regarding the Old World because it now had a role in
History as the champion of planetary freedom. The creative paroxysm of
avant-garde art gained kudos by being indigenous, so that it was able to
symbolize the values of individualism and liberalism essential to Western
democracies, thereby investing the United States with an emblematic role as
the bulwark of freedom.
During the immediate post-war years, various fashion magazines devoted
their covers to the artistic avant-garde, a subject that also became the focus
124 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

of articles in periodicals devoted to the cultivation of the middle classes. The

famous feature on Pollock published in Life with the aim of making
American art sound like the best possible output in circulation60 earned
itself a permanent place in the collective conscience of the United States,
creating a wave of unexpected national pride concerning that country’s
artistic endeavor.
Clement Greenberg, the art critic who started out as an angry Trotskyist
and ended up as the most authoritative ideologist of the canonization of the
avant-garde in the United States, was also a talent scout for Abstract
Expressionism. His intellectual evolution was emblematic of the process of
“normalization” that modern art was in the process of undergoing. The
Greenberg cultural project was clearly expressed in a seminal article
published in an influential radical review in 1939.61 His argument was based
on a triple equation. Good taste is opposed to bad taste just as avant-garde
art is opposed to commercial art (identified as kitsch), and freedom of
aesthetic judgment to ideological propaganda:

Cultivated taste Avant-garde Freedom

= =
Bad taste Kitsch Totalitarianism

The cornerstone of Greenberg’s stand lies in the zealous dualism with

which he opposes avant-garde and kitsch. This line of reasoning inevitably
has moral and political implications.
In Greenberg’s view, the advent of the avant-garde should be viewed
within the cultural climate of the early 1900s, whose salient feature was
the demise of the principle of authority. The avant-garde took part in the
cultural ferment that encouraged the West to take a close critical look at
the certainties inherited from the past. The aesthetic equivalent of the
epistemological revolutions that led to the redefinition of the exact sciences,
the movement was like a form of deep introspection, an invitation to think
seriously about expressive abilities and conditions; a self-analysis that was
pictorial in idiom, rather than critical and philosophical.
For Greenberg, the paradox of modernity lays in the fact that the birth of
the avant-garde went hand in hand with the development of kitsch, a sort
of reverse mirror image. How could it be that the same civilization produced
both Eliot’s poetry and audiocassette music, paintings by Braque and covers
by Norman Rockwell?
Greenberg traced the social origins of kitsch back to the changes brought
about by the process of industrialization and urbanization: the new cultural
habitat that tore the masses away from their traditional folklore brought
about a state of symbolic disorientation and loss, which in its turn led to a
demand for new cultural parameters in line with the commercialization of
culture itself. The naivety of taste of the masses greatly widened the customer
base for what was kitsch, since such people were attracted by forms of “art”
that were in actual fact bogus and simplified. The new symbolic ABC
supplied by the arts of entertainment also proved to be a remarkable aid to
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 125

persuasion and political compliance, which explains why the rhetoric of

kitsch was adopted by both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.
In view of its polar opposition to kitsch, in Greenberg’s view the avant-
garde acted as an antidote to the commercial prostitution and ideological
exploitation of art. The mixing of morals with aesthetics led the author to
declare that “the alternative to Picasso is not Michelangelo, but kitsch.”62 In
this rose-tinted account, the avant-garde was like the teleological fulfillment
of the Renaissance tradition, intent on furthering the independence and
secularization of art, on freeing it of the rhetorical and celebrative functions
with which it had been invested in the past. The myth that taste should be
disinterested and “purely” receptive, intended during the Enlightenment as
a defense of this historic process, thus came to be ascribed to the avant-
garde as one of its merits. Indeed, Greenberg deemed abstract art to be
practically uncontaminated by content as a function, which meant that it
could not be accused of being ideologically manipulated.63
For Greenberg, taste was the receptor of avant-garde art. The difference
with respect to the past lay in the fact that taste groped its way forward in
exemplary solitude. Because it could no longer rely on the “instructions for
use” that earlier canons of beauty had once provided,64 it could solely
depend on its own ineffable perspicacity.
Rather more Kantian than he was wont to admit, Greenberg was getting
close to Hume when he upheld the indisputable nature of the critic’s
judgment (in other words, that the opinion of the recognized expert shaped
the consensus of tastes). And when he argued that the advent of Abstractionism
had made art self-aware, bent exclusively on the exploration of its own
expressive potential and subject only to the constraints of canvas and color,65
he was not far removed from Hegel.
Regardless of who his philosophical ancestors may effectively have been,
Greenberg is the last important thinker to have tried to place modern art
within an aesthetic paradigm of Enlightenment derivation. Unfortunately
for him, only Cubism and Abstractionism came within his interpretative
framework. The rest of the avant-garde eluded his inquiry, especially the
thoroughly American trend that was soon to explode in the wake of the
irreverent heritage of Dadaism: Pop Art.66 In the face of all empirical
evidence (public and critical acclaim, commercial success), in his work as a
critic Greenberg did all he could to minimize its importance.
Harold Rosenberg, who was a contemporary of Greenberg’s, clearly had
a better grasp of modern art: the cults of the new and aesthetic heterodoxy67
were what he judged to be the fundamental ingredients of the avant-garde
cacophony. In his view, the task of modernity was to promote works of art
that did not try to gratify taste (not even that of an enlightened critic like
Greenberg), but to establish a break, to violate the aesthetic, conceptual and
material barriers contained in earlier art. It was not only a question of
abandoning the superstitions of the past. Following half a century of ups
and downs, even the avant-garde had gathered a history of its own and
established a tradition. The constant tension that urged it beyond the
126 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

transitory arrival point was indeed the very engine of modernity: the cult of
the new, which was the artistic equivalent of the myth of progress and the
future that was replacing the broken idols of the old world.
Rosenberg was perhaps the first specialist—certainly the most influential—
to come up with an explicit theory of the uselessness of aesthetics as a way
of enjoying and validating modern art. The advent of the avant-garde had,
in his view, revolutionized the way works of art were received. It was no
longer possible to establish the value of a work by looking at it: to the
uninitiated, modern art was intrinsically unattractive, irritating and
enigmatic. There are plenty of works that cannot even be collected or shown:
earthworks, for example. All that remained of art’s onetime splendor was its
self-satisfied gratuitousness, which was simply the symbolic opposite of an
age dominated by efficiency and profit. Contemporary works were like a
new sort of show, a happening that the artist, or showman (to use Rosenberg’s
term) used to attract proselytes, or viewers.
Modern art was thus poles apart from the Enlightenment aesthetic. It was
the deliberate fruit of iconoclasm, in that it aimed at discrediting, profaning
and sabotaging the edifying complaisance of aesthetic pleasure. In its efforts
to make fun of naïve, shared tastes, it upset tame contemplation. In other
words, it developed within the aesthetic paradigm in order to contest it in a
crescendo of perceptual provocation:

the transgression of the academic rules of representation on the part of

Impressionism; the transgression of the codes of figuration by means
of color on the part of Fauvism; then the creation of shapes on the part
of Cubism; the transgression of the norms pertaining to figurative
objectivity on the part of Expressionism; the transgression of humanist
values on the part of Futurism, of the criteria of seriousness on the part
of Dadaism, and of real possibility on the part of Surrealism; the
transgression of the very need for figuration on the part of different forms
of Abstractionism, starting with Suprematism and Constructivism,
through to Abstract Expressionism: generation after generation, modern
art upsets and betrays the established norms of art. And in so doing
creates scandal.68

Regardless of Greenberg’s declarations, the viewer could not be left to

face the work of art alone because the viewer was simply not in a position
to understand it. To appreciate a work of art called for instructions, and this
meant expertise: an explanation of the artist’s recondite intentions, and a
certificate of originality. This cultural mediation redefined behavior regarding
the perception of works of art: it was an exercise in intent, a painful
initiation, an “aesthetic leap” into a parallel dimension, a quest into the
ultimate essence and murky confines of art that was a goal in its own right.
In modernity, aesthetic agreement (the instant recognition of what is
beautiful) was turned into an ontological challenge, which involved
vacillating arguments about the nature of art, especially where no one ever
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 127

previously presumed it to exist. The outcome was that the naïve taste for
beauty was condemned as despicable, and the conventions of the past were
upturned and mocked.
Modern art thus dictated the epilogue of aesthetics. It celebrated
nothingness, rejecting the social consumption of beauty for which the
Enlightenment had identified a faculty. Modern art required initiation, and
was deliberately incomprehensible to the masses, who found in it nothing of
aesthetic value. Though it may have created a scandal at the outset, in the
course of time it lost its edge and became almost predictable in its ritual self-
desecration.
One provocation after another, in time the principle of affront became a
self-deceptive, self-referential convention. But then if the ultimate goal of the
avant-garde is to make viewers think about the real essence of art, it is hard
to imagine how the constantly repeated question can represent a shared
criterion of appreciation: “the quality of a work cannot be measured in
terms of the meaningfulness of the ontological questions it raises, since even
an ugly picture can raise a debate of this sort. Moreover, the intrinsically
fascinating question regarding the definition of art will only interest the
philosopher of aesthetics, not the art lover or the critic. Lastly, the question
itself is no more essential to the contemplation of a work of art than
any other insoluble matter (for example, the meaning of time, of love, of
truth, etc.).”69
Since the 1980s, a spirit of resignation has made itself felt among
enthusiasts, such that contemporary art somewhat resembles the proverbial
moonless night when everything looks much the same shade of black.
Thinkers such as Belting, Danto and Morgan70 have argued that the avant-
garde has lost its purpose in the “delta of modernism,” where everything is
allowed and, with varying degrees of amusement, accepted.
Regardless of whether it is considered ritual suicide, cultural treachery or
ideological fraud in grand style,71 modern art eludes all classification (in
Duve’s view turning from concept into proper noun)72 because it no longer
has anything to communicate, other than its desperate need to survive and
nurture its own myth.
Three centuries after the original, modern art seems to be reinventing the
Don Quixote myth: just as this latter played on the discrepancy between
events (the deeds of the hero) and meanings (a context in which those same
deeds became grotesque) to present the collapse of the courtly epic, so
modern art portrays the collapse of aesthetic experience, the disintegration
of the underlying values and the failure of ideals that have no reason to exist
in modernity. In its battle against the windmills, the avant-garde uses
distortion, ugliness and derision of artistic beauty to mock aesthetic
perception as a dated form of sensibility that relates to a defunct system of
aspirations and representations.
The gallery of iconoclasms thus represents a way of processing loss. The
conception of beauty as an allegory of beauty, a way of evoking ideals
beyond sensorial perception (the sacred, power, human brotherhood, the
128 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

bourgeois possession of the world) that has been definitively deposed, reviled
and abolished. Rather than encouraging the spectator to look beyond what
is obvious, conventional and reassuring, modern art tells a far more upsetting
and painful tale: the disenchantment of looking, the loss of the shared sense
of beauty, the fact that it is no longer possible to enjoy anything according
to the rules that worked in the past. For thousands of years art did its best
to “show off (present, exhibit, materialize) by means of a sensorial support
(color, sound, stone) what was considered a superior truth,”73 but this aim is
now lost for ever. The burden of the sacred is undone, and in its place
evanescent secularity weighs down on the shoulders of post-Enlightenment
humanity in all his solitude. As for the artist, the latter bears emblematic
witness to this change, but with detachment.74
A world that no longer has dreams to share unless they are part of a
nightmare (the domination of technology, totalitarianism, world wars,
genocides, arms of mass destruction) cannot express accepted forms of
aesthetic devotion. Adorno predicted that after Auschwitz it was no longer
possible to write poetry: in other words, just like in Don Quixote, there is
no way to propose anew any edifying aesthetic without appearing ridiculous.
There is nothing to celebrate other than the ephemeral myths of consumer
society; nothing that can move us to the devoted detachment and sense of
sacredness that Beauty (as an absolute idea) can induce; nothing indeed that
can warrant the arcane and paralyzing experience of the Sublime.
In an era dominated by technology and information, reality seems to
have nothing to hide, nothing that cannot be understood, calculated and
programmed. It is as though Hegel’s prophecy had come true: once humanity
reaches the height of its spiritual progress, it loses the state of innocence that
allowed it to contemplate the world aesthetically, such that the need for art
is no more.
Looking backwards, the appearance of aesthetics in Western culture comes
across as a casual, short-lived event: before the eighteenth century, art had
goals other than simply gratifying the eye of the viewer. One and a half centuries
later, the dissolution of art seems to mark the end of an age and a utopia.
In Kant, the inheritance of Enlightenment ideals in the definition of the
aesthetic event is as clear as can be, not least in view of the way he attributes
universality to a faculty of judgment that was really the outcome of social
privilege. Aesthetics sanctioned the democratization of tastes, which had
hitherto been the prerogative of the court, and the spirit of the French
Revolution brought about the ensuing symbolic expansion. What did
extending the flag of 1789 and the cry of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” to the
sphere of taste really mean? Desiring the superfluous was evidently a form
of Liberté, and the contemplation of beauty a sublimated version of this.
Égalité meant giving everyone the right to enjoy the pleasures of this same
beauty. And Fraternité stood for the sharing of taste, which accounted for
the edifying, collective nature of the phenomenon.
In mass society, these achievements come across as obvious, to the
extent that they are relegated to the constantly expanding realm of what is
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 129

pleasurable. If cultural entertainment has become accessible to everyone,

then there is no longer any need for beauty, at least for the sort of beauty
that transcends individual sensibility and affects the shared human spirit.
In processing this loss, the edifying contemplation of beauty can only
survive in the form of nostalgia: this explains the tendency to admire
the relics of the past, still subject to the dictates of Romanticism and the
Enlightenment. For example, in 2001, the West was shocked by the
destruction of the gigantic statues of Buddha in a desert torn by religious
enmity, perceiving this as a crime against the (aesthetic) dignity of human
kind. The entire planet thus becomes a sort of living nativity scene, a heritage
to protect, a show to eternalize, where natural beauty and works of art
coexist, just as Kant would have wanted.
As a museum, however, it is sterile: there can be no introduction of new
products, conceived, constructed and enjoyed according to universally
accepted rules. A permanent schism has come about between the meaning of
the art of the past and that of the present, which looms over us, insensitive
and ineluctable. Modernity has disowned Beauty like a deposed deity; in its
stead there is a constellation of minute events, a kaleidoscope of transient
aesthetic models whose only possible archetype and parameter is fashion,
the ephemeral art of vanity. The aesthetics of modernity is subject to the
same frenzied rhythms, the same capricious temporality: everything is
subjective, short-lived and unconvincing. Instead of the icy discipline of awe,
we have the heady tyranny of seduction.
Beauty has been deposed in favor of a new catalyst of sensibility: Style.
The real outcome of the autonomy achieved by art is the transformation of
aesthetics into the frenzied production of signs that flutter into our
consciences and make their presence felt without requiring any center of
gravity or direction. Taste is no longer the faculty for recognizing an abstract
ideal, a shared goal towards which all ages in history were supposed to draw
closer. It is Style that commands, the prototype of all individual predilections:
gratuitous, revocable, and yet at the same time irresistible and inexplicably
contagious.
Why Style? Because taste looks to Style for individuality, for the relic that
seems authentic in a world of shiny, prefabricated fakes. The idealization of
style amounts to a symbolic tribute to the individual, a protected species in
mass society, a talisman against mechanization, mass production and the
alienation of the modern world.
A bottle-carrier, a torn canvas, what seems to be a can of soup, a wrapped
building or a mound of trash obviously have no claim to arouse a sense of
beauty. A caustic celebration of the discomfort of civilization, they stand for
the refusal to submit to conformism, and as such are bearers of style, without
which they would never have been noticed, let alone considered works of
art. They have to be the original article, however, rather as other memorabilia
are sought at auctions simply because they once belonged to celebrities. In
other words, their value resides in the fact that they came from an artist, and
has nothing to do with how they are made.
130 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

The “transitive principle” of the artistic aura gained strength from the
object’s power to shock and surprise. Duchamp was well aware of this when
he first proposed his ready-made: the magic wand for turning a banal
functional item into a work of art was style, which allowed him to exploit
one original idea, thereby justifying a form of plagiarism that inevitably led
to creative sterility.
The contemporary artist was no longer expected to be able to draw or
paint, but to be original. As with Don Quixote, the traditional canons of
artistic beauty became farcical when applied to the present. The outlawing
of kitsch ratified the displacement between a declining cultural mythology
and a new world that embraced the ban while knowing it to be insufficient.
Thus Dorfles could preach the divorce between artistic “talent” and “taste”:
the latter alone could inspire a style, while in its pursuit of a conventional
ideal of beauty the former inevitably ended up in mannerism. The technically
perfect but soulless work of Pietro Annigoni, official portraitist to Queen
Elizabeth (“an academic work whose ‘pleasantness’ and skill are not
sufficient to make up for the lack of a contemporary ‘taste’ or style”),75 is
thus stigmatized in favor of the crude primitivism of Jean Dubuffet, “a
deformation of what is figurative in which the ‘unpleasantness’ of the image
is justified by the topicality of the ‘taste’ and the technique involved.”76
By the same token, no painting by Picasso can reasonably be considered
“beautiful,” although his output—at least from the Cubist period on—
undoubtedly reveals distinct personality. The works of Warhol or Lichtenstein
cannot claim to be “beautiful” either, but they are certainly not short of
originality: a mere glance is sufficient to recognize them. The criteria for
judging art thus undergo radical transformation. The true object of
veneration is no longer the work, but the celebrity artist. And if style is the
indelible mark of his individuality, his work will become “a highly refined
visiting card”:77 “for modern viewers, the work acquires meaning only
when it refers to subjectivity, becoming a pure and simple expression of
individuality: a unique style that does not try to mirror the world, but to
create an imaginary world within which the artist acts. Though we may be
allowed to enter this world, it in no way pretends to be a universe that is
shared a priori.”78
The ousting of beauty and the enthronement of style are symptomatic of
a wide phenomenon that has shaped Western sensibilities in the age of
massification: the idolatry of individuality, and its transformation into an
object of collective worship.
Well before Coco Chanel, Greta Garbo or Elvis Presley, modern art gave
rise to the modern myth of individuality. Before the phenomena of emulation
promoted by fashion labels and the collective hysteria unleashed by the stars
of show business, avant-garde art had already started to glorify individuality,
thereby preparing the way for much of the behavior typical of the society of
frivolity: the bawdy-house of celebrities, and the surrogate for holiness in a
secular mass society. Art was to lend this cult of the profane its workshop
and testing ground. By establishing a new form of aesthetic production and
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 131

reception, art thus prepared the way for the history of modern taste because
it wielded the power to create artifacts for exhibition. No other activity was
better suited to shaping the social consumption of images.
The 1900s were not only the century of the avant-garde movements, that
is, of the loss of the edifying sense of beauty. They were also the century that
witnessed the triumph of Style: that aura of singularity that raises us above
everyday ordinariness, the symbolic antidote to the mechanization of the
world, the new hypnotic source of the seduction of tastes. This phenomenon
found its most evident expression in fashion, which it easily transcended to
establish a forma mentis that redefined the Babel of human preferences.

Tattooed Man
Fashion designers bear witness to the fact that the twentieth century elected
style as a dominant ideal of taste. Moreover, the twenty-first century
appears to further the veneration for ideological and commercial stardom
of this sort.
This is particularly visible in the media, where fashion designers enjoy a
prestige hitherto unequaled in the history of consumer society: “there is no
writer, painter or film director with such a visible claim to fame. Only the
fashion designer can aspire to see his or her name identified with a label and
exposed to such public appraisal and awareness, from city shop signs to
logos on every item of clothing sold. A successful businessman may become
a household name, but never with the visibility of a fashion designer. The
difference lies in the fact that the fashion designer is still considered akin to
an artist.”79
Such social and symbolic acclaim turns the cultural coordinates of
aesthetic appeal upside down. Artists, architects and product designers may
be the darlings of critics and journalists, but they are usually unknown to
the public at large. Fashion designers, on the other hand, tend to be foreign
to the realms of academia and intellectual pursuit, yet are venerated as idols
by wide swathes of the younger generation whose tastes they help to forge.
The protagonists of the star system may not be the subject of many learned
treatises, but they are certainly the focus of endless magazine cover shots
and feature stories, of advertising and megastore distribution.
Yet what fashion designers produce cannot be relegated to the realms of
kitsch, the repository of so much that triumphs on the mass market. On the
contrary. The fashion designer is by definition an arbiter of elegance,
someone who lays down the laws of vanity and defines the sphere of luxury,
inventing and imposing new laws of apparel. Indeed, fashion designers are
perceived as clairvoyants invested with the gift of foreseeing women’s whims
in clothing. They are the modern Prometheus, stealing the fire of fashion and
giving it to mortals in a constant cycle of renewal.
All this is but a short step from the Renaissance, when the high priests of
taste were artists. Through their art they reshaped collective awareness and
132 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

renewed aesthetic parameters, leaving their own seal on works of great

inspiration.
The etymology of the word “style” makes this clear. The term derives
from the Latin “stilus,” which refers to the pointed tool used by the ancients
to engrave wax tablets. In designating the quality of expression, style acts
like a trademark that reveals the personality of the designer.80 Clearly the
next step is the concept of style as a characteristic of a given period or
aesthetic trend. In both instances, today no less than in the past, the essential
characteristic is individuality.
It is interesting to note that the word “griffe” also derives from the sphere
of writing (“gràphein”) and designates individual creativity, like a sort of
overall fingerprint, except that fingerprints are hereditary and therefore
involuntary, whereas the written expression requires the power of will and
reveals indelible personal traits.
In the fanciful world of fashion, the various griffes provide canons of
taste that effectively aid people in their choices of what to wear. Granted,
this suggests a large number of competing systems, which are all based on
the charismatic figure of particular designers. What is important, of course,
is the fact that consumers recognize their chosen style guru and blindly trust
in his/her every expression. The outcome is a convenient solution to the
enigma of taste that has fascinated generations of philosophers engaged in
defining beauty in art. Just why we should accept and embrace the dictates
of taste regardless of our own deeper feelings and perceptions is a question
that remains unanswered.
Consider further the mechanisms of contemporary fashion. “Taste always
refers to the preferences and the choices of an individual and is totally private
by its very nature. Everyone is supposed to choose what feels good. At the
same time, the ideal of good taste is meant to be beyond the individual, and
to be socially binding. It offers a universal standard, potentially applicable to
all members of a society. It is an ideal which everyone is supposed to follow.
Furthermore, it is a standard which is socially communicable even though it
can never be conceptually determined.”81
By contrast, the classic aesthetic norms in art largely pertain to the desire
for timeless beauty. Fashion, on the other hand, focuses on the ephemeral
criterion of elegance, which can be turned into a socially recognizable cult.
This is a major difference. If beauty is linked to the present, and elegance
prefers action to contemplation, then the public stage of social competition
becomes its sole focus. The system spawns must-have objects to be grabbed
and shown off as symbols of privilege and distinction. The key concepts are
thus self-image, exhibition and seduction. Little wonder that the thinkers of
the Enlightenment saw fashion as an illusory expression of human vanity
lacking in any real aesthetic stature: fashion could never be widely accepted,
because if it were it would no longer be fashion.
With respect to this framework, however, contemporary fashion has
introduced something entirely new. With the spread of wellbeing, fashion
has become less exclusive and showy, and instead has developed symbolic
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 133

and psychological values that have little to do with economic factors.

Consumer society relies on the principle of access, such that social distinction
is no longer the main function of fashion, which in its turn grows more
universal, available and repetitive.
It is the fashion designers who are responsible for this. Thanks to the
proliferation of collections (from ready-to-wear to casual and sportswear)
and in particular to the way licenses have expanded to embrace all manner
of objects, the style trade has grown at an astounding rate. What it has lost
in impact it has gained in accessibility, drawing into the realm of fashion a
vast range of previously unrelated commodities. In so doing, it has also
reshaped terms of reference and consumption.
A great deal has happened since 1921, when Chanel No. 5 was launched
and soon became the most famous scent in the world. Increasing numbers of
fashion designers have invested products once extraneous to fashion with
their personal charisma to further their commercial success. In 1948,
Christian Dior lent his name to a collection of hosiery in the United States.
Forty years later, Pierre Cardin had accumulated 800 licenses ranging from
garments to cosmetics, chocolate, furniture and appliances that bore his
name throughout the world. Among the 200 licenses collected by Yves Saint
Laurent, the enfant prodige of Parisian fashions, there was even the YSL
brand of cigarettes. To this day, the main source of income for fashion
houses derives from brand licensing. The seasonal collections that receive so
much press coverage are what establish, develop and maintain the designer’s
image. Because they are costly to produce, they do not always yield income.82
Little matter, however, for this is the job of the vast array of brand accessories.
Fashion today is a heady, often showy enactment of style. It embraces not
only choices to do with clothing, or indeed consumer behavior, but also the
attitudes, interests, desires and preferences of individuals. It is thus evident
that while designer labels represent only a fraction of the variegated universe
of fashion, they encapsulate most aspects of the phenomenon, especially its
causes and symptoms.
Moralists83 complain that fashion has made label slaves of helpless,
innocent souls duped into thinking that they too can enjoy the thrill of
luxury. Yet a more detached view of the whole world of logos simply reveals
to what extent the demand for fashion has spread throughout contemporary
society. After all, it was the power of the label that turned tailors and
dressmakers into the high priests of taste, their griffe into a magic wand.84
Logos have dematerialized style and turned it into a fetish, capable of
investing mass produced objects with an aura of exclusivity. “It’s the rarity
of the producer that makes the product rare. The magic of the logo is what
explains the conceptual difference between the true item signed by the
master and a mere copy, though the two essentially differ only in price.”85
Of course it’s true that there may be practically no difference between a
genuine designer garment and a fake version of the same thing, at least as far
as look, finish and materials used are concerned. Yet the symbolic divide
between the two is unbridgeable. Acquiring a designer garment is like an
134 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

entry ticket to dream world, a sort of aesthetic affiliation, a declaration of

faith, a form of devotion. Buying a fake designer garment is the equivalent
of prizing a postcard from an exotic destination one has never had the
privilege of visiting.
The miraculous power of designer logos resides in the ability to turn
personal charisma into a magic talisman that can elevate banal commodities
into precious and desirable items. Iron becomes gold in an act of “symbolic
transubstantiation that eludes any real transformation.”86
Fashion achieves ubiquity thanks to designer logos. It transcends social
barriers and commodity categories, is universally accessible and infinitely
repeatable. For this is the magic charm that eliminates the contrast between
sacred and profane, precious and banal, authentic and fake, exceptional and
ordinary. The oxymoron triumphs within the realms of taste, as the principle
of authority and free will coexist in a constant, euphoric flurry.
The great Post-Modern saga is the product not so much of architects as
of fashion designers. When product designers rebeled against the grey
predictability of the Modernist Movement, their provocative counter-
proposals went largely unnoticed by the public at large. When fashion
expanded to embrace all manner of products, on the other hand, the
phenomenon swept the whole world along with it, shaping and spreading
“the postmodern condition.”
The foremost exegete and hagiographer of postmodernism was Lyotard,87
who described it as the eclipse of the accepted canons of artistic and scientific
discourse: where there are no established rules, the “truth” of a work or a
theory becomes intrinsically volatile. When applied to the profane world of
trade, this implies the loss of convertibility between symbolic value and
economic privilege: the value of fashion becomes a form of autosuggestion.
Other authors have argued in favor of an intimate connection between
consumer society and postmodern sensibility. Lyons88 talks about the closing
of the divide between cultured and mass taste brought about by the spread
of consumer logic throughout all aspects of cultural production. Jameson89
describes how aesthetics and culture have become revocable, superficially
chosen commodities. This followed Baudrillard’s original perception90 of a
collective indoctrination to the religion of consumption and the aesthetic
hallucination of reality. As for Featherstone,91 he identifies ubiquitous
fashion as the most evident symptom of the postmodern revolution that
has brought about the implosion of symbolic hierarchies and the aesthetics
of daily life.
Logos are so seductive and contagious that they have spread beyond the
confines of gadgets embellished by the golden designer touch. A growing
number of industrial brands from both the luxury and the mass-market
sectors now claim to be designer labels. This is visible not only in the
multiplication of commodity genres (design labels now ennoble anything
from cigarettes to clothing, cigars to scents, fountain pens to wrist watches,
travel gear, shoes and even car tires). What is particularly noteworthy is the
metamorphosis of brands into the symbols and mirages of lifestyles.
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 135

According to Naomi Klein, whose pamphlet criticizing the globalization

of logos met with widespread acclaim,92 the phenomenon is actually the
fruit of a deliberate strategy on the part of the huge multinationals to
counteract the increasing banality of commodities, their interchangeability
when it comes to performance, the growing indifference of consumers to
advertising. When manufacturers started outsourcing production to low
wage countries, it became evident that what they were selling “were not
things, but images of their brands. Their real work lay not in manufacturing
but in marketing.”93 As for advertising, Klein regrets that its appeal has
“gradually taken the agencies away from individual products and their
attributes and toward a psychological/anthropological examination of what
brands mean to the culture and to people’s lives.”94 Unsurprisingly, when
you consider that the goal of advertising has always been to endow goods
with a special “aura” that differentiates them from competitors and makes
them more in the eyes of the public. What is more, just as all consumer
goods embody a great deal of symbolic content, so the exchange value of
logos implies a premium with regard to their use value. The “scandal”
deplored by Klein consists in the global manipulation of minds whereby
consumers attribute such symbolic value to a logo.
Whatever the social and moral implications of the phenomenon may
be,95 it is clear that the process of spinning dreams around logos has
borrowed a page from the “ubiquitous fashion” book in its efforts to imbue
goods with symbolic and emotional content. In its own way, a logo is a
magic talisman that repeats the formula of designer labels: there is no
substantial difference between the person who purchases an Armani scent
or pair of Dior specs and the consumer who opts for a Marlboro Classics
bomber jacket or a Nike cap. Both are lifestyle brands, which allow their
owners to partake of a special world of their choice.
The very fact that the charisma system created by fashion designers can
actually be applied to a wide range of different products reveals to what
extent the social and cultural meaning of fashion has changed. In becoming
more “democratic,” it loses its aura of luxury and becomes a trait common
to consumer goods in general, or at least their outer appearance. The
traditional parameters of what is and is not considered a luxury thus fade
into non-existence.
The vertical structure of preference and the way taste percolates down
from the top of the pyramid to its lower echelons defined in the past the
exclusive nature of luxury. Fashion was explained in terms of the two polar
extremes: imitation of the leisured classes on the one hand; and differentiation
from the newly moneyed on the other.
Gone are the times when style rivalry could be explained in terms of
competition between social classes. Today fashions often begin at the grass
roots level, spontaneously and unexpectedly, transforming city streets into
catwalks that often act as inspiration for fashion designers themselves.96
Social fragmentation has given rise to the proliferation of intermittent,
interchangeable fashions which spread in mysterious ways: “contemporary
136 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

dress fashions are neither as universal nor as symbolically focal as they once
were [. . .] Nor do fashions today seem capable of enforcing uniform like
compliance throughout society and across all class and status groupings.”97
This brings to the fore the paradox of fashion in the contemporary age.
Pluralistic and polycentric, intrusive and blasphemous, fashion is like a
kaleidoscope that encapsulates and abandons short-lived styles and products.
No longer is it a vehicle for social mobility or privilege. Fast food fashion,98
as it has been called, is available to everyone everywhere, which entirely
undermines the real desire for fashion. What do we really want? This is the
question that only a history of contemporary taste can hope to answer.
The Far East is in the social and cultural vanguard when it comes to
“ubiquitous fashion.” For an overview of the relative model of development
and consumption suffice it to turn to Japan, and other prosperous Asian
countries following its lead. Not only do they represent highly profitable
markets for Western luxury products, they also provide a precious
observatory for the anthropology of contemporary fashion.
The essential feature is the sense of loss brought about by the adoption
en masse of Western clothing. Traditional costumes have all but disappeared,
replaced by “modern” garb that does not embody similarly meaningful
norms, values and prohibitions.
According to Donald Richie, in The Image Factory, “The Japanese,
having scrapped their own native costumes and having proved understandably
maladroit in handling the various nuances of Western dress, are now
presented with a new problem—or rather, the same old problem under a
new guise: how to present the social self, given only the highly individualized
clothing styles from which they must choose.”99 The outcome is that fashion
is suddenly called upon to provide “instructions for use” for an alien sort of
elegance. For an Asian consumer, bowing to fashion (including the worship
of logos) has become a rule of life that supplies a ready and reassuring
solution to the latent need for self-expression.
This explains the obsession with a given look, not only in clothing but
throughout the whole range of consumer products. Teen magazines are
full of features that nicely illustrate the situation. “The taipu betsu, or
classification of types, in relation to the clothes, products and accessories
that each individual prefers. Not even the most ordinary products can elude
this analysis. From the brand of a packet of cigarettes, for example, you can
identify the “type,” specifying in detail the global characteristics of his or her
personality: style, tastes, weaknesses, education. There are all sorts of taipu
betsu: in relation to haircut, clothing, music, sport, leisure pursuits, food,
cosmetics, preferred reading.”100 Little wonder, then, that the streets of
Tokyo far outdo those of Paris, Milan or New York when it comes to
parading comatose, passive fashion victims. In Omote-sandoˉ, the fashion
avenue is flanked by megastores and the logo sanctuaries erected by famous
architects to attract swarms of devout pilgrims, dazzled by the spectacle of
consumer paradise and the beatification of fashion designers whose products
are purchased and treasured like sacred relics.
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 137

The place of initiation into the cult of adult fashion is Harajaku, a

fairground of trends much beloved by adolescents. Here “you can discover
exactly what is cool and naui (from ‘now’), which pop stars are in or out,
which clothes, accessories, hairstyles are on the crest of the wave, which
cocktails prove one is not dasai (out), which crepes or pizzas will still be in
fashion by the end of the month.”101
Shibuya is a picturesque district that provides further insights into fashion
in Japan. Its inhabitants tend to be young: nymphets duly attired and made
up; young mothers wheeling colorful pushchairs bearing infants with
trendily bleached hair. Amid this daily fashion, carnival girl groups form to
establish their look and exhibit their identity as brazenly as possible. To
shock is to succeed because it means being noticed, which is much, much
better than the gray anonymity that would otherwise engulf them.
The ganguro-gyaru (literally “dark-faced bad girls”) are a case in point.
They meet up and give free rein to self-expression, safe in the fold of the
group. Only thus can they claim visibility: “it is evident that the ganguro
reject the very concept of Japaneseness, which they do their best to alter by
modifying their look. It’s as if these girls were hell-bent on achieving a
transformation involving hair, skin and features that allows them to elude
the perceived constraints of their real lives. The ganguro style is closer to
disguise than it is to fashion.”102
These extreme manifestations of fashion actually contain an element of
explanation. As a crossroads between culture and commerce, aesthetics and
custom, elegance and disguise, they are essentially theatrical events, at the
same time both élitist and popular, in which the actors draw in the audience
to take part in a play whose theme is how to be different.
Style worship in Japan achieves such paroxysms of exhibitionism that the
country has become the apotheosis of Western fashion, a land in which
fashion fever and the cult of the look define the existential game of reshaping
one’s inner and exterior being. That said, something remarkably similar is
also going on in the outskirts of the West. In the globalized world, fashion
has become the buzz, the upper, the trip that gets people through the day:
aesthetic Prozac plus social aphrodisiac.
So, far from being the manifestation of ease and refinement it once was,
fashion is now equated with labels and logos following hot on each other’s
heels in a frantic race without a finishing post: run, run, as fast as you can
. . . it will leave you too breathless for Angst.
Of course, since time immemorial, human beings have devoted thought
to appearance. “Before embellishing fabrics, man decorated his body with
scars and tattoos. The origins of the symbolic aspect of ornament lie in
man’s innate need to dress up in order to show who he is.”103 From this
point of view, though contemporary fashion may be widespread, pluralistic
and accessible, it still manages to express the ritual function of ornament
typical of archaic societies: that of defining the signs of social identity.
Yet there is one basic difference: in modern democracies, social identity
has become a stage for acting out competing aspirations, and as a result it is
138 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

also a source of frustration, insecurity and neurosis. For fashion today is

fluid, risky and unstable. The construction of identity is not something that
can be passed down from one generation to the next. Rather, it is an
individual conquest in which fashions and logos inevitably reflect the
temporary, volatile character of an indeterminate reality. “Today there is no
fashion: there are only fashions. [. . .] No rules, only choices is the current
claim. [. . .] Everyone can be everyone. In fashion, as in much of the imagery
of a mass culture, we confront the echoes of our own desires.”104
The mirage of fashion often embraces what can appear to be some
worrying distortion. For instance, the youths whose fashion fetish leads
them to have the Nike logo tattooed onto their skin. But then, all the other
kids are wearing the same logo anyway, so what real difference does it make?
Even the loudest and showiest icons of fashion do much the same thing,
except that they’re applied to our second skin: clothes and accessories.
Hence the double G buckle denoting Gucci, the Bulgari logo that dominates
a wristwatch, the Louis Vuitton monogram disseminated over a vast range
of products as an ornamental motif. Such are the tattoos of modernity.
Those who show them off are asserting their identity as part of the flow of
fashion. They are armed with the right passport for entering the hallowed
realms of here-and-now society.
An intriguing study by Alain Ehrenberg describes the clinical and social
development of depression during the twentieth century.105 According to
Ehrenberg, depression can be seen as a symptom of the “pathology of
change.” The trigger is the rise of mass individualism as society demands and
imposes a process of autonomy on each and every citizen. “The 1960s saw
the collapse of the prejudices, traditions, constraints and limits that had
hitherto given structure to people’s lives. We grew emancipated, in the true
sense of the term: the modern political ideal, which frees men and women
from being docile subjects and turns them into self-proprietors, is extended
to all aspects of existence. The sovereign individual, as predicted by
Nietzsche, has now become a common condition of existence.”106
The society of autonomy does not countenance superior nature (we fight
age, our hereditary traits, our physical imperfections), and has banished any
trace of an interior moral law (gone are the sense of guilt, the taboos of
desire, the constraints of pleasure). What we become and how we behave
depend exclusively on our own will and abilities. “Our reality has become a
world in which the individual is freed of morality and shapes his or her own
being, thereby becoming a superperson in his or her tendency to transcend
individual nature through action. This individual, however, is often fragile
and rarely has the courage of his or her convictions. Weighed down by
autonomy, he or she feels aggrieved and dissatisfied. Depression is melancholy
amalgamated with equality, the quintessential sickness of democratic man.
Such is the ineluctable endowment of the individual who has become his or
her own sovereign.”107
Since the spread and degree of depression is directly proportionate to the
process of social autonomization, the ailment can be seen as the toll of
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 139

modernity, along with substance and alcohol addiction: two forms of self-
defense against depression, both of them pathological in their own right.
Contemporary society expects us to construct an identity, to maintain it
and defend it from ourselves and those who surround us. All this clearly
comes with a psychological and social price tag. The miraculous mission of
fashion is to reduce this price tag, which it does with the help of logos and
labels. Society is thus supplied with a simplified recipe for elegance based on
fragments of identity ready for use.
The central question of this chapter centers on the conviction that what
people seek in fashion today is a transfiguration of self that can help alleviate
fatigue of self. In the melting pot of an ambivalent, contradictory society in
which individuals have to choose their own fate, fashion acts as a social
panacea that mitigates the discomfort of autonomized identity.
The condition of autonomy, long desired but frustratingly difficult to
handle, looks to fashion for a paradigmatic model of the contagious state of
permanent over-excitement that underlies the collective yearning for
individual happiness. It sustains the self by encouraging desires for every
sort of consumer commodity that can provide momentary gratification. In
this sense it is the ideological imperative “that characterizes the second half
of the twentieth century, attributing value to everything in terms of pleasure
or disappointment. Those who do not take part in the euphoric ritual are
condemned to shame or relegated to a life of discomfort. The imperative is
based on a double postulate: either get the most possible out of life, or suffer
and feel wretched because you haven’t.”108
The irresistibility of fashion lies in its ability to foment desires and
encourage the compulsion for luxury, or at least what is superfluous, in the
name of self-realization. This is inextricable from modernity, in which the
multiplication of individual aspirations goes hand in hand with an economic
system that promotes and gains from the mirage of universal happiness:
“what underlies capitalism is no longer the concept of production based on
labor and saving, but rather that of consumption, which brings with it
expenditure and waste. In this new strategy, pleasure has taken the place of
exclusion, thereby blurring the divide between the economic machine and
our whims, which become the true engine of development. The Western
individual is thus freed of public shaming, which was a feature of the early,
authoritarian stage of democracies, and is encouraged to acquire full
autonomy. In his freedom, however, he no longer has any choice: with no
obstacles between him and paradise, he is “condemned” to be happy. If he’s
not, he only has himself to blame.”109
In reality, of course, the individual is beset with a feeling of inadequacy,
the fear of being excluded, the unmentionable anxiety of not quite managing
to enjoy life quite as one should. This is simply the hidden face of fashion,
not the panacea of self-realization, but the empty chimera of unfulfilled
promise. What underlies both aspects of the phenomenon is narcissism,
which can be joyous gratification or a tantalizing and ultimately frustrating
projection of the self. In this latter case, the individual becomes the “prisoner
140 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

of an image that has been so idealized as to be paralyzing. The outcome is a

constant need for reassurance resulting in dependence on those who supply
it”:110 a condition that is intimately linked to the frenetic volatility of fashion.
To be fashionable means constantly trying to improve one’s look, and being
frustrated in so doing. The concomitant anxiety is simply due to the
impossibility of the task: an ever-receding goal.
The mirage of self-image also suffers in relation to the direction that
society is taking. In the days when fashion represented the choreography of
progress, the stage costume for a play about us in which we all took part, it
seemed to be positive and desirable. Nowadays, however, “the fear of going
backwards and being excluded far outweigh the hopes for social preferment.
We all change, inevitably, but without the sense of making progress.”111
Having reached this peak, the focus on self no longer seems like the
existential project it once did. Instead it looks worryingly like a form of
autosuggestion, an ugly mirror image of a society that has lost its vision.
Fashion no longer appears to embody excitingly contagious novelty. On the
contrary, it smacks of an endless, errant pursuit of the present. The fruit of
this is self-disappointment, leading in its turn to further striving towards
surrogate identity. In this vicious circle of aspiration, effort and dissatisfaction,
the ultimate goal grows increasingly evanescent. Little wonder, then, that
fashion should reflect that sad state of affairs.

The Odyssey of Appetites

We live in an age of overabundance. By affecting our eating habits, the age of
overabundance has greatly expanded our range of choices and revolutionized
the way in which we exercise them: “yesterday choices were limited and
imposed by resources, membership, tradition, rituals and representation.
Today the atomized individual of modern civilization is like a particle of mass
society, totally disconnected from family, social and cultural ties, and lacking
in reliable points of reference for making such choices.”112
In premodernity, people ate according to availability without thinking
too much about their stomachs. What and how they ate depended on their
roots, family and social milieu. Nowadays, unlimited freedom of choice
means that we are constantly forced to make decisions of our own. Feeding
becomes a question of individual responsibility, and the constant search for
guidance and confirmation, criteria for appraisal and reassurance regarding
our eating habits. This explains people’s extraordinary readiness to let their
minds and palates be swayed by myriad different stimuli, fashions and
precepts. It also accounts for the random role of taste in shaping our
preferences and dislikes.
In all ages and civilizations, the taste for food has meant more than simply
gratifying the palate. Above all it has stood for adaptation to a given system
of practices and images regarding the way nature (the foodstuffs available
and the requirements of the metabolism) is subjected to culture (the
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 141

techniques involved in processing and preserving these foods, combining

their tastes and controlling the manner in which they are consumed). When
a particular culture gives way to the overwhelming impact of what is new
(new products, new lifestyles, new orientations), taste inevitably grows
irresolute in the face of so much that is seductive and dissonant. The inner
compass that governs our feeding habits thus gets stuck, and we lose our
inner feeling for what is “ecological” in terms of food. The traditional
relationship between individual, landscape, social context and material
history begins to collapse, and in its stead we experience a nostalgic longing
for what is perceived, often erroneously, as being typical and traditional.
To account for the food taboos characteristic of tribal societies, Lévi-
Strauss came up with a famous declaration according to which animals and
vegetables do not become food because they are “good to eat,” but because
they are “good to think”113—in other words part of the classification system
that defines the sphere of what is edible. In today’s food system, however, the
saying is no longer applicable: between the response of the palate and
the image the food conjures up in the mind’s eye, where once there was
harmony, correspondence and mutual support there is now suspicion,
aversion and reciprocal deception.
Modernity has revolutionized the world of food, redefining its tutelary
gods and rewriting its myths. The cacophony of dietetics and gastronomy
has spawned contradictory stimuli that torment our desires, and weigh
down on our preferences. We are no longer what we eat; we eat (or at least
try to eat) what we would like to be. And when, as often happens, we fail
to achieve this goal, we are unable to be self-accepting and instead give in to
feelings of guilt and inner conflict. We desire foods that are less suited
to satisfying bodily needs or whims of the palate than they are to nurturing
the imagination and appeasing the conscience: foods that contribute to our
narcissistic self-image.
The aspirations and goals that shape food preferences change in the
course of time. Taking part in modernity calls for detachment regarding the
heritage of the past. The tyranny of mass communications and individualism
imposes forms of self-idealization aimed at exorcising the specter of physical
decline and concomitant social marginalization. In so doing it distances us
from ancestral traditions, which are perceived as being aesthetically and
substantially inadequate, symbols of poverty and protracted privation, of
early ageing, of the fatigue and hardship that mark the body, of an archaic
condition of existence and its underlying aspirations.
To return to such a state would mean giving in to the ineluctable nature
of the past, enduring its disgrace and relinquishing the challenge to sway the
future. And this in its turn would imply giving up all hope of prosperity,
renunciation of the collective dream of inexorable, unlimited progress, and
rejection of the mirage of omnipotence in shaping one’s own fate as expressed
by a slim, attractive and eternally young body.
There is indeed little that is comforting or gratifying about becoming part
of modernity. The globalized standardization of supply is shaped by market
142 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

interests and objectives that reflect changes in the way society and the family
are organized. The quiet murmur of the well-oiled wheels of consumer
behavior cannot entirely block out a sinister background noise.
Modernity multiplies the deceits, anxieties, doubts and frustrations
regarding the identity and effects of the foods we ingest, underlining the rift
between what we think we ought to eat and what we actually consume,
between looking after ourselves and giving in to temptation, between control
and indulgence, longevity and satiety, duty and pleasure. Apollo and
Dionysus are the two gods that upset the new food theogony. The object of
clandestine liturgies and sacrilegious cults, they can stand for orgies or
penitence. Stigmatized as heretical with respect to the salvific religion of
nutritional balance, bulimia and anorexia reveal the uneasy conscience of
contemporary appetites.
Certain critics have tried to explain alimentary modernity in terms of a
contrast between junk and light foods, perceived as polar opposites in the
problematic handling of the hunger instinct. This apocalyptic view is
reductive, however, because it fails to account for the complexity of the
phenomenon. Outside of North America, the threatened “Macdonaldization”
of eating habits is a sociological caricature,114 and the so-called “lipophobic
society” of people so terrorized by fat that they subject themselves to hideous
dietary torture belongs more to the world of dreams (or nightmares) than to
that of real consumer behavior.
The revolutions and rediscoveries in what people think about food have
not only reshaped the appetites of the Old World. They have also helped
mitigate the divide between the demands of the palate and duties involved
in healthy living, between the myth of lost genuineness and the reality of the
industrial food chain. To put it briefly, “good to eat” and “good to think” are
now slightly less out of tune with each other.
Etymologically speaking, gastronomy is the discipline of the appetites
(from the roots gastros meaning stomach or greediness, and nomos meaning
precept or custom). By instigating the seduction of the palate, gastronomy
has effectively returned to a meaning that resembles its Renaissance usage,
when it pertained to the doctrine of honest pleasure (honesta voluptas), to
the art of remedy, to the methodical reduction of damage: in other words,
when it was the catechism for moral consolation.
The most significant events to have influenced the way we think and act
concerning food can all be traced back to the conflicting elements in this
concept. With the breakdown of rules, the disintegration of reference points
and the clash of contradictory convictions, consumers have begun to feel torn
and unhappy about their choices. Yet the goal of modern food science has also
been to define new gastronomies, thereby reestablishing rules, reintroducing
regulatory principles and returning to certain paradigms of taste.
In this sense, the Mediterranean diet, the French paradox, our gastronomic
treasures and creative cuisine all help shape how we think about food,
introducing new mythologies destined to influence what and how we
consume. Each of these will be treated in turn.
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 143

The first and most influential of the modern gastronomies, at least in

Italy, is the Mediterranean diet. Right from the outset it has always come
across as an ideological rather than a dietary solution to the discomforts of
modernity. For generations of people brought up to believe in the religion of
wellbeing, the advent of nutritional prosperity has failed to fulfill its promise
of happiness. The variety and profusion of foods available to everyone, the
abolition of the principle of fatigue, restriction and renunciation, and the
daily accessibility of foodstuffs that earlier generations could not have
hoped to enjoy, except perhaps on special occasions (“Sunday lunch is no
longer anything special in relation to the festivity: from this point of view
every day is a Sunday”),115 transform the achievement of prosperity into a
self-destructive threat.
The damage that derives from overabundance of food has been a matter
for debate for some time now, thereby spoiling the voracious appetites of
opulent society. Modern dietetics no longer addresses the ills of malnutrition,
but focuses its energies on trying to cure the effects of overeating, a practice
that has reached epidemic proportions. The new mortal sins of overfed
society are the plague of obesity and the spread of cardiovascular illness
(according to statistics, one of the main causes of death). From this point
onward, freedom of choice must go hand in hand with a sense of individual
responsibility, the delights of pleasure with self-control, gluttony with the
ability to look after oneself, conviviality with temperance, bingeing with life
expectation. “The contemporary condition is intimately related to education:
knowing what one is eating and what one should eat. No longer imposed by
cultural background or family habit, such rules for behavior are shaped
by dietary information and aesthetic aspirations, common opinions and
personal idiosyncrasies.”116
Historically and ideologically, it is within this context that the
“Mediterranean diet” has enjoyed such widespread success. As a scientific
theory, it was promoted by the American nutritionist Ancel Keys in a series
of pioneering studies undertaken in the 1950s. A further three decades were
to pass, however, before it acquired widespread acceptance, establishing
itself as the new bible for healthy eating.
The success of the Mediterranean diet is largely due to the fact that it
reconciles our eating habits with our dreams about food. In other words, it
lessens the inner divide between our taste for luxury and our witting choices
shaped by nutritional considerations. “People tend to see the Mediterranean
diet as a sort of nutritional counter reform, the very answer to the constraints
of modernization. The food image of the ‘North’ is technological and full of
proteins: the steak myth, for instance, or the astronaut’s pills, or slimming
diets, or precooked convenience foods. By contrast, by offering a dietary
model based on its own history, Italy comes across as a model of nutritional
wisdom, scientifically ratified by the United States, that most advanced of
countries, and widely admired and copied.”117
The discomfiture of modernity is thus resolved by repudiation. In
advocating a return to earlier times, the Mediterranean diet actually makes
144 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

a myth of what people really used to eat, inventing a state of something akin
to nutritional innocence, authenticity and purity, surrounded by an aura of
cleansing frugality that opens up a path to nutritional redemption for the
benefit of an overfed civilization. Rescued from the folly of modernity,
longevity is the golden fleece that we should all try to attain by means of the
rediscovery of simple, healthy, natural food. The echo of the phenomenon
goes well beyond the spheres of diet and gastronomy: underlying the myth
of the Mediterranean diet are implicit judgments concerning duties and
pleasures, temptations and renunciations; in other words, suggestions for
how to behave regarding the insidious threats of food and the onslaught of
models of consumption that are not only heinous, but also contagious. In
people’s minds, the world of food thus takes on edifying precepts of an
essentially moral, ideological nature, thereby shaping what is perceived as
being “good to think.”
Granted, the condition of those brought up on hamburgers, fries and
Coca-Cola is different. Here change involves behavioral adjustments that
resemble conversion to a foreign religious sect. The first requirement is to
bury the deeply interiorized practices of the recent past, which is altogether
a different approach to that of those accustomed to eating bread, pasta,
vegetables and olive oil, and who have only recently achieved sufficient
prosperity for a daily slice of meat. In this latter case, the Mediterranean diet
comes across as a delectable form of symbolic and cultural revenge that
erases all feelings of guilt, inadequacy or inferiority. The Mediterranean cult
provides new generations of Italians who have been temporarily “corrupted”
in their eating habits with a way of plotting a safe course in the labyrinth of
food. “In actual fact the Mediterranean diet resolves the ‘omnivore’s
paradox’ described by Claude Fischler because it helps reconcile the tendency
to innovate with resistance to change, such that earlier behavior can go
hand in hand with the urge to evolve. In the Mediterranean diet, the greatest
alimentary modernity coincides precisely with the least innovation, or, to
put it differently, with the greatest gastronomic regression. To feel that one
is keeping up with the times it is no longer necessary to revolutionize one’s
habits, but simply to carry on eating as one always has done, with the
glorification of pasta.”118
The Mediterranean diet has managed to assure pasta and olive oil a place
in the High Temple of Comestibles, rather as the “French paradox” has
resulted in a similar revalorization of red wine. In 1990, the American review
Health published a report written by correspondent Edward Dolnick on the
state of health of the French.119 As in the case of the Mediterranean diet, the
whole argument depended on epidemiology. Why is it, the author wondered,
that death rates due to cardiovascular disease in France are two thirds lower
than they are in the United States, despite the fact that the French consume
such abnormal quantities of animal fats? To answer his own question,
Dolnick quoted the unorthodox theories of nutritionist Jacques Richard
concerning the unexpected virtues of his fellow countrymen’s eating habits:
it was the daily doses of red wine that kept the Gallic arteries in order.
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 145

The French paradox had to wait another year before it could reach
a wider audience. This happened thanks to an episode of the popular
60 Minutes show specifically devoted to the subject. Glued to the screen in
the comfort of their own homes were twenty million viewers,120 which
meant that the miraculous fame of red wine spread fast, thereby provoking
a major rise in consumption.121

For the first time in the United States restaurants began to sell the same
quantities of red and white wine. In early years, white wine had dominated
by 80 percent. What was it that managed to overturn American preferences
to such an extent? A television broadcast: in France, it was declared, the
death rate for heart disease was three times lower than what it was in
America, despite the fact that fine eating was still the favorite pastime of
the French. One hypothetical explanation for this scandal was that red
wine was responsible for protecting them. For Americans, health is a
difficult goal to achieve, one that calls for effort in adopting an
“appropriate” diet. For the French, on the other hand, it is a blessing that
permits the elect to enjoy life: for them, wine is not a magic potion, but a
pleasure. In France people drink to other people’s health, in America to
ensure their own.122

The analogy with the phenomenon of the Mediterranean diet is evident:

yet between the two cases there is one substantial difference. While
Mediterranean eating habits can be described as a “diet,” albeit a highly
enjoyable one, providing followers with a yardstick for alimentary
temperance and nutritional balance, the French model has no such claims,
which is precisely why it comes across as a paradox. That said, however,
what is most disconcerting is not the disputable nature of its scientific
premises or its empirical validation, but the fact that it violates an ideological
prejudice, the very one that underlies the Mediterranean paradigm: the idea
that frugality is healthy, morally edifying and ecologically sound. In the view
of nutritional puritanism, “the French paradox represents an ethical scandal
in which perceived sin is rewarded.”123
A value judgment of this sort naturally calls for contextualization. For
centuries, wine had led two parallel lives, especially in France: aristocratic
and plebeian, sophisticated and humble, refined and vulgar, according to the
circumstances in which it was consumed. It thus projected two separate
images, of which one (that of quaffing wine) began to fade as consumption
diminished, while the other rose to wider acclaim as it gained recognition
and kudos as a blazoned drink to be enjoyed in the right company.124
Flasks, demijohns and large bottles with crown caps gradually began to
disappear, leaving more room for 75 cl bottles embellished with labels and
closed with cork stoppers. Clearly this was not simply a question of
appearances. The symbology of wine and the anthropology of wine-drinking
had grown more refined, thereby distancing themselves from the archaic
experience of peasant culture: once a proudly home-produced source of
146 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

energy that could contribute to the household economy and was never
missing at mealtimes, wine was gradually turning into a quality product for
hedonistic consumption, a drink for convivial occasions that was invested
with the gastronomic and emotional significance that had once been the
prerogative of a narrow circle of privileged people.
In the epochal transition from “wine as nutriment” to “wine as pleasure,”
the inclinations of taste and the variables of appraisal underwent substantial
change: the senses grew more discerning, the range of choices became wider,
and the drinker was increasingly expected to be well-informed. Once wine
had become a symbol for prestige, subject to ceremony and viewed as a sign
of savoir vivre, its consumption moved away from need towards choice, and
from ordinariness towards refinement. By the time the expression “the
French paradox” gained acceptance, the transformation of anonymous
plonk into a desirable, select wine had already come about. Once it had
established itself as a luxury product, wine could hope to emulate the
prestige of the great labels, which had always been considered symbols of
pleasure-loving dissipation, gastronomic squandering and ostentation
(nothing at the table can be as expensive as a rare cru). All this was clearly
poles apart from the ideals of frugality suggested by the Mediterranean diet.
The image of wine thus underwent a new metamorphosis, becoming
an elixir that remained a source of pleasure and a sign of refinement.
Accompanied by polished wine-talk, its consumption was beatified, freed of
feelings of guilt and invested with salvific virtues, such that it ousted
alcoholic chastity and abstinence in representing nutritional probity.
The perception of wine as a herald of health coincided with the gradual
collapse of the moral juxtaposition between sensuality and sensibility,
pleasure and temperance, squandering and need, alcoholic inebriation and
dietary redemption. This in its turn meant redefining the system of values
and images that considered the drink an object of desire.
Like the Mediterranean diet, the French paradox rewrote the instructions
pertaining to earlier consumption, which thus acquired a new light that
allowed them to become, all of a sudden, “good to think.” The “new
gastronomy” thus gained ground, upheld by consolatory morals. The French
paradox taught how to sin and save the soul at the same time, dispensing
nutritional absolution to the epicureans, and paving the way for luxury
consumption and gourmet inclinations. It thus reconciled desires with
reassurance, melding self-image with self-respect, translating self-indulgence
into self-esteem, and assimilating vice and virtue within the mirage of
joyous longevity.
The myth of origins and authenticity, with its surrounding aura of ethical
correctness, is even more evident in another recent phenomenon: that of the
gastronomic glorification of small local producers whose very existence is at
risk, of purveyors of specialties known only to initiates. Italy abounds in
such products: cave-ripened cheeses that have aged in straw-lined
subterranean shafts, Colonnata pork fat that is brine-seasoned in marble
vats, Zibello culatello pork rump matured in underground caves, to mention
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 147

but a few of the area-specific products that have been invested with almost
magical qualities. It is interesting to note that these three at least owe their
cultural tradition, gastronomic identity and special flavor to the fact that
they are in some respects “sepulchral foods,” products that have been
“buried” in their place of origin.
As often as not, products such as these also embody something of the epic
and legendary in the way they tell the tale of whoever founded or discovered
them. For instance, the practice of burying foods in caves or shafts was
originally adopted to protect them from the bandits who raided the
Romagnolo countryside; and the custom of salting pork fat in marble vats
was simply a way of using locally available products for the seasoning of
foodstuffs that could be taken up to the quarries by Tuscan quarrymen.
Food writer Davide Paolini, a pioneer in seeking out realities of this sort
in Italy, describes the ideological delights of discovering “gastronomic
treasures” in the following terms:

anyone who observes, smells, touches and tastes these items is well aware
that they are far removed from the “standardized” foodstuffs that are
produced industrially and in great quantities. These realities are like
mines from which rare tastes can be extracted, veins of precious
gastronomic substances that are the fruit of knowledge and skill handed
down through the generations, of manual expertise that cannot be
replaced by machinery or technology. The production of these foods is
made up of various stages, such as cutting, seasoning, salting and breaking
that are akin to the manual gestures of the artist, something individual
that becomes part of the country’s heritage. This is why such products
merit recognition and a dignity on a footing with that of works of art. As
such they should also be protected.125

In opposing the standardization of what we eat and drink, the revival of

so-called typical products promotes an eclectic, itinerant gastronomic model
in which the greatest source of gratification is that of tasting the “authenticity”
of the foods shaped by material history. The cultural significance of the
phenomenon is more than a mere antidote to the inferior world of
supermarkets or fast food. At a deeper level, the gastronomic treasures are a
way of exorcising the discomfiture of modern day views of food.
According to Claude Fischler, the worst aspect of modern food is the way
comestible goods have lost their identity. Today’s consumers find it
increasingly hard to recognize the soundness of foods based on culturally
shared and empirically controled requisites and connotations. “Food has
become an adulterated mystery, a ‘non identified comestible object,’ an
orphan with no past or origins.”126 If we really are what we eat, but we do
not know precisely what we are incorporating as we ingest prefabricated,
plastified, lifeless foods, then we are bound to feel uneasy about ourselves in
mind and body: “modern food no longer has an identity because it cannot
be identified. As the contemporary eater continues day after day to ingest
148 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

foods that he is at pains to recognize, he fears he will lose control of his body
and mind, and end up wondering about his own identity.”127
Mass production, anonymity and adulteration are not the only factors
that elicit fear, however. Above all people are daunted by the collapse of
the prosperity and safety promised by alimentary modernity: “progress in
food was supposed to defend consumers from ancestral dangers such as
shortage and decay, yet with horror we discover that it conceals new threats.
The cellophane wrapped foods stacked up in the refrigerated units of
supermarkets or lined up on shelves as far as the eye can see increasingly
seem to be unknown objects, doubtless full of mysterious poisons.”128
Following in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster came wine containing
methanol, mad cow disease, GMO s and myriad “lesser” scandals that have
taken the edge off our appetites from time to time. Clearly our questions
concerning what we really ingest go beyond the sphere of our inclinations
and predilections, investing a wider universe that is full of hidden dangers.
In the first place, the definition of what is “good to think” thus concerns
ethics and health, and only later relates to gastronomic appraisal.
Indeed, the ethics of food now largely revolves around their increasingly
enigmatic nature. Appearances no longer seem to tally with substance. We
cannot help wondering about the real ingredients of a given product
(composition, origins, processing, preservation), and yet we are seduced
by the way it looks (packaging, labels, nutritional data, commercial image).
As for the health aspect, consumers are so suspicious about “modern” foods
that the sensation of imminent poison actually stops them making the
purchase.
The rediscovery of “gastronomic treasures” is thus intimately reassuring.
By returning to foods that have survived the process of industrialization,
sterilization and homogenization unharmed (or so it is believed), consumers
feel they can enjoy products and tastes that are authentic and uncontaminated.
By contrasting soulless, adulterated foods with products that express
authenticity, those who have lost their way in the slough of despondent
eating habits can hope to regain the path leading to the magical land of
gastronomic beatitude.
The fact that these “treasures” were unknown to most people until
recently in no way diminishes their fascination: all that is needed is an act of
faith to turn them into legends. As Eric Hobsbawn has pointed out, cultural
traditions can be invented ex novo, without diminishing their “cultural
yield,” that is their edifying, celebratory, ritual function.129 The same thing is
true for food, where the endorsement of tradition becomes a source of faith,
reassurance and consent. All this is an imaginary version of a past that is
“good to think,” whereby the relics of an uncontaminated tradition seem so
desirable. When we relive the magical tastes of that distant world, we enjoy
something akin in its effect to the Eucharist. “Nostalgic foods are thus
transformed into social prostheses: they promise to placate tensions and
mop up conflict. Reference to rusticity turns a meal into an imaginary
remedy for real evils.”130
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 149

The myth of genuineness thus regains all its original power of suggestion.
In contemporary Italian, the word “genuine” has gradually come to be
interchangeable with “natural,” despite the fact they are not really synonyms.
What they do reveal is growing alarm on the part of consumers regarding
the adulteration of foods. Natural has come to signify genuine, meaning
pure, uncontaminated, unadulterated. Yet “genuine” expresses a sense of
belonging that is extraneous to “natural.” The etymology of the word makes
this quite clear: “Genuine” derives from Latin genu, meaning knee, and
pertaining to the son whom the father sat on his knee as a sign of recognition.
Indeed, once this rite of acknowledgment had fallen into disuse, the term
survived in genus, meaning gender, birth, offspring. So from the etymological
point of view, “genuine” suggests an act of legitimation, the revelation of
origin and descent that ratifies blood ties, intimates affiliation and celebrates
an ancestral communion. On the other hand “natural,” as opposed to
sophisticated, adulterated, counterfeit, simply expresses the least degree of
corruption as brought about by human action. Thus while genuineness
relates symbolically to roots and traditions, that is to material skills refined
by man and handed down from one generation to another, naturalness is
simply a utopia: a “non place” freed from history and geography, a salvific
haven in contrast with wretched reality. In this sense, organic products are
certainly natural, but only typical products are truly genuine.
The fact that the past embodied by these products does not actually
belong to us and is extraneous to our own experience and traditions in no
way diminishes their desirability. Indeed, the adoptive, imaginary nature of
such origins makes them all the more enticing. When select products become
emblems of edible desire they undergo a sort of museumization that has
much in common with forms of escapism from the psycho-sociological
point of view. Having somehow escaped the ravages of time and history, the
so-called gastronomic treasures appear to be living relics of a lost paradise,
revealing hidden treasures to be saved from oblivion. Duly traced and
documented, they will thus survive for the benefit of aspiring explorers of
the lands of lost delicacies.
The “gastronaut” is able to escape the pitfalls, anxieties and repulsions of
alimentary modernity by taking refuge in nostalgic myths and imaginary
origins. Reaching a consolatory Ithaca is the seductive mirage of the new
“gastronomic archeology,” replete with “real” food fairs and “authentic” tastes.
The festival of modern food mythologies would not be complete without
mentioning changes that have come about in the sphere of cooking that
effectively establishes what and who is “in” when it comes to gastronomy.
Inventive, skilled and ostentatious, such cuisine is the polar opposite of
ordinary, everyday, family cooking, “connected to local traditions and
products, to seasonal availability, to inherited expertise handed down
through imitation and custom.”131
Haute cuisine shapes the “style” of appetites, defining what people should
want to eat and dictating the manners appropriate for convivial dining. In
other words, it defines an ideology of taste as a model of refinement,
150 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

providing the necessary rules in an orderly, persuasive liturgy. Precisely

because this is an ideological option, it takes into account the anxieties and
aspirations expressed by society. Taste is never neutral: it reflects a vision of
the world that defines what is and is not desirable.
The Mediterranean diet, the French paradox and the reinvention of
typical foods come across as “gastronomic restoration,” whereby products
that explicitly refer to the real or imaginary past are invested anew with
dignity and visibility. Haute cuisine, by contrast, heads in the opposite
direction, exploring, experimenting and inventing in its efforts to perfect
and transcend.
This is particularly apparent in the case of Nouvelle Cuisine, which in
the 1970s came to the fore as heir to French haute cuisine, but in an
avowedly revolutionary fashion. The new trend in cooking emphasized
experimentation, taking it to unprecedented extremes as regards style of
presentation, the rhetoric of recipes, new cooking techniques, new
ingredients, new combinations of tastes, a wealth of new dishes—all of
which were the prerogative and privilege of good taste at the table. An
overview of the main stages in this evolution helps bring to light the
underlying socio-cultural premises, and the appeal of novelty.
Nouvelle Cuisine was born in France in the 1970s in overt ideological
contrast and commercial competition with the Grande Cuisine of nineteenth-
century origins. In this it reflected new lifestyles, including greater informality,
more flexibility in social relationships, the availability of a wider range of
leisure pursuits, and the tendency to pay more attention to physical form.
Refined establishment cuisine involved delicacies with mysterious names
that were far from describing the content of the recipes. Dedicated to
sovereigns, celebrities, improbable places, the very sound of these dishes
conjured up obsolete images. It was a cuisine that had become pompous and
self-satisfied, suitable for the patrons of grand hotels, a crumbling, inward-
looking world that was far removed from the desire for self-affirmation of a
tumultuous nascent society. People were beginning to take vacations and to
travel, and with very different ideas in mind. Those were the years of the first
Club Méditerranées, Spartan oases of freedom in which it was finally
possible to divest oneself of the conventions and hypocrisies of middleclass
respectability.
Spontaneity, joie de vivre, the rediscovery of nature, increasing
independence in consumption and behavior, physical dynamism and a
certain vanity in body care were the new tendencies in French society. The
good food cult was aware of this as it intercepted the budding sensibilities
of a new generation of customers.
It is no coincidence that Nouvelle Cuisine was actually born in the
provinces, in an area far removed from the grand hotel circuit. The great
renewal came about thanks to the efforts of “owner restaurateurs,” who
proved to be more flexible, responsive and imaginative in their gastronomic
propositions. By making dishes lighter and simpler, with an accent on fresh
produce and genuine ingredients, they moved away from the so-called
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 151

“alchemic” cuisine of earlier times and established the commandments of

the new gastronomic faith. “The new gastronomic paradigm seems to
consist in achieving the primeval truth of foods, in capturing the deep
essence of victuals. The task of revealing this categorical principle was
entrusted to the art of chefs, who had to identify core tastes and pleasures in
their purity, rescuing them from the dross of social codes, myths and specters.
It was no longer the principle of authority that characterized the job of the
chef, but a modest, tenacious ability to bring forth what was latent. The
culinary warlord was replaced by the Socratic cook who could nurse
gastronomic truth into being.”132
The advent of a new style was an expression of this new sensibility, one
that was destined to revolutionize the vocabulary and ways of presenting
recipes. First and foremost, the language of recipes changed, moving from
pompous, esoteric titles to straightforward, somewhat bucolic descriptions
that abounded in terms such as “small,” “young,” “tender,” “warm” and
“light,” which made the potential concoction acquire a certain gentility. This
was the ecological vein of Nouvelle Cuisine: the “warm brioche with
mountain hare, new celery fondu and home-grown green tomatoes”133 is a
celebration of the idyll of nature recovered, with wild ingredients that evoke
a state of grace and innocence. In the meantime, the repeated use of
euphemisms suggests the equation between small and beautiful, providing
in words a positive explanation of what will soon be evident on the plate.
Such changes in content were accompanied by parallel reforms in how
dishes looked: they were simplified, cut back and recomposed to enhance
contrasts of color that could suggest differences of taste. Moreover, food
design related to individual plates, which meant that the superabundant,
sculptural emphasis of classic cuisine was replaced by a more graphic,
pictorial way of presenting a dish. The new sense of composition soon
spread, communicating an idea of food that was cleaner and lighter, in
antithesis to the monumental, baroque taste of earlier times with its
triumphant apology of excess and conspicuous waste. The minimalist
delicacies embodied two essential traits: they were photogenic (in their
ineffable elegance they first delighted the eye, and then were perceived as
mouth-watering); and they tended towards miniaturization (the arrangement
on individual plates, together with the modesty of the portions, acted as an
appropriate discipline for the appetites).
From the symbolic point of view, this “calligraphic cuisine” was evidently
a metaphor for the body and a votive tribute to the rising tide of body
worship: if we really are what we eat, even what we perceive as visually
desirable reflects our desires regarding ourselves. In presenting itself as small
and nice to look at, food was proclaiming the end of the binge as a morally
and aesthetically acceptable event. Body care had come to figure in Nouvelle
Cuisine, indicating that in the age of inexpensive overabundance the cult of
slimness could achieve its own gastronomic celebration.
The message implicit in this development was that what is aesthetically
attractive gratifies the eye as much as it does the palate—indeed on occasions
152 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

may satisfy the eye more than the taste buds. The age of iconophagy had
thus begun, and was all set to change the way people felt about good taste
at the table: henceforth images and words would increasingly pave the
way for desire, arousing the imagination and thereby capturing and seducing
the palate.
Forty years down the line, Nouvelle Cuisine has clearly lost the right to
adopt the initial adjective. While it has undeniably imposed a certain
scholastic rigor on the way people talk and write about food, all that remains
of the “nouvelle” claim is the tendency to experiment. In the meantime, to
designate this type of cuisine other, more fitting, epithets have come to the
fore: “creative,” “inventive” or simply “celebrity chef,” to mention but a few.
From the aesthetic point of view, how food is presented has achieved new
heights of elegance and technical skill. What we considered to be remarkably
modern and trendy twenty years ago now comes across as hopelessly gauche
and ungainly. Yet it is clear that the contemporary style derives directly from
what went before, duly updated and improved. The same basic principles
remain: serving on individual plates, the taste for minimalism and “abstract”
forms, the predilection for clean colors, and the tendency to juxtapose them.
The only true progress regards the perfecting of compositions.
What has changed, on the other hand, is the value system central to the
cult of elegant dining, expressed in visual terms by the presentation and
naming of recipes.
Nouvelle Cuisine succeeded in overcoming and renewing an approach to
cooking that was artificial, cumbersome and ridiculously pompous. No
elegant restaurant today claims to serve classic cuisine. Yet there is one
aspect of Nouvelle Cuisine’s original mission that has become increasingly
sterile and specious: the return to nature and the primacy of ingredients
over processing.
Food and recipes today bear the indelible mark of the celebrity chef, with
all focus on effect, surprise and wonderment: “today every chef is convinced
that the world is anxiously awaiting a seasonal menu of his creation, stuffed
with exciting new recipes, just as fashion designers come up with their
spring and fall collections. In pairing foods, what really counts is the fact
that the recipe should seem original and creative—in other words “good to
think.” It doesn’t matter that much whether it is also “good to eat,” that is if
the ingredients seem to be well combined when it comes to tasting. The
palate has been well prepared by the story told, predigesting the whole
novel. It is no longer a question of taste, so there is no need to achieve real
harmony. The only real customers served by high-class restaurants are the
eyes and the imagination.”134
In electing creativity as its supreme value, haute cuisine has thus become
mannered, and the glossy world of fashion has followed fast on its heels.
This explains the urge to stupefy at all costs: a tendency that occasionally
spawns something truly sublime, but that usually comes down to heavy-
handed imitation resulting in a hotchpotch of preposterous “creations” that
sacrifice the pleasure of taste on the altar of originality as an end in itself. Yet
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 153

the perpetually reinvented menu, and its sartorial equivalent in fashion

shows, is served up the world over in pretty much the same terms. Honores
mutant mores: if the specialized press flatters chefs by turning them into
legendary “designers for the palate,” and if glossy magazines portray their
culinary creations as though they were paintings in an exhibition, then it is
hardly surprising that media and figurative visibility should take absolute
pride of place.
Interweaving the beautiful and the good, visual seduction and the
pleasures of the palate, is evidently not a novelty of recent years, but rather
a constant theme of sumptuous cuisine, indeed its very trademark. Cultivated
for centuries, the art of a fine table involves techniques and expedients aimed
at embellishing the presentation of dishes. The history of this particular
discipline, like that of the other major arts, reveals different periods, masters,
trends, borrowings and influences.135 In the course of time, along with the
different styles, the meanings and values connected with the presentation of
food also change. This is likewise true for contemporary cuisine, where the
mannerist leaning has upset the order of the factors involved, such that the
aim of the image of food is no longer to stimulate the appetite. As a result,
aesthetics comes before technique, aspect before gastronomy, the wow
factor before the response of the palate. Haute cuisine has turned into a
branch of fashion. And what is fashion if not a delight for the eyes?
The taste for refined foods has thus become the witting hostage of media
enthralment, which in its turn governs the present-day definition of culinary
prestige: the illusion of appearances, the tyranny of the new, the thrill of
originality ordain that the experience of taste should be subordinated to its
simulacrum, that the pleasures of the palate should be subservient to those
of the imagination.
All this brings us back to the odyssey of taste, and what is arguably its
ultimate manifestation: the pleasures of the palate. Originally indicating a
physical sense, taste was the metaphorical term coined to account for the
cultural nature of the sensibility that allowed for the independence of art
and the refinement of customs. This figurative meaning, which once
suggested a sensor of beauty and a faculty for predilection, gradually
expanded to absorb banal everyday experiences. Having become effectively
equivalent to consumer civilization, it then returned to its original source of
inspiration: the palate, for which it established new parameters.
Just as what is unusual, eccentric and unthinkable are deemed
extraordinarily attractive in the fields of the arts and fashion, so taste
pertaining to the palate is currently engulfed in a fantasy world full of
tantalizing tales that lead further and further away from sensorial reality.
In our culinary phantasmagoria we pursue the mirage of ourselves. The
advent of alimentary modernity has failed in its promise of universal
happiness, obliging the duly disillusioned and dissatisfied to fall back on
alternative solutions. Taste is both the sensor and censor of desires, oscillating
between the individuality of choice and the aleatory principles that are
supposed to shape such preferences. The new gastronomies thus come across
154 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

as fragile, temporary constructions: therapies for the soul that provide us

with an improved image of ourselves and encourage the somatization of our
appetites. In our consumer behavior and the corrective measures with which
we try to correct them, we end up by resembling a caricature of what we
would like to be, or to avoid becoming.
What different periods and civilizations have considered “good to think”
has always been a conceptual construct that absorbs and rearranges myths
and legend, beliefs and observance, taboos and superstition. This is still the
case today in the sphere of eating habits, which differ from those of the past
on account of their debatable, transitory nature.
Another aspect of contemporary taste is the tendency to project the
threshold of desire beyond actuality, towards nostalgia, magic and the
intangible. In this sense, taste increasingly resembles a dream world,
manipulating and distorting reality with the injection of myths, archetypes
and specters. Taste thus corrects and makes up for sensorial experience,
subordinating it to visionary appetites and edible infatuations: fanciful,
ecstatic and enraptured, it mirrors itself in the constantly changing
kaleidoscope of an imaginary world overflowing with charm and short-lived
chimeras.
A brief apologue of gastronomic theogony.
Taste today cannot be ensnared by the demon of bingeing and drunkenness,
by lubricious appetites, orgiastic pleasures and unbridled desires. But nor
can it be trapped by the despotic god of temperance, with its concomitant
repression of all drive and yearning in the name of two virtuous ideals: the
aesthetics of appearances and the ethics of longevity.
By taking flight into the dream world, taste can explore distant
constellations, pursue elusive meteors and explore unknown planets. In so
doing it necessarily adopts a new tutelary god: “Hermes is the god who
leads our dreams. A small, dubious, superficial, lying god who abandons
himself to toying with the imagination.”136

The Triumph of Pleasure

Based on the reception of beauty as a contemplative activity, aesthetics has
taken on the persuasive power of a revealed truth. Like every self-respecting
cult, it has also imposed its own orthodoxy and the liturgy necessary to
support its dogmas. Western culture has thus used its museums, schools and
academies, its intellectuals and art merchants, to spread and perpetuate the
paradigm of pure taste.
Because it is interiorized like an article of faith, this paradigm has had an
incontestable impact, lending itself to a wide range of distortions and misuse.
To justify the aesthetics of disinterestedness, Kant had recourse to ecumenical
motivations based on the dichotomy between pure and contaminated,
contemplation and evasion, edifying and delectable. Since then, other
dichotomies have been added to the list, thereby introducing new parameters:
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 155

highbrow versus lowbrow, Kultur versus Kitsch, and sophisticated versus

commercial.
Reformulated in these terms, instead of acting in the interests of cultural
integration, as philosophers had once believed possible, the paradigm of
pure taste has been adopted as a tool of cultural exclusion and discrimination.
As Bourdieu has clearly shown, rather than being a pleasure of the mind, the
paradigm has worked like a sense of disgust regarding whatever is seen as
being easy, and as an expression of disapproval of vulgar tastes. As such, it
has become a criterion of distinction and contempt that sublimates privilege
as the symbol of freedom from necessity.
Kant’s edict has thus ratified the apartheid of tastes on the basis of the
cultural practices underlying their arousal and surrounding their satisfaction
[Figure 1].
One ramification of this state of affairs concerns taste as disinterestedness,
which takes respectful place under the aegis of the arts and knowledge that
subscribe to the same cause. Central to this system is all that can be described
as classical, from literature to the theater, and music to the figurative arts. By
making a museum of the past, it is possible to define and delimit the sphere
in which aesthetic reception can be exercised. Located far apart from this
conception is the genre that revolves around what is pleasurable, tickled by
the whims of fashion and the delights of the palate so dramatically
stigmatized by Kant. More recently the new arts of entertainment have
added to the potential range of pleasures, thereby eliciting horrified criticism
on the part of the purists, from Clement Greenberg to Theodor Adorno.
Yet it is precisely this very “taste for what is pleasurable” that has fostered
new expressive genres and nurtured a flourishing cultural industry, thereby
redefining the aesthetic landscape of the 1900s: fashion, film, television, pop
and rock music, comics, advertising and styling (as opposed to good design)
have all contributed to the advent of a new popular culture based on leisure,
hedonism and consumption—in other words a world that is poles apart
from the sphere of traditional folklore.
In the light of current developments in cultural consumption, the
hegemony of Kantian style aesthetics pertains to a particular historic period,
at this point confined to a sterile limbo by socio-cultural events and
dynamics. In contemporary society, lifestyles are transitory and fragmentary,
such that the paradigm of pure taste can no longer exercise the decisive
power of earlier times. Though it still survives within the wide range of
entertainments available to the inhabitants of the Western world, it is not
predominant, but on an equal footing with many other pastimes that are
equally legitimate and culturally more up to date.
Many factors have contributed to the decline of the pure taste paradigm:
the growing relevance of the mass media and consumer culture, a phenomenon
that has attracted increasing numbers of scholars; the postmodern revolution
and the progressive decline of the cultural divide between elevated and lesser
tastes; the spread to various fields of the mechanisms typical of fashion and
the star system (for example, to literature and cooking).
156
F IGURE 1 The Tree of Tastes from its roots to the present.
 ECONOMY OF TASTE IN CONSUMER SOCIETY 157

The pleasure genre has thus made headway in people’s perceptions of

society, easing the terms of access to the tastes of privilege. With prêt-à-
porter and the licensing system, fashion has undergone a process of
democratization, accompanied by a vast widening of choice in the field of
food consumption, and thus individual appetites.
The plurality of lifestyles and the concomitant aestheticization of daily
existence together decree that individual behavior is, to a certain extent, a
question of personal choice. This is the culmination of a long historic and
social process that began, as Sombart pointed out,137 with the interweaving
of luxury and capitalism, investing Western society as a whole, and extending
its effects to increasingly widespread strata of society.
The advent of consumer society has not signified, as various moralists
and old fogeys have claimed, an epidemic of bad taste and a barbarian
invasion of the hortus clausus of symbolic and social exchange. What it has
really brought about is anthropologically more interesting: the universal
adoption of taste as a means for individual expression and gratification.
Mass hedonism is the formula that has become part of everyday language,
legitimizing the enthronement of pleasure at the top of human endeavor.
The taste for what is superfluous, self-referential and ephemeral is the forma
mentis inscribed in the collective dream of prosperity, progress and growing
expectations.
Abraham Moles was right on target (albeit unwittingly, since he was a
convinced imitator of the Kantian paradigm) when he used the expression
“the art of happiness” as the subtitle for an essay he wrote on the psychology
of kitsch,138 which he considered a sort of pathology of the mind. If the role
of taste, be it good or bad (de gustibus), is to investigate self-awareness by
means of the emotions and pleasures that come to the fore, then the matter
at stake is happiness. In the modest guise of mass hedonism, the state of
inebriation, perceived by Nietzsche as the viaticum of those “strong spirits”
who had freed themselves of the tame consolation of morality, amounts to a
state of perpetually aroused desire: “To desire is to be happy: the satiety of
happiness is simply the last instant of desire. To be full of desire with constant
new desires is to be happy.”139
Lipovetsky dealt with this subject in a recent study devoted to analyzing
the mindsets and sensibilities relating to the practices of consumerism.
According to the author, the myth of the homo felix, believed by the
Enlightenment to be the supreme ideal of humankind, has found its true
utopia in the profusion of material goods of consumer society. Consumer
culture started to spread in the post-war period, when the accent moved
from the demands of status to those of pleasure. Consumer culture “has
decreed that hedonism should be the legitimate goal for everyone, and this
has transformed the context and style of consumption, investing it with an
aura of lightness and lucidity, of youthfulness and eroticism.”140
In recent years this stage has been followed by another, which the
author calls the era of hyper-consumption, characterized by the acceleration
and intensification of emotional and personal gratification and experience
158 THE INVENTION OF TASTE

relating to the practices of consumption: “Hyper-consumer society unfolds

under the banner of happiness. The production of goods, services, media,
leisure time, education, urban furnishings, everything is organized to
maximize our happiness. Eating, sleeping, seducing, resting, making love,
communicating with children, keeping fit: is there any sphere that still eludes
the recipes for making us happy? We have passed from the closed world to
the infinite universe of happiness.”141
Clearly this is intimately connected with the individual expression of
tastes in the exploration of the possible gratifications offered by the endlessly
expanding world of what is pleasurable, of what can procure satisfaction.
Impure, changeable and concupiscent though it may be, taste is the true
engine of consumer society, the organ of individual preferences and the tool
with which people build up their personalities. Spurned by educated
aesthetics, it has its revenge in ratifying an unalienable right: the search for
human happiness; in other words the right to desire. To desire through taste
means expressing individual aspirations, formulating a desire that shapes
our daily existence: the desire that we should not be resigned to being what
we are, and the hope that we may improve our lot, shape our individual
personalities freely, and live life as an active project rather than suffer it as a
passive fate.
 NOTES

Chapter 1 The Success of a Metaphor

1 B. Croce, Storia dell’età barocca in Italia, Laterza, Bari, 1929.
2 F. Schümmer, Die Entwicklung des Geschmackbegriff in der Philosophie des
17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, “Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte,” 1: 120–41, 1956.
3 U. Franckowiak, Der gute Geschmack. Studien zur Entwicklung des
Geschmackbegriff, Fink, Munich, 1994.
4 R. Klein, Form and Meaning. Essays on the Renaissance and Modern Art,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1981.
5 A. Hauser, The Social History of Art, Routledge, London, 1999, p. 68.
6 Hauser, see note 5, pp. 38–9.
7 Hauser, see note 5, p. 48.
8 A.K. Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, Dover
Publications, New York, 1956, p. 108.
9 A.K. Coomaraswamy, “A figure of speech or a figure of thought?,” in A.K.
Coomaraswamy, Selected Papers. Traditional Art and Symbolism, Bollingen,
Dehli, 1977, p. 13.
10 Coomaraswamy, see note 8, p. 16.
11 Coomaraswamy, see note 8, pp. 64–5.
12 Coomaraswamy, see note 9, p. 14.
13 A.K. Coomaraswamy, “Ornament,” in Coomaraswamy, see note 9, p. 253.
14 B. Croce, Estetica come scienza dell’espressione linguistica generale. Teoria e
storia, Adelphi, Milan, 1990, p. 235.
15 Croce, see note 14, p. 235.
16 Croce, see note 14, p. 239.
17 B. Croce, “Iniziazione all’estetica del Settecento” (1933), in B. Croce, Filosofia.
Poesia. Storia, Ricciardi, Milan and Naples, 1951, p. 410.
18 In the edition of 1612 and 1623, the only meaning attributed to taste is that of
“pleasure, delight, appetite.” In the 1691 edition, this interpretation is traced
back to the Latin terms delectatio and voluptas, whereas the first meaning of
taste is given as “try” (libatio). Moreover, the same edition ushers in the
expression “good taste,” restricted to the practical sense that Croce attributed to
Gracián: “you can talk about having good taste in any sphere: in other words,
to be intelligent.” The Latin circumlocutions adopted to clarify the matter were
peritiam habere, probe callere, acri iudicio pollere, in other words to have

159
160 NOTES

practical knowledge, great skill or depth of judgment. The 1738 edition

maintained the same approach, but with the additions of “highly” before the
word “intelligent” and “intended as good.”
19 Zuccolo, quoted by Croce, see note 1, p. 166, my italics.
20 Voltaire, “Goût,” in Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonnée des sciences,
des arts et des métiers, vol. VII , Livourne, 1778, pp. 746–7. At the end of
this entry, Voltaire reins in the universal extension of the metaphor: “There
are many countries—he writes—as yet untouched by taste. They are those
in which society has not developed, in which men and women do not
resemble each other, or where certain arts such as sculpture and painting
are forbidden by religion. Where there is little society, where the spirit is
cramped, its stimulus is blunted: what is lacking is the matter from which
taste is formed. This is why the Asians have never possessed well-made
works of any sort and why taste has been the exclusive patrimony of certain
peoples of Europe.”
21 The term is used to refer to metaphors that are absorbed into everyday language
out of necessity, without appearing to be overly manipulated: the neck of a
bottle, the leg of a table, the head of a pin, and so on. The extended meaning of
the word taste went one step further, however, ultimately affecting the original
sense of the term.
22 “Just as the gourmet recognizes and immediately perceives the mixture of two
liquors, so the man of taste, the connoisseur, will be aware at first glance of the
mixing of two styles” (Voltaire, see note 20).
23 Voltaire, see note 20.
24 Montesquieu, Essai sur le goût, 1757.
25 Voltaire, see note 20.
26 Croce on Du Bos, in Estetica, see note 14, pp. 244–5.
27 Croce on Home, in Estetica, see note 14, p. 601.
28 A. Laurent, De l’individualisme, enquête sur le retour de l’individu, Presses
Universitaires de France, Paris, 1985.
29 Clearly the epistemological decline of the disputatio, its diminishing relevance to
teaching and its demise as a method for settling complex questions all
contributed to the loss of validity of the medieval adage.

Chapter 2 Pleasures and Morals

1 Tacitus, Annals, XVI , 18. Elegantia is the Latin term that best sums up what we
mean by taste today.
2 P. Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” in P. Ariès and G. Duby (eds), A History of
Private Life: from Pagan Rome to Bysantium, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA , 2003, p. 123.
3 F. Revel, Un festin en paroles. Histoire littéraire de la sensibilité gastronomique
de l’Antiquité à nos jours, Plon, Paris, 1995, p. 53.
4 See. J. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes. The Consuming Passions of
Classical Athens, Fortuna Press, London, 1998.
 NOTES 161

5 B. Lançon, Rome in Late Antiquity: Everyday Life and Urban Change,

Routledge, London, 2001.
6 U.E. Paoli, Vita romana. Usi, costumi, istituzioni, tradizioni, Mondadori, Milan,
1990, p. 96.
7 R. Flacelière, Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles, Macmillan, New
York, 1965, p. 151.
8 See C.J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury. A Conceptual and Historical Investigation,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, ch. 3.
9 R. Muchembled, L’invention de l’homme moderne. Culture et sensibilités en
France du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, Fayard, Paris, pp. 458–9, 1994.
10 See N. Elias, The Court Society, University College Dublin Press, Dublin, 2006;
and N. Elias, The Civilizing Process, Blackwell, Oxford, 2000.
11 C. Casagrande and S. Vecchio, I sette peccati capitali. Storia dei peccati nel
Medioevo, Einaudi, Turin, 2000, p. XII .
12 M. Onfray, “Sept péchés capitaux,” in G. Viatte, D. Ottinger and M. Onfray,
Les Péchées capitaux, Éditions du Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1996, p. 44.
13 Onfray, see note 12, p. 48.
14 See W. Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism, Routledge, London, 1930.
15 Elias, The Court Society, see note 10.
16 W. Sombart, Luxury and Capitalism, University of Michigan Press, Michigan,
1967.
17 Veyne, see note 2, p.179.
18 Elias, The Court Society, see note 10.
19 Sombart, see note 16.
20 Sombart, see note 16.
21 Sombart, see note 16.
22 Sombart, see note 16.
23 See B. de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits
(1723).
24 Gregorius Magnus, quoted by Thomas Aquinas in Quaestiones disputatae
De malo, q. 14, a. 1.
25 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II -II , q. 148, a.6 and Quaestiones
disputatae De malo, q. 14, a. 4
26 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, see note 25, q. 150, a.2.
27 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, see note 25, q.149. a.1.
28 Quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, see note 25, q. 148, a.4
29 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, see note 25, q. 148, a.4.
30 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, see note 25, q. 14, a.3.
31 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, see note 25.
32 It is worth pointing out that in French, the term gourmet originally referred to
wine tasters, whereas gourmand meant “glutton.” See J.-L. Flandrin,
“Distinctions through taste,” in P. Ariès and G. Duby, A History of Private Life:
Passions of the Renaissance, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA , 2003.
162 NOTES

33 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, see note 25, q. 150, a.2.

34 The faculties of the soul are the consequence of the temperaments of the body is
the title of a famous work by Galen.
35 Galen, Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur.
36 M. Jeanneret, Des mets et des mots. Banquets et propos de table à la
Renaissance, Corti, Paris, 1987, p. 80.
37 B. Platina, Il piacere onesto e la buona salute, Einaudi, Turin, 1985, pp. 17–18.
38 “The civilising of appetite, if we may call it that, appears to have been partly
related to the increasing security, regularity, reliability and variety of food
supply. But just as the civilising of appetite was entangled with several other
strands of the civilising process, including the transformation of table manners,
so the improvement of food supplies was only one strand in a complex of
developments within the social figuration which together exerted a compelling
force over the way people behaved. The increased security of food supplies was
made possible by the extension of trade, the progressive division of labour in a
growing commercial economy, and also by the process of state-formation and
internal pacification” (S. Mennell, All Manners of Food. Eating and taste in
England and France from Middle Ages to the Present, University of Illinois
Press, Urbana and Chicago, 19962, p. 32).
39 N. Elias, The Civilizing Process, see note 10.
40 M. Montanari, La fame e l’abbondanza. Storia dell’alimentazione in Europa,
Laterza, Rome and Bari, 1993, p. 75.
41 Montanari, see note 40, pp. 106–8.
42 Mennell, see note 38, pp 33–4.
43 The very term gradually took on a different meaning: “Delicacy” initially meant
the quality of being addicted to sensual pleasure and encompassed by lust and
gluttony, but mostly gluttony [. . .] Delicacy was the excessive immersion in the
bodily pleasure—especially that of the palate—to the exclusion of all else. But
slowly the notion of delicacy got caught up in the civilization process; it got
refined. Instead of referencing sin, it now referenced a delicacy of taste, a
sensitivity to the elegant, to the pleasing, to refined and subtle sensation, so that
from the immoral beginnings in gorging, it ends by the time Hume is writing in
the first half of eighteenth century, marking feelings of modesty, and the sense of
propriety, and a delicate regard for the feeling of others” (W.I. Miller,
“Gluttony,” in R.C. Solomon (ed.), Wicked Pleasures, Rowman & Littlefield,
Lanham, 1999, p. 38).
44 Mennell, see note 38, p. 33.
45 Mennell, see note 38, p. 71.
46 Revel, see note 3, ch. 5.
47 P. Gillet, Le goût et les mots. Littérature et gastronomie (XIVe–XXe siécles),
Payot, Paris, 1993, p. 101.
48 “From the eighteenth century the belief that the quality of a food depended on
the predominant humor of the eater no longer held sway. And nor did the
relationship between the different national cuisines and the temperament of the
nation in question. These were simply considered objectively good or bad, and
that was all that mattered. And even if good taste was not evenly spread among
 NOTES 163

different nations—Voltaire discussed the matter in depth—gourmets themselves

are able to appreciate good cooking wherever they happen to be. Does it not
seem strange that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the only good
cuisines were found to be in Europe, and especially in France? No. There was no
room for doubt. It became a common opinion that the French, who had learned
from the Italians, had the most refined taste in the world” (J.L. Flandrin, “Dalla
dietetica alla gastronomia, o la liberazione della gola,” in J.-L. Flandrin and M.
Montanari (eds), Storia dell’alimentazione, Laterza, Rome and Bari, 1997,
p. 549).
49 See S. Peterson, Acquired Taste. The French Origins of Modern Cooking,
Cornell, Ithaca and London, 1994.
50 Peterson, see note 49, p. 184.
51 Peterson, see note 49, p. 185.
52 Peterson, see note 49, p. 186.
53 Mennell, see note 38.

Chapter 3 The Birth of Aesthetics and the

Bifurcation of Tastes
1 See G. Dickie, The Century of Taste. The Philosophical Odyssey of Taste in the
Eighteenth Century, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1996.
2 Towards the end of the 1700s, Chamfort observed that “good taste and tact
have more in common than many men of letters claim to believe. Tact is good
taste applied to composure and conduct; and bon ton is good taste applied to
discourse and conversation” (quoted in P. D’Angelo and S. Velotti (eds), Il “non
so che.” Storia di un’idea estetica, Aesthetica, Palermo, 1997, p. 24).
3 Voltaire, Le Mondain, 1736.
4 V. Bozal, El Gusto, Machado, Madrid, 1999.
5 W. Tatarkiewicz, A History of Six Ideas: An Essay in Aesthetics, Kluwer,
Dordrecht, 1980, p. 139.
6 Tatarkiewicz, see note 5, p. 140.
7 See B.J. Feijóo, Teatro crìtico universal [1765], Tomo VI , Discurso XI , Espasa-
Calpe, Madrid, 1944.
8 Feijóo, see note 7, p. 95.
9 Feijóo, see note 7, p. 100.
10 Feijóo, see note 7, p. 100.
11 Feijóo, see note 7, p. 101.
12 Feijóo, see note 7, p. 101.
13 E. Burke, On Taste: Introductory Discourse [1759], The Harvard Classics,
Cambridge, MA , 1909–1914, p. 5.
14 Burke, see note 13, p. 6 my italics.
15 G. Sertoli, “Il gusto nell’Inghilterra del Settecento,” in L. Russo (ed.), Il Gusto.
Storia di un’idea estetica, cit., p. 107.
164 NOTES

16 Sertoli, see note 15, p. 107.

17 Sertoli, see note 15, p. 106.
18 P. Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art, Seuil, Paris, 1992, p. 472.
19 Sertoli, see note 15, p. 102.
20 Sertoli, see note 15, p. 103.
21 S. Givone, “L’estetica del Novecento,” in M. Ferraris, S. Givone and
F. Vercellone, Estetica, Tea, Milan, 2000, p. 85.
22 D. Hume, Of the Standard of taste [1741], The Harvard Classics, Cambridge,
MA , 1909–1914, p. 7.
23 Hume, see note 22, p. 8.
24 Hume, see note 22, p. 15.
25 Hume, see note 22, p. 9.
26 Hume, see note 22, p. 16.
27 Hume, see note 22, p. 18.
28 I. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2000, pp. 215–20.
29 L. Ferry, Homo Aestheticus. The Invention of Taste in the Democratic Age,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993.
30 Ferry, see note 29, p. 58.
31 Hume, see note 22, p. 26, my italics.
32 See D. Summers, “Why did Kant call taste a ‘common sense’?,” in P. Mattick
(ed.), Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, New York and Victoria, 1993, pp. 120–51.
33 R. Schusterman, “Of the scandal of taste: social privilege as nature in the
aesthetic theories of Hume and Kant,” in Mattick, see note 32, p. 102.
34 Schusterman, see note 33.
35 D. Hume, “Of refinement in the arts” [1753], in D. Hume, Political Discourses,
Part II , Essay II .
36 D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature [1739–1740], Book II , Part II , Section V.
37 D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature [1739–1740], Book III, Part III, Section I.
38 Ferry, see note 29, p. 74.
39 Tatarkiewicz, see note 5, p. 312.
40 A.G. Baumgarten, Aesthetica, Olms, Hildesheim, 1970.
41 C. Batteux, Les Beaux-Arts rèduits à un même principe, Durand, Paris, 1746.
42 See J. Barnouw, “The beginnings of ‘aesthetics’ and the Leibnizian Conception
of sensation,” in Mattick, see note 33, p. 80.
43 In his Critique of Judgment, see note 28, Kant used the term “aesthetic” in the
etymological sense to refer to both bodily and spiritual sensitivity (in other
words, the experience of beauty that was later to become its meaning).
44 J. Stolnitz, “On the origins of ‘aesthetic disinterestedness’ ,” Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism, XX (1961), pp. 131–43.
45 I. Kant, see note 28.
 NOTES 165

46 Kant, see note 28, p. 92.

47 Kant, see note 28, p. 92.
48 Kant, see note 28, p. 93.
49 Kant, see note 28, p. 97.
50 Kant, see note 28, p. 97.
51 Kant, see note 28, p. 99.
52 Kant, see note 28, p. 106.
53 Kant, see note 28, p. 107.
54 Kant, see note 28, p. 108.
55 Kant, see note 28, p. 108.
56 Kant, see note 28, p. 94.
57 Kant, see note 28, p. 96.
58 Kant, see note 28, p. 121.
59 Kant, see note 28, pp. 165–6.
60 Summers, note 32.
61 Kant, see note 28, p. 163.
62 Kant, see note 28, p. 163.
63 Kant, see note 28, p. 165.
64 Kant, see note 28, pp. 170, 173.
65 Kant, see note 28, p. 176.
66 Kant, see note 28, p. 177.
67 Kant, see note 28, p. 185 (clearly borrowed from Batteux).
68 Kant, see note 28, p. 163.
69 Kant, see note 28, p. 163.
70 Kant, see note 28, p. 182.
71 Kant, see note 28, p. 206.
72 Kant, see note 28, p. 207.
73 Kant, see note 28, p. 211.
74 Tatarkiewicz, see note 5, p. 16.
75 Tatarkiewicz, see note 5, pp. 14, 15.
76 Tatarkiewicz, see note 5, p. 84.
77 Tatarkiewicz, see note 5, p. 84.
78 Poetry for the Ancient Greeks was always recited, never written. Moreover,
there was no form of exclusively instrumental music, because the voice always
played a part in it, accompanied by poetry or dance.
79 Tatarkiewicz, see note 5, p. 111.
80 Tatarkiewicz, see note 5, p. 114.
81 H.R. Jauss, Kleine Apologie der Ästhetische Erfahrung, Universitätsverlag,
Konstanz, 1972, p. 9.
82 Jauss, see note 81, p. 10.
166 NOTES

83 C. Korsmeyer, Making sense of Taste. Food and Philosophy, Cornell University

Press, Ithaca and London, 1999, p. 51.
84 I. Kant, Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View [1798], Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2006, p. 4.
85 Kant, see note 84.
86 Kant, see note 84, my italics.
87 T. Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Oxford, Blackwell, 1990, p. 9.
88 Eagleton, see note 87, p. 23.
89 Eagleton, see note 87, pp. 93–4.
90 “There is a difficult tension within bourgeois society between the ideology of
production and the ideology of consumption. Since the former realm is generally
unpleasant, sanctions and disciplines are required for the subject to buckle itself
in its tasks. There is no suggestion that this world of production exists for the
subject [. . .] Like Kant’s aesthetic object, the commodity would seem designed
especially for our faculties, addressed to us in its very being. Viewed from the
standpoint of consumption, the world is uniquely ours, shaped to nestle in our
palms” (Eagleton, see note 87, p. 92).
91 Eagleton, see note 87, p. 96.
92 C. Weneger, The Discipline of Taste and Feeling, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago and London, 1992, p. 28.
93 P. Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Routledge,
New York, 2013.
94 Bourdieu, see note 93, p. 488.
95 Bourdieu, see note 93, p. 493.
96 T. Eagleton, The Function of Criticism, Verso, London, 1984, p. 16.
97 N. Schneider, Geschichte der Ästhetik von der Aufklärung bis zur Postmoderne,
Reclam, Stuttgart, 1996, p. 43.
98 Schneider, see note 97, p. 52.
99 See J.-L. Flandrin, “Distinctions through taste,” in P. Ariès and G. Duby, A
History of Private Life: Passions of the Renaissance, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA , 2003.

Chapter 4 The Arts of Happiness: A Journey

Through Impure Tastes
1 J. de Berchoux, La Gastronomie ou l’homme de champe à table. Poème
didactique en IV chants pour servir de suite a l’Homme des champs, Giguet et
Michaud, Paris, 1801.
2 G. de la Reynière, « Itineraire nutritif ou promenade d’un gourmand dans divers
quartier de Paris », 1803, reprinted in G. de la Reynière, Ecrits gastronomiques,
10/18, Paris, 1978, p. 233. On the same subject see also J.-P. Pitte, “Nascita e
diffusione dei ristoranti,” in J.-L. Flandrin and M. Montanari (eds), Storia
dell’alimentazione, Laterza, Rome and Bari, 1997, pp. 601–9.
 NOTES 167

3 T. Zeldin, Histoire des passions françaises 1848–1945. 3. Goût et corruption,

Seuil, Paris, 1981, p. 439.
4 J.P. Aron, The Art of Eating in France: Manners and Menus in the Nineteenth
Century, Harper & Row, New York, 1975, p. 112.
5 J.-C. Bonnet, introduction to G. de La Reynière, Ecrits gastronomiques, see
note 2, p. 30.
6 J.-L. Flandrin, “Gourmets, gourmands et friands,” in Croniques de Platine. Pour
une gastronomie historique, Jacob, Paris, 1992, pp. 93ff.
7 Bonnet, see note 5, p. 29.
8 P. Gillet, Soyons Français à table!, Payot, Paris, 1994, pp. 131–2.
9 J. de Berchoux would appear to have become the Baumgarten of the situation.
10 See G. Marchesi and L. Vercelloni, La tavola imbandita. Storia estetica della
cucina, Laterza, Rome-Bari, 2001, ch. II , § 1 (Il pasticciere architetto).
11 Bonnet, see note 5, p. 24.
12 Gillet, see note 8, p. 133.
13 F. Portinari, “Introduction” to G. de La Reynière, Almanacco dei buongustai
seguito dal Manuale dell’Anfitrione, Serra e Riva, Milan, 1981, p. 15.
14 Bonnet, see note 5, p. 46.
15 R. Barthes, Physiologie du goût avec une Lecture de Roland Barthes, Hermann,
Paris, 1975, p. 8.
16 Bonnet, see note 5, p. 51.
17 J.A. Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, Dover, Toronto, 2002, p. 251.
18 In Meditation XII , towards the end of an original “physiognomic analysis,”
Brillat-Savarin claimed the existence of a social class better suited than others to
the cult of good food: “Men of finance are the heroes of gourmandise.” To
whom he added doctors, men of letters and bigots as lesser ranking priests of
the new religion.
19 P.J.G. Cabanis, Relations between the Physical and Moral Aspects of Man, Johns
Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1981.
20 M. Faucheux, Fêtes de Table, Lebaud, Paris, 1997, p. 187.
21 The complete title of Brillat-Savarin’s treatise is Physiologie du goût.
Méditations de gastronomie trascendante.
22 M. Onfray, La raison gourmande, Paris, Grasset, 1995, p. 114.
23 C.F. Volnay, Tableau du climat et du sol del États Unis d’Amerique, Courcier-
Dentu, Paris, 1803.
24 See S. Moravia, “Filosofia e medicina in Francia nel XVIII secolo,” in S.
Moravia, Filosofia e scienze umane nell’età dei Lumi, Sansoni, Florence, 1982,
pp. 109ff.
25 Meditation XXI of the Physiology of Taste, devoted to obesity, begins with a
telling “If I were a trained physician” (Brillat-Savarin, see note 17, p. 172).
26 Brillat-Savarin, see note 17, Meditation XXI , p. 180.
27 Brillat-Savarin, see note 17, Meditation III , p. 33.
28 Brillat-Savarin, see note 17, Meditation XIII , pp. 126–30.
168 NOTES

29 Brillat-Savarin, see note 17, Aphorisms, p. 4.

30 Brillat-Savarin, see note 17, Dialogue, p. 6.
31 M. Facheaux, Fêtes de table, Lebaud, Paris, 1997, pp. 193–4.
32 Facheaux, see note 31, p. 194.
33 Brillat-Savarin, see note 17, “Footnote of a patriotic gastronome,” Meditation
XI , p. 113.
34 This is how Brillat-Savarin liked to refer to himself, though of course no
mention is made of the related seat of Academia.
35 In other words, The Physiology of Taste (see Brillat-Savarin, see note 17).
36 Brillat-Savarin, see note 17, p. 113.
37 H. de Balzac, Traité de la vie élégante [1830], Payot & Rivages, Paris, 2012.
38 See R. König, Macht und Reiz der Mode, Econ, Düsseldorf and Wien, 1971.
39 D. Roche, Histoire de choses banales. Naissance de la consommation (XXVIIe–
XIXe siècle), Fayard, Paris, 1997, p. 209.
40 The one difference lies in intensity and duration: while you can change
restaurant every evening, fashion calls for devotion that lasts at least one
season.
41 The period from the second half of the nineteenth century through to the early
1960s. See G. Lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère. La mode et son destin dans
les sociétés modernes, Gallimard, Paris, 1987, ch. II .
42 The “Great Sacrifice” is the historical phenomenon that marked the rejection of
frivolity on the part of male elegance and the adoption in its stead of dark, drab
and serious middle-class attire that stood for the new ideals of work,
commitment and profit. The expression was coined by John Carl Flügel in his
Psychology of Clothes, The Hogarth Press, London, 1930.
43 P. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie. A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth
Century, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996, p. 30.
44 See P. Sparke, As Long as It’s Pink. The Sexual Politics of Taste, Pandora,
London and San Francisco, 1995.
45 Lipovetsky, see note 41, p. 107.
46 Lipovetsky, see note 41, p. 32.
47 “Among savage peoples, clothing and decoration (like their antecedents,
tattooing, painting, etc.) start anatomically at or near the genital region, and
have very frequently some definite reference to a sexual occasion (puberty,
marriage, etc.)” (Flügel, see note 42, p. 26).
48 Tatarkievicz, see note 5, p. 121.
49 D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, XI (1740), Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2000.
50 G. Simmel, “Die Koketterie,” in Philosophische Kultur, Klinkhardt, Leipzig,
1911, p. 115.
51 Voltaire, “Goût,” in Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonnée des sciences, des
arts et des métiers, vol. VII , Livourne, 1778, p. 746.
52 I. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View [1798], Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 142–3.
 NOTES 169

53 Kant, see note 52.

54 Kant, see note 52, p. 148.
55 See A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena. A Collection of Philosophical
Essays, Cosimo, New York, 2007.
56 Schopenhauer, see note 52, p. 74.
57 Schopenhauer, see note 52, p. 75.
58 W.G. Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages,
Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals, Ginn & Co., Boston, 1906, p. 194.
59 Lipovetsky, see note 5, p. 67.
60 Lipovetsky, see note 5, p. 68.

Chapter 5 The Economy of Taste in

Consumer Society
1 É. Zola, Au Bonheur des Dames, Flammarion, Paris, 1999 (1883), p. 131.
2 Quoted by W. Benjamin in The Arcades Project, Harvard University Press,
Boston, 1999, p. 31.
3 Benjamin, see note 2, p. 42.
4 Benjamin, see note 2, p. 11.
5 M.B. Miller, The Bon Marché. Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store,
1869–1920, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1981, p. 183.
6 Benjamin, see note 2, p. 7.
7 O. Rühle quoted by Benjamin, see note 2, p. 181.
8 D. Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic. The Aesthetic of Consumerism,
Basic Books, New York, 2000, p. X.
9 R.H. Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century
France, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982, p. 71.
10 P. Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Routledge,
New York, 2013, pp. 488–9.
11 Bourdieu, see note 10.
12 P. Perrot, “De l’apparat au bien-être: les avatars d’un superflu nècessaire,” in J.P.
Goubert (ed.), Du luxe au confort, Belin, Paris, 1988, p. 45.
13 See P. Sparke, As Long as It’s Pink. The Sexual Politics of Taste, Pandora,
London and San Francisco, 1995, p. 39.
14 H.P. Berlage, “Some reflections on classical architecture” (1908), in Thoughts on
Style 1886–1909, The Getty Center Publication Program, Santa Monica, 1996,
pp. 123–6.
15 A. Loos, Ornament and Crime (1908), Ariadne Press, Riverside, 1998, p. 167.
16 Loos, see note 15.
17 Henry Van de Velde (1863–1957) was one of the principal exponents of Art
Nouveau.
170 NOTES

18 Loos, see note 15, p. 155.

19 Loos, see note 15, p. 187.
20 Loos, see note 15, p. 185 (my italics).
21 S. Ewen, All Consuming Images. The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture,
Basic Books, New York, 1988, pp. 130–1.
22 It is no coincidence that some of the foremost names applied to this trend
derived from specialized furniture stores: the Art Nouveau store in Paris,
Liberty’s in London, and—to a slightly lesser extent—Tiffany in New York. No
commercial concern, however fearless in its ambition, could have volunteered to
“launch” the rationalist style.
23 Le Corbusier-Saugnier, “Trois rappels à Mm. les Architectes,” in L’Esprit
Nouveau, 4 January 1921, p. 457.
24 C.G. Argan, L’arte moderna, Sansoni, Florence, 1988, p. 275.
25 S. Ewen, see note 21, p. 143.
26 P. Blake, Form Follows Fiasco. Why Modern Architecture Hasn’t Worked,
Atlantic and Little, Brown & Co., Boston and Toronto, 1997, p. 144.
27 Blake, see note 26, p. 138.
28 Blake, see note 26, p. 143.
29 Blake, see note 26, p. 65.
30 O. Boissière, Streamline. Le design americain des années 30–40, Rivage, Paris
and Marseille, 1987, p. 15.
31 G. Dorfles, Il Kitsch. Antologia del cattivo gusto, Mazzotta, Milan, 19764,
p. 265.
32 V. Gregotti, “Kitsch e architettura,” in Dorfles, see note 31, p. 267.
33 Although it was more expressive, imaginative and colorful, the Post-Modernists
did not really bring about much in the way of change regarding the received
taste of the Modernist Movement. In a famous pamphlet Tom Wolfe described
Post-Modernism as a form of “scholasticism” invented to “test the subtlety of
other architects,” in other words of orthodox Modernists (see T. Wolfe, From
Bauhaus to Our House, Bantam Books, New York, 1999, p. 81).
34 Blake, see note 26.
35 Le Corbusier, “Eyes which do not see . . . III : Automobiles” (1921), in Towards
a New Architecture, Dover, Mineola, NY, 1985, p. 359. The conclusion is
particularly interesting: the plain “English suit” is the antithesis to the fatuity of
women’s fashions, while the “easel paintings” of the gentleman (as opposed to
the trinkets and the naïve frescoes of the peasant) establish the proper rules of
aesthetic enjoyment.
36 F. Haskell, “Enemies of Modern Art,” The New York Reviews of Books, June
30, 1983.
37 Haskell, see note 26.
38 W. Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility,
Belknap (Harvard University Press), Boston, 2008.
39 Much the same thing had happened five years earlier with another famous work
by Duchamp, the Futuristic Nude going down stairs n. 2, which also met with
 NOTES 171

aesthetic incomprehension, albeit of a different nature, and was rejected by the

organizing committee of the Salon of Independent Artists in Paris.
40 N. Heinich, Le triple jeu de l’art contemporain, Les Èditions de Minuit, Paris,
1998, p. 31.
41 Heinich, see note 40, p. 34.
42 T. de Duve, Résonances du readymade, Chambon, Nîmes, 1989, p. 15. The
snow shovel mentioned by the author refers to another famous ready-made by
Duchamp.
43 In this regard I should like to turn to a personal memory. At the beginning of
the 1970s I was fortunate enough to meet Man Ray, the artist-photographer
who had been a friend and disciple of Marcel Duchamp. Man Ray told me that,
greatly saddened by the latter’s death, he had spent two whole days and nights
of the funeral vigil photographing the artist’s dead body. Although several years
had gone by, he had still not found the courage to develop these photographs.
One cannot help wondering what became of the films: what lost masterpieces
ended up among the trash rather than being handed down to the voyeurism of
posterity?
44 See J. Clair, Sur Marcel Duchamp et la fin de l’art, Gallimard, Paris, 2000.
45 See D. Kuspit, Idiosyncratic Identities. Artists at the End of Avant-Garde,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.
46 T. de Duve, Kant after Duchamp, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA , 1996, p. 336.
47 O. Paz, Marcel Duchamp: l’apparence mise à nu . . ., Gallimard, Paris, 1977, p. 30.
48 “Taste rejects perusal and judgment, which pertain to the gourmet. It is torn
between instinct and fashion, style and dictate. It expresses a skin-deep idea of
art, something merely sensorial and social: a tickling and a sign of distinction. In
the first case, taste reduces art to a sensation. In the second, it introduces a
social hierarchy based on a reality that is as mysterious and arbitrary as purity
or blood and color of skin. The phenomenon is more evident still in our own
times: following Impressionism, painting becomes material, color, design,
consistence, sensibility, sensuality. The ready-made is a criticism of ‘retinic,’
manual art” (Paz, see note 47, p. 31).
49 “The artist is not a maker; his works are not things, they are acts” (Paz, see
note 47).
50 “Duchamp will have nothing to do with the idea of Beauty, and instead invents
an art that is radically cerebral, conceptual and intellectual” (M. Onfray,
Antimanuel de philosophie, Bréeal, Rosny, 2001, p. 80).
51 “If industrialization has effectively made craftsmanship pointless, then manual
ability is something that an artist aware of his times must consider to be
impossible. When manual skill, ability and talent are no more, all that remains
is genius, or Witz” (de Duve, see note 42, p. 146).
52 “Beauty flushed away. What is the meaning of the revolution brought about by
the urinal? Duchamp delivers a death sentence to Beauty, as others had to the
idea of God (the French Revolution in History, or Nietzsche in philosophy).
Following Duchamp, no one approaches art any more thinking of beauty, but
rather of Meaning. A work of art no longer needs to be beautiful, but it is
supposed to be meaningful” (Onfray, see note 50, p. 80).
172 NOTES

53 Heinich, see note 40, p. 27.

54 See F. Guerrin and P. Montebello, L’art. Une théologie moderne, L’Harmattan,
Paris-Montréal, 1997.
55 Heinich, see note 40, p. 313.
56 See J. Ortega y Gasset, La deshumanización del arte, Biblioteca de la Revista de
Occidente, Madrid, 1925; A. Coomaraswamy, Why Exhibit Works of Art?,
Luzac, London, 1943; H. Sedlmayr, Die Revolution der modernen Kunst,
Rohwolt, Hamburg, 1955.
57 See J. Clair, Considérations sur l’état des beaux-arts. Critique de la modernité,
Gallimard, Paris, 1983; J.-P. Domecq, Misère de l’art. Essai sur le dernier
demi-siècle de création, Calmann-Lèvy, Paris, 1999; H. Obalk, Andy Warhol
n’est pas un grand artiste, Flammarion, Paris, 2001.
58 B. Altshuler, The Avant-Garde in Exhibition. New Art in the 20th Century,
University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998, p. 136.
59 S. Guilbaut, Comment New York vola l’idée d’art moderne. Expressionisme
abstrait, liberté et guerre froide, Chambon, Nîmes, 1996, p. 8.
60 “Jackson Pollock. Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?,” Life,
8 August 1949, pp. 42–5.
61 C. Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Partisan Review, Fall 1939, reprinted in
C. Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism, 1. Perceptions and Judgments,
1939–1944, University Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1988, pp. 5–22.
62 C. Greenberg, see note 61, p. 14.
63 As Guilbaut has rightly observed (see note 59) he failed to appreciate that
because art is the object of collective contemplation in a given historical and
social context, avant-garde art is also ineluctably and eminently ideological, and
indeed a fortiori celebrative.
64 See C. Greenberg, Homemade Aesthetics. Observations on Art and Taste,
Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1999.
65 See C. Greenberg, “Towards a newer Laocoon,” Partisan Review, July–August
1940, reprinted in Greenberg, see note 61, pp. 23–38.
66 See A. Danto, After the End of Art. Contemporary Art and the Pale of History,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997.
67 See H. Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New, Horizon Press, New York, 1959,
and The De-definition of Art. Action Art from Pop to Earthworks, Horizon
Press, New York, 1972.
68 Heinich, see note 40, p. 19.
69 H. Obalk, see note 57, p. 153.
70 See H. Belting, Das Ende des Kunstgeschichte, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich,
1983; A. Danto, “The end of art,” in B. Lang (ed.), The Death of Art, Haven,
New York, 1984, pp. 3–35; R.C. Morgan, The End of Art World, Allworth
Press, New York, 1998.
71 See J. Baudrillard, Le complot de l’art, Sens & Tonka, Paris, 1999.
72 See de Duve, note 42.
73 L. Ferry, Le sens du beau. Aux origines de la culture contemporaine, Livre de
Poche, Paris, 2001, p. 16.
 NOTES 173

74 See D. Kuspit, Psychostrategies of Avant-Garde Art, Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, 2000.
75 G. Dorfles, Le oscillazioni del gusto e l’arte moderna, Lerici, Milan, 1956,
p. 52.
76 Dorfles, see note 75, p. 53.
77 Ferry, see note 73, p. 21.
78 Ferry, see note 73, p. 27.
79 F. Monneyron, De la frivolité essentielle. Du vêtement et de la mode, Puf,
Paris, 2001.
80 A fashion garment or object that carries a designer logo is thus pleonastic.
81 J. Gronow, The Sociology of Taste, Routledge, London and New York, 1997,
p. 91.
82 See T. Agins, The End of Fashion. How Marketing Changed the Clothing
Business Forever, Quill, New York, 2000.
83 See U. Volli, Contro la moda, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1988.
84 “My name has become more important than my person,” as Pierre Cardin
famously put it.
85 P. Bourdieu and Y. Delsaut, “Le couturier et sa griffe: contribution à une
théorie de la magie,” Actes de la Recherches en Sciences Sociales, 1: 21,
January 1975.
86 Bourdieu and Delsaut, see note 85.
87 F. Lyotard, La condition postmoderne, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris, 1979.
88 D. Lyons, Postmodernity, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1999.
89 F. Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke
University Press, Durham, 1991.
90 J. Baudrillard, L’échange simbolique et la mort, Gallimard, Paris, 1976.
91 M. Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, Sage, London, 1990.
92 N. Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Picador, New York, 1999.
93 Klein, see note 92, p. 4.
94 Klein, see note 92, p. 30.
95 See L. Vercelloni, “No logo, no global, no fun. Chi è d’accordo alzi la mano,”
Mark-up, 86: 78–9, November 2001.
96 See T. Polhemus, Street Style: from Sidewalk to Catwalk, Thames and Hudson,
London, 1994
97 F. Davis, Fashion, Culture and Identity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1992, p. 107.
98 See M. Lee, Fashion Victim. Our Love–Hate Relationship with Dressing,
Shopping, and the Cost of Style, Broadway Books, New York, 2003.
99 D. Richie, The Image Factory: Fads and Fashions in Japan, Reaktion Books,
London, 2003, pp. 35–8.
100 A. Gomarasca, “Occidente estremo,” in A. Gomarasca and L. Valtorta, Sol
mutante. Mode, Giovani e umori nel Giappone contemporaneo, Costa &
Nolan, Ancona-Milan, 1966, p. 30.
174 NOTES

101 Gomarasca, see note 100, p. 39.

102 T. Miyake, “Black is beautiful. Il boom delle ganguro-gyaru,” in A. Gomarasca
(ed.), La bambola e il robottone. Culture pop nel Giappone contemporaneo,
Einaudi, Turin, 2001, p. 141.
103 D. Waquet and M. Laporte, La mode, Puf, Paris, 1999, p. 60.
104 S. and E. Ewen, Channels of Desire. Mass Images and the Shaping of American
Consciousness, Minnesota University Press, Minneapolis, 1992, p. 60.
105 A. Ehrenberg, La fatigue d’être soi. Dépression et société, Odile Jacob, Paris,
2000.
106 Ehrenberg, see note 105, p. 14.
107 Ehrenberg, see note 105, p. 277.
108 P. Bruckner, L’euphorie perpétuelle. Essai sur le devoir de bonheur, Grasset,
Paris, 2000, p. 17.
109 Bruckner, see note 108, pp. 58–9.
110 Ehrenberg, see note 105, p. 163.
111 Ehrenberg, see note 105, p. 236.
112 C. Fischler, “Gastronomie et gastro-anomie. Sagesse du corps et crise
bioculturelle de l’alimentation moderne,” Communications, 31: 205–6, 1979.
113 C. Lévi-Strauss, Le totémisme aujourd’hui, Puf, Paris, 1962, p. 128.
114 See L. Vercelloni, “Big Mac 3 per cento,” Slow, 10: 12–15, 1998.
115 A. and M. Keys, Mangiar bene e star bene, Piccin, Padua, 1962, p. 10.
116 L. Vercelloni, “La modernità alimentare,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 13,
L’alimentazione, Einaudi, Turin, 1998, p. 973.
117 Vercelloni, see note 116, p. 978.
118 Vercelloni, see note 116, pp. 978–9. For a more detailed account of the
“omnivore’s paradox,” see C. Fischler, L’homnivore. Le goût, la cuisine et le
corps, Odile Jacob, Paris, 1990.
119 E. Dolnick, “Le paradoxe Français. How do the French eat all that rich food
and skip the heart disease?,” Health, 1990, pp. 41–7.
120 “60 Minutes,” 17 November 1991, CBS News.
121 Within a few weeks of the broadcast, a 40 percent increase on the American
market, which contributed to a positive trend that continued into the
following years.
122 C. Fischler, Du Vin, Odile Jacob, Paris, 1999, p. 183.
123 Fischler, see note 122, p. 190.
124 See G. Garrier, Histoire sociale et culturelle du vin, Larousse-Bordas, Paris, 1998.
125 D. Paolini, Viaggio nei giacimenti golosi, Mondadori, Milan, 2000, p. 7.
126 Fischler, see note 122, p. 209.
127 Fischler, see note 122, pp. 210–11.
128 Fischler, see note 112, p. 201.
129 “ ‘Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by
overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek
 NOTES 175

to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which

automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they
attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past” (E. Hobsbawm,
“Inventing traditions,” in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, The Invention of
Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, p. 1).
130 O. Assouly, Les nourritures nostalgiques, Actes Sud, Arles, 2004, pp. 41–2.
131 F. Revel, Un festin en paroles. Histoire littéraire de la sensibilité gastronomique
de l’Antiquité à nos jours, Plon, Paris, 1995, p. 36.
132 C. Fischler, “La cuisine et l’esprit de temps: quelques tendances récentes de la
sensibilité alimentaire en France,” in J. Labat, H. L. Nostrand and J.-C.
Seigneuret, La France en mutation depuis 1955, Newbury House, Rowley,
MA , 1979, p. 203.
133 A. Chapel, La Cuisine c’est beaucoup plus que des recettes, Laffont, Paris,
1980, p. 373.
134 L. Vercelloni, “Searching for lost tastes,” Slow. The International Herald of
Tastes, 5 (2002): 12.
135 See G. Marchesi and L. Vercelloni, La tavola imbandita. Storia estetica della
cucina, Laterza, Rome-Bari, 2001, ch. II , § 1 (Il pasticciere architetto).
136 P. Citati, “I tiranni dell’anima,” La Repubblica, 2 January 2004, p. 37.
137 W. Sombart, Luxury and Capitalism, University of Michigan Press, Michigan,
1967.
138 A. Moles, Psychologie du Kitsch. L’art du bonheur, Mame, Paris, 1971.
139 F. Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente, 1882–84, 5(1): 209.
140 G. Lipovetsky, Le bonheur paradoxal. Essai sur la société
d’hyperconsummation, Gallimard, Paris, 2006, p. 37.
141 Lipovetsky, see note 140, p. 306.
176
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Art Criticism and History

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Schneider, N., Geschichte der Ästhetik von der Aufklärung bis zur Postmoderne,
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Architecture and Design

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Food, Gastronomy and Wine

Aron, J.P., The Art of Eating in France: Manners and Menus in the Nineteenth
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Assouly, O., Les nourritures nostalgiques, Actes Sud, Arles, 2004.

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190
 INDEX

60 Minutes show 145 Altshuler, B. 172 n.58

American dream 113
Abstract art/expressionism: 39, 122, Ancien Régime 77, 78
124, 126 Antiquity 16, 17, 18, 20, 32, 46, 52, 54,
Addison, J. 47, 48, 55 76, 87, 118
Adorno, T. 63, 128, 155 Appetite(s) 2, 6, 15, 19, 22, 24, 28,
Aesthetic judgment 56–9, 63; as 29, 32–4, 37,38, 42, 54–6, 65,
disinterested 45, 55; as necessary 67, 70, 77, 79, 84, 85, 114, 140,
55; as pure 55, 57; as universal 55, 142, 148, 149, 151, 153, 154,
56; a impermeable to pleasure and 157
need 61; independent from charm Apicius 17
and emotion 57; making a claim Aquinas, T. 28, 29, 30, 161 nn.25–31,
on all subjects 58; refractory to 161 n.33
dispute but questionable 57; Architecture 3, 62, 107, 109, 112
universal and necessary but Aristocracy 19, 20, 28, 35, 47, 65,
essentially subjective 57; vandalism 68–71, 74, 78, 104, 118
and 122 Arman, P.F. 122
Aesthetic(s): and disgust for the facile Armani, G. 135
67; and disinterestedness 104; and Aron, J.P. 74, 75, 167 n.4
ecstasy 18; as a branch of Arrigoni, P. 130
archeology 117; as a forma mentis Art de bien traiter, 36
promoting the bourgeois vision of Art Nouveau 108–9, 114; as opposed
the world 65; as a vis aestimativa to Modernism 109
shared with animals 54; as Art(s): 2, 7 8, 23, 48, 61; and moral,
consideration vs. predilection 51; as religious or social messaging 8;
linked to leisure and entertainment applied 26; as an aphrodisiac 9;
48; belonging to the realm of autonomy of 7, 125; contemplative
emotions 48; etymology of 8, 53; function of, 2; contemporary 39;
experience 9, 26, 40; in Kant’s cultural prestige of 14; dissolution of
vocabulary 164 n.43; paradox 111; 128; divorce from aesthetics 116;
pleasure vs. possession 116; emancipation of 11; fine 37–8, 116;
predisposition towards as symbolic fine vs. decorative or applied 15;
transposition of bourgeois affluence finished 118; secularization of 125;
66; revival of the term 53; sensibility market 7; of happiness 73, 157; of
5, 10, 40, 65; tribes 103; value 39; pleasing 90; passion for 39; refined
see also disinterested 24; see also aesthetic, pleasure
Agins, T. 173 n.82 Artist(s): 26; as a creative spirit/genius
Alison, A. 55 7, 8; vs. craftsman 6

191
192 INDEX

Assouly, O. 175 n.130 Bourdieu, P. 19, 66, 67, 68, 93, 103,
Avant-garde 116, 117, 120, 122–7, 155, 164 n.18, 166 nn.93–5, 169
130, 131; aimed at disconcerting nn.10–11, 173 nn.85–6
the common conception of beauty Bozal, V. 163 n.4
116; history and tradition of 125; Braque, G. 124
iconoclastic nature of 120; Brillat-Savarin, A. 77, 79, 80, 81, 82,
promoting the loss of the 83, 84, 85, 167 nn.17, 26–8, 168
edifying sense of beauty 125; nn.29–30, 33, 36
turning the work of art into a Bruckner, P. 174 nn.108–9
scandal 119; unpopularity 120; Bunyan, J. 48
victim of totalitarianism 123 Burke, E. 42, 44, 45, 163 nn.13–14
Burri, A. 122
Bacon, F. 62
Bad taste: arousing disgust and Cabanis, P.J.G. 80, 81, 167 n.19
contempt 102; crusade against Cardin, P. 133
102; in food vs. in the arts 11; in Carême, A. 36, 77, 86
Imperial Rome, 19; 47; in the Casagrande, C. 161 n.11
department stores 101; see also Cato 26
taste Chanel No. 5 133
Balzac, H. 87, 168 n.37 Chanel, C. 130
Barnouw, J. 164 n.42 Chapel, A. 175 n.133
Baroque 40, 42 Charles V 88
Barthes, R. 74 Christo, V.Y. 122
Batteux, C. 164 n.41 Cicero 18
Baudrillard, J. 134, 170 n.71, 173 n.90 Citati, P. 175 n.136
Bauhaus 110, 112 Civilizing/Civilization: of appetites 162
Baumgarten, A.G. 53, 65, 164 n.40 n.38; of customs, culture and arts
Beauty: 42–3, 51, 57, 60; as a shared 41; of taste 23; process 21, 35
cultural model 57; as specific faculty Clair, J. 171 n.44, 172 n.57
54; commercialization of 105; Class(es) 47, 52, 53, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71,
experienced by human beings only 74, 77, 82, 84, 93, 95, 97, 98, 101,
56; loss of shared sense of 128; myth 106, 111, 118, 124, 135, 136, 150,
oif 122; naïve taste of 126; 152
perception of 5, 42; puerile form in Comfort 104–5; aesthetic of 105;
consumer society 117; pure and feeling of 105
contemplative 114; recognition of 6; Common sense 58
sense of 1, 41, 46; superior instinct Connoisseur(s): 7, 16, 35, 66, 160 n.22;
for 41 in ancient Rome 17
Bel Geddes N. 112 Consumer: aesthetics 103, 114;
Belting, H. 127, 172 n.70 civilization 104; society 3, 14, 95–6
Benjamin, W. 96, 99, 169 nn.2–4, 6, Contemplation/contemplative: 5, 8, 61;
170 nn.38 and the fine arts 60; attitude 54;
Berchoux, J. 74, 166 n.1, 167 n.9 disinterested 9; moral predisposition
Berlage, H.P. 169 n.14 55; of beauty 8, 47, 55; of nature 60;
Berry, C.J. 161 n.8 pleasure of 102; surviving in the
Black square 122 form of nostalgia for the past 129;
Blake, P. 115, 170 nn.26–9, 34 see also distance, disinterested(ness)
Boissière, O. 170 n.30 Convenience(s) 48, 52, 143
Bon Marché 96, 98 Coomaraswamy, A.K. 122, 159
Bonnet, J.C. 167 nn.5, 11, 14, 16 nn.8–13
 INDEX 193

Coquetterie: as a French invention 84; Delsaut, Y. 173 nn.85–6

as one of the arts of pleasing 90; Demoiselles d’Avignon, Les 122
expression of impure taste 85; Department store 95–6, 98, 101
expression of savoir vivre 87; Depression 138
parallel to gourmandise 85; Descartes, R. 81
promoting the cult of appearances Design: 3; 151; 155
85 Desire(s): 14, 15–9, 21–5, 28–9, 32–3,
Court: 21, 24, 25, 26, 33, 38, 46, 69, 36–7, 43, 54–6, 66, 69, 70, 75–6,
87, 98, 128; French 35, 38; 78–9, 80, 82–3, 87, 89, 90–3, 95,
Renaissance 87; society 20, 24, 87; 97–8, 101–11, 113–16, 132, 136,
Spanish 88 138–9, 141, 146, 150–4, 157–8;
Couturier(s) 26 legitimacy of 104; logic of 14; right
Crafts: vs. art 7, 14 to extended to everyone 100;
Creative cuisine: 142, 152, 153; as heir suspension of required by the
of Nouvelle Cuisine 152; becoming a aesthetic judgement 61;
branch of fashion 153 Taylorization of 109; to consume
Critic: as arbiter of taste 51; as gifted 100
with superior ability of aesthetic Dickie, G. 163 n.1
judgment 50; embodying the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française
principle of authority 50 10
Croce, B. 5, 6, 9, 159 nn.1, 14–18, 160 Dietetics 12, 30, 33, 35; of antiquity 32;
nn.26–7 medieval 32; modern 143; modern
Cromwell, O. 88 cacophony of 141
Cubism 39, 122, 125–6 Dior, C. 133, 135
Cuisine 2, 24, 37, 50, 74–6, 78, 81, 95, Discernment: 10, 11
142, 149–52; contemporary 153; Disinterested(ness): and aesthetic
emancipated from dietetics and judgment 54, 56; and love for God
morals 35; fine 17, 36, 71; French 55; as ideology 55; political function
36–8; Italian 37; refined and of 70; taste 54, vs. pleasurable 55;
sumptuous 2, 26, 35, 37, 153; subtle see also aesthetic
and sophisticated 38; see also Diskrasia 31
Creative cuisine, Haute Cuisine and Disneyland 102
Nouvelle Cuisine Disputatio 12, 160 n.29
Cuisinier François 35 Distance 8, 19, 54, 63, 65, 68–9, 89,
99–100, 102, 111, 116, 141; from
Dada/Dadaism 39, 120, 122, 125–6 the ordinary 101, stylistic 118
Danto, A. 127, 172 n.66 Dolnick, E. 144, 174 n.119
Davidson, J. 160 n.4 Don Quixote 49, 127
Davis, F. 173 n.97 Dorfles, G. 130, 170 n.31, 173 nn.75–6
De gustibus non est disputandum: 2, Dream Worlds 101
12, 32, 40, 46, 68, 157 Dubos, J.B. 42
De honesta voluptate et valetudine Dubuffet, J. 130
32–3 Duchamp, M. 119, 120, 121, 122, 130
Decoration/decorative 115; as a form of Duve, C.R. 127
seduction 26; exotic 101 Duve, T. de 171 nn.42, 46, 172 n.72
Delight(s):8, 9, 19, 22, 24, 26, 29, 30,
36, 45, 52, 65, 120, 143, 147, 153, Eagleton, T. 65, 68, 69, 166 nn.87–9,
155; see also delectatio 91, 96
Delectatio 8, 13 Ehrenberg, A. 138, 174 nn.105–7,
Delicacy 35, 162 n.43 110–11
194 INDEX

Eighteenth Century 43, 46, 48, 53–4, self-image, exhibition and seduction
59, 68, 70, 73, 89, 128 as key concepts of 132; shaping
Elegance 16, 23, 37 personal identity 92; street 135;
Elias, N. 21, 24, 25, 33, 93, 161 nn.10, ubiquity of 3, 134–5; victims 136
15, 18, 162 n.39 Faucheux, M. 167 n.20, 168 nn.31–32
Eliot, T.S. 124 Featherstone, M. 134, 173 n.91
Embellishment 60 Feijóo, B.J. 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 163
Empedocles 30 nn.7–12
Encyclopédie des arts et des métiers 10 Female: 18, 25–7, 88–92, 95; beauty 6,
Engineer 109–10 90; genius 26, sensibility 90, 93; see
Enlightenment: 40, 42, 68, 69, 70, 125, also fashion, gender
127–9, 157; aesthetic/aesthetic Ferry, L. 50, 164 nn.29–30, 164 n.38,
paradigm of 125–6; and the dream 172 n.73, 173 nn.77–8
of universality 69; and the myth of Fischler, C. 144, 147, 174 nn.112,
homo felix 157; and universal rights 122–3, 126–8, 175 n.132
70; equalitarianism of 2, 70, 116; Flacelière, R. 161 n.7
ideal of socially shared sense of Flandrin, J.L. 71, 75, 166 n.99, 167 n.6
beauty in 116; philosophers 27, 45, Fontana, L. 122
54, 69; political and social Food(s): 18, 20, 22, 28–9, 30–3, 35–8,
perspective of 70; thinkers of 12, 41, 42, 44, 58, 62, 68–9, 73–6, 78–80,
54, 64, 132 82–3, 87, 103, 136, 140–4, 147–53,
Enology 39 157; bad 34; desire for 29; disgust
Entertainment 19–20; convivial 60; new for 11; enjoyment of 33, 40, 76, 80,
arts of 101; industry in consumer 86; fast 136, 147; good 74, 77, 80,
society 117 150; modern 142, 147–9; natural
Epicurism 33 144; over-indulgence 28; luxury 29,
Etiquette 34 76; pathologies 81; preference/
Eukrasia 31 predilections 63, 83, 141; refined/
Ewen, S. 170 nn.21, 25, 174 n.104 fine/rare 18, 29–30, 34, 86, 153;
Exhibition of Degenerated Art 123 taboos 141; writers/critics 14, 77,
147; see also taste and good taste
Fashion(s): 13, 23, 26, 57, 88, 129, 132, Form(al) 33, 39, 41, 54, 56, 62–3, 65,
133; as a female prerogative 89, 92; 66, 102, 106, 108, 112–15, 150,
as a lesser manifestation of taste 2; 152; and function 106–7
as the most conspicuous and Fountain, 119
captivating manifestation of taste Franckowiak, U. 6, 159 n.3
88; celebrating conspicuous display, French paradox: 142, 144–5, 150; as an
eccentricity, rejection of conventions ethical scandal in which sin is
90; challenging the ethics of duty rewarded 145
with the morals of pleasure 92; Freud, S. 83
contrasting masculine taste concept Frivolity 37, 61, 69, 89, 92, 100, 108,
and ideology 91; despised by 130
philosophers 91; democratization of Functionalism 112–3
157; impact on the evolution of Futurism 122, 126
individual predilections 90; in Far
East 136; no arguing with 92; Gagosian, L. 50
pluralistic and polycentric 136; Gaius Petronius Arbiter 16
promoting an ephemeral criterion of Galen 31, 32, 42, 43, 62, 162 nn.34–5
elegance 132; revolutionizing the Garbo, G. 130
representation of individuals 93; Garrier, G. 174 n.124
 INDEX 195

Gastronome: 13, 75, 77, 78; ambition of spiritual nobility not founded on
to rule over the appetites of others rank and blood 47; as a goal of the
77; and gluttony 75; as arbiter of evolutionary process of humanity
taste 77; imposing norms based on 41; as a means for self-realization
purely hedonistic premises 78 139; as a means for social distinction
Gastronomic treasures: 142, 147, 148, 3, 6; as a social panacea mitigating
150; as outcome of glorification of the discomfort of autonomized
small local producers 146; as identity 139; as a solution to the
reinvention of tradition 148; as relativity of tastes 48; as a subject
works of art 147; boosted by the for philosophers 45; as an empty
myth of origins and authenticity chimera of unfulfilled promise 139;
146; contrast with the loss of as an exclusive pleasure not socially
identity of packaged foods 147 sharable 71; as model of life among
Gastronomy: 2, 23, 29, 33, 36, 38, 63, the aristocracy to the exclusion of
71, 74–9, 81–5, 88, 141–2, 144, 146, others 71; as ultimate arbiter of
149, 153; and art criticism 78–9; works of art 8; at the table 35; based
and promotion of new food on disgust for everything that is
mythologies 142; and sexuality 78; facile 67; culturally shaped to fit in
and the cosmology of gluttony 78; socially 46; in manners 35;
and the cult of good food 80; as a restaurant as the new temple of 73;
lesser literary genre in Western vs. bad taste 43
culture 73, 75; as a lesser “Good to think:” 141–2, 146, 148, 152,
manifestation of taste 2; as a 154
pseudo-science 73; as providing an Gourmandise 18, 35, 80; parallel to
imaginary gratification similar to coquetterie 84–7
pornography 79; as the science of Gourmand(s) 30, 77, 79, 85
nothingness 79; compulsive nature Gourmet(s): 7, 29, 49, 58, 73, 75–80,
of 84; contemporary 39; fine/refined 83, 146; in imperial Rome 17; of the
36, 69; founders of 76; history of 35, past 17; Republic 84; vs.
74, 80; in the modern age 142; connoisseurs 11
legitimacy of 73 Gracián, B. 6, 46
Gender: 89, 149 Gratification(s): 19, 21, 23, 39, 51–2,
Gentleman 20, 34, 47 61, 67, 69, 78–80, 83, 87, 90, 92,
Genuine 149 102, 104–6, 110, 114–15, 117, 120,
Gillet, P. 162 n.47, 167 nn.8, 12 139, 147, 157–8; of appetites/food
Givone, S. 164 n.21 40, 55, 68, 76
Gluttony 23, 24, 28, 29, 30; see also Great Depression of 1929 112
gastronome Great Revenge 108
Gomarasca, A. 173 n.100, 174 n.101 Great Sacrifice 88–90, 168 n.42
Good design 114 Greek: ancient society 17
Good manners 2, 33, 34; internalization Greenberg, C. 124, 125, 126, 155,
of 47 172 nn.61–2, 64–5
Good taste: 7, 12, 29, 46, 47, 66, 68, Gregorius Magnus 29, 161 n.24
116; acquisition of 47; and tact Gregotti, V. 170 n.32
163 n.2; as a bourgeois invention, Griffe 132–3; an aesthetic affiliation
reflecting a class detachment from 134; an entry ticket to dream world
life and labor 66; as a conventional 134; providing a canon of taste 132;
badge of status 66; as a conventional see also fashion
repertoire of tastes, acts and words Grimod de la Reynière 74, 75, 76, 77,
35; as a learned faculty 46; as a form 78, 79, 80, 82
196 INDEX

Gronow, J. 173 n.81 Idiosyncrasy 32

Guerrin, F. 172 n.54 Individual(s): 6, 12–5, 21, 23, 25, 27,
Guilbaut, S. 123, 172 n.59 29–34, 39–40, 43–4, 50–2, 54, 57,
59, 62, 66–8, 77–9, 84, 86, 89, 92–3,
Händel, G.F. 45 96, 103, 110, 118, 129, 132, 135,
Harmony 51, 66, 101, 115, 141, 152 138–41, 143, 147, 151–2, 157;
Harris, D. 101, 169 n.8 aspirations 100, 139, 158; centrality
Haskell, F. 170 nn.36–7 of 20; choice/preference 88, 90, 117,
Hauser, A. 7, 159 nn.5–7 132–3, 136; condemned to be happy
Haute couture 86 139; creativity/genius 7, 63, 132;
Haute/grande cuisine: 33, 35–6, 86–7; perception/sensation/sensibility
as defining an ideology of taste 149; 56–7, 86, 103, 129; personality/
rise of 38 temperaments 12, 31, 43, 51, 93,
Hedonism 19, 33, 37, 54, 65, 69, 74, 138, 158; responsibility 140;
155, 157 self-esteem 21; taste/predilection
Hegel, G.W.F. 125, 128 12–14, 33–4, 39–40, 44, 79, 110,
Heinich, N. 171 nn.40–1, 172 nn.53, 129, 157–8
55, 68 Individualism/individualistic 20, 93,
Highbrow culture: 111; vs. lowbrow 104, 113, 123, 138, 141
155 International Style 110
History: 20–1, 37, 41, 49, 62, 76, 82,
84, 90, 100, 107, 110, 121, 123, Jameson, F. 134, 173 n.89
125, 129, 141, 143, 147, 149; of Japan 136; colonization by style 137
ideas 2; of fashion 2; of aesthetics 7; Jauss, H.R. 165 nn.81–2
of costume 85; of design 113; of Jeanneret, M. 162 n.36
art 2, 8, 14; of taste 2, 12–4, 38, 53, Judgment: 9–10, 57; as an early
86, 90, 92, 116, 122, 131, 136; of synonym of taste 5, 6
cuisine/gastronomy 2, 35, 74, 80, 81;
of Western culture/society 14, 16, 26, Kant, I. 2, 39, 43, 50, 52, 54, 55, 56,
75 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 67,
Hobsbawn, E. 148 68, 69, 70, 85, 90, 91, 103, 115,
Hollywood 20, 102 128, 129, 154, 155, 156, 164 nn.8,
Horace 51 43,45, 165 nn.46–59, 61–73,
Hume, D. 42, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 59, 166 nn.84–6, 90, 168 n.52,
68, 77, 110, 125, 164 nn.23–7, 31, 169 nn.53–4
35–7, 168 n.49 Kantian: aesthetics 2, 39, 53, 60, 68, 70,
Humors 31, 44; balance of 31, 33 102, 155
Hutcheson, F. 55 Keys, A. 143, 174 n.115
Hyper-consumption 157–8 Kitsch 102, 113–4, 117, 122, 124–5; as
Hipocrates 31 opposed to avant-garde art 124;
psychology of 157; vs. Kultur 155
Iconoclasm(s) 116, 122, 126, 127 Klein, N. 135, 173 nn.92–4
Idealization 100 Klein, R. 6, 9, 159 n.4
Identity (construction of): as an Klein, Y. 122
individual pursuit 138; as an König, R. 93, 168 n.38
expectation of contemporary society Korsmeyer, C. 63, 166 n.83
139; as having a psychological and Kuspit, D. 171 n.45, 175 n.74
social price tag 139
Idéologues 80–1; and the rehabilitation La Varenne, F.P. 35, 36
of the body 81 Lançon, B. 161 n.5
 INDEX 197

Laporte, M. 174 n.103 104, 109, 129, 148; society 87, 99,
Laurent, A. 12, 160 n.28 100, 109–11, 116, 128–30, 140;
Le Corbusier 102, 109, 110, 112, 115, taste 102, 106, 117
170 nn.23, 35 Mauss, M. 121
Lee, M. 173 n.98 Mediterranean Diet: 142, 144; as a
Leisure 14, 19, 28, 39, 48, 66, 98–9, gastronomic restoration 150; as a
103, 135, 155, 158; pursuits 23, 40, nutritional counter reform 143; as a
136, 150 solution to omnivore’s paradox 143;
Less is more 107 as an ideological solution to
Lévi-Strauss, C. 74, 141, 174 n.113 discomforts of modernity 143; as
Lichtenstein, R. 130 reconciling food habits with dreams
Life Magazine 124 about food 143
Lifestyle(s): 103, 134, 155; brands 135; Mennel, S. 38, 162 nn.42, 44–45,
new 141, 150; plurality of 157 163 n.53
Lipovetsky, G. 88, 93, 157, Menon 36
168 nn.45–46, 169 nn.59–60, Michelangelo 125
175 nn.140–1 Middle Ages 7, 8, 21, 22, 26–9, 33, 35,
Logo(s): and lifestyle brands 135; as a 54
magic talisman 134; as modern Middle class: 47, 52, 66; American 101;
tattoos 138; fashion designer 134; fashion 89; Parisian 95; restaurant
promoting the metamorphosis of 73; romanticism and puritanism of
brands into symbols and mirages of as opposed to freethinking and
lifestyles 134 sensuality of aristocracy 70; see also
London 88, 99, 101 class
Loos, A. 106, 107, 169 nn.15–16, Miller, M.B. 169 n.5
170 nn.18–20 Milton, J. 48
Lucullus, L.L. 17, 18 Miyake, T. 174 n.102
Luxury 5, 13, 18, 21, 25, 26, 27, 29, Modern art 3,116–17; aesthetic
33, 34, 36, 46; and opulence18; as heterodoxy in 125; aimed at
certification for social eminence 25; arousing scandal, paradox,
cuisine 35; democratization of 98, profanation and enigma 117; and
104, 111; goods/commodities 19, intention of not pleasing 117;
26, 50; in medieval banquets 32; anti-aesthetic tendency of 121; as a
love for among aristocracy 104; cult of the new 125; as collective
sin of 9 autosuggestion 121; as intrinsically
Lyons, D. 134, 173 n.88 unattractive, irritating and enigmatic
Lyotard, J.F. 134, 173 n.87 126; crescendo of transgressions in
125; dissolution of 122; eluding all
Machines à habiter 112 classifications 127; signifying the
Madison Avenue 102 uselessness of aesthetics 126
Magazins de nouveautés 96–8 Modernist Movement/Modernism 27,
Malevitch, K.S. 122 107, 113, 134; aesthetic of 110–11;
Mandeville, B. 161 n.23 affinity with Kantian aesthetics 115;
Manuel des amphitryons 77 and the battle for ideological
Manzoni, P. 122 supremacy in the academy 110; as
Marchesi, G. 167 n.10, 175 n.135 an economic waste 115; desire to
Mass(es): 98, 107, 110, 114, 118, 120, defend artistic independence and
122, 124, 127–8, 131, 133, 141, prerogatives of the intellectual caste
155; culture 20, 138; hedonism 157; in 111; ecological failure of 115;
individualism 113, 138; production ideology of 115; in food choices and
198 INDEX

representations 142; invested with Onfray, M. 161 nn.12–13, 167 n.22

aesthetic authority 114 Opsophagia 18
Modernity: 8, 19, 21, 54, 90, 96, 108–9, Ornament: among women and savages
111, 114, 124–7, 138–9, 141–3; 108; and misogyny 108; and
aesthetics of 129; alimentary 144, peasants 116; as abomination of
148–9, 153; and beauty 129; cult taste 106; as erotic in essence 108;
of 107 disgust for 108; emancipation from
Moles, A. 157, 175 n.138 107
Monneyron, F. 173 n.79 Ortega y Gasset, J. 122, 172 n.56
Montanari, M. 162 nn.40–1 Ostentation: and exhibitionism 18
Montebello, P. 172 n.54 Overabundance (age of) 140
Montesquieu 11, 160 n.24 Ovid 51
Morality 6; lay 22; based on the
ephemeral 25 Palate: 23, perception of 5; orgasm of
Moravia, S. 167 n.24 13; pleasures of 23, 35;
Mores sequuntur temperamentum 43 intemperance of 30
Morgan, L.H. 127 Panem et circenses 20
Mouret, O. 96 Paoli, U.E. 161 n.6
Muchembled, R. 161 n.9 Paolini, D. 147, 174 n.125
Music: 5, 10, 14, 19, 33, 39, 45, 60–2, Paris 41, 71, 74, 81, 86, 88, 96; as the
67, 100–1, 103, 114, 124, 135–6, capital of luxury 95; as the mecca of
155; relegated to the lowest level of fashion and gastronomy 85
fine arts 61 Parvenu 17
Passages 96–7
New, the: culture/mentality 6, 21, 33, Paz, O. 171 n.47
110, 123–4, 150, 155; economy 21, Pericles 18
24, 33, 96–7; fashion/aesthetics/ Perrot, P. 168 n.43, 169 n.12
styles 25–6, 86, 88, 90–1, 105, 11, Peterson, S. 37, 163 nn.49–52
125, 130; morality/customs 23, 25, Philosophy: 73, 79, 83; abstract 50;
28, 70–1, 77, 87–8; taste/cookery/ natural 6
gastronomy 36–7, 74–5, 90, 103, Physiology of taste 82
142, 149–53 Picasso 102, 122, 125, 130
New York: 123 Pinel, P. 82
Nietzsche, F. 53, 138, 157, 175 n.139 Piscinarii 18
Nineteenth century 71, 85, 95–6, 99; as Platina, B. 32, 33, 162 n.37
the century of ugliness 106 Plato 17
Nouvelle Cuisine 17, 150; as a Platonism 54, 111
calligraphic cuisine 151; Pleasure(s): 1, 9, 11, 19, 21, 23–4, 28,
inaugurating the age of 30, 43–5, 47–8, 50–5, 58, 61, 63,
iconophagy 152; miniaturized 65, 67, 69–70, 74, 78–80, 81,
and photogenic style of dishes 83–6, 92, 99, 102, 104, 110,
in 151; vocabulary and food 114–16, 146, 151, 155, 157;
display typical of 151 aesthetic 116, 126; affinity with
Novelty: 27, 36, 75, 91–2, 97, 100, 140, lust and lechery 58; and
150, 153 predilections 19; life of 9; of beauty
delivering a sense of universal
Obalk, H. 172 n.69 brotherhood 59; of luxury 68;
Ogilby, J. 48 of the palate 12, 17, 18, 23, 33,
On the Relations between the Physical 35, 38, 40, 58, 65, 76, 77, 152–3;
and Moral Aspects of Man 80 of the table 17, 18, 29, 38, 76,
 INDEX 199

78, 80; sensorial 68, 102, 120; Revel, F. 36, 74, 160 n.3, 162 n.46,
spiritual vs. sensory 41, 56, 60; 175 n.131
triumph of in consumer society Reynière, G. 166 n.2
3, 154 Richard, J. 144
Poetry: closeness of to Modern concept Richie, D. 136, 173 n.99
of art 62; death of after Auschwitz Robertson, J. 50
128; different from other arts in Roche, D. 168 n.39
Antiquity 62; fruit of invention Rockwell, N. 124
and creativity 62; irrational and Rococo: 42
inspired 62 Romantic/Romanticism: 100, 129; age
Polhemus, T. 173 n.96 55; culture 89
Pollock, J. 124 Rome/Roman: concepts of beauty in
Polybus 31 89–90; culture of ancient 22;
Pop Art 39, 125 Imperial 16, 19
Port Grimaud 112 Rosenberg, H. 125, 126, 172 n.67
Portinari, F. 79, 167 n.13 Rousseau, J.J. 55
Possession: delight in 52 Rühle, O. 169 n.7
Post-Modern(ism): 134; as a collective
indoctrination predicated on Saint Laurent, Y. 133
consumption 134; as a new Satyricon 16, 17
scholasticism 170 n.33; as closing Saugnier 170 n.23
the divide between cultured and Savoir vivre 38, 41
mass taste 134; revolution 155; Schneider, N. 166 nn.97–8
ubiquity of fashion as most evident Schönberg, A. 102
symptom of 134 Schopenhauer, A. 91, 169 nn.55–7
Presley, E. 130 Schulze, G.E. 107
Privatization 26 Schümmer, F. 6, 159 n.2
Progress: ideology of 107; myth of 114; Schusterman, R. 164 nn.33–34
stages of civil 60 Sedlmayr, H. 122
Pure/purity: as a tool of cultural Self: 7, 55, 58, 65, 78, 83, 85, 90, 92,
exclusion and discrimination 155; 96, 100, 105, 116, 120, 122–7,
myth of 115 136, 138–9, 140, 143, 150, 154,
157; -control/discipline 15, 19,
Ready-mades 121, contesting the role 22–3, 29, 33, 35, 67, 69, 143;
of contemplation and taste 121; -determination of aesthetic
aimed at shocking and surprising judgment 20; -esteem 21–3, 61,
130 115, 146; -expression 5, 89,
Refinement 2, 5, 6, 16, 34, 36; 136–7; -image 88, 132, 140–1,
desire/demand for 25, 45; natural 146; -indulgence 19, 20, 24–5,
vs. artificial 29; of appetites 38; 97, 146
of convivial behavior 68; of taste Seneca 62
16, 57 Sensation(s): 5, 6, 9, 12, 16, 56, 59–60,
Renaissance 5, 7–8, 11, 13, 35, 37, 40, 67–8, 79, 81, 83, 90, 97, 104, 107,
54, 63, 87, 90, 100, 106, 125, 131, 116, 148
142 Sense(s): 2, 5–6, 8, 10–11, 14, 16–17,
Restaurant(s): as expression of French 22, 30, 41–2, 44–5, 49–51, 53–4,
culture 74; rhetoric of the 56–9, 61, 67–8, 80–1, 84, 106, 108,
sublime75; role in promoting the 117, 153; see also sixth sense
cult of good food to a wider public Sensitivity: 10, 20, 73, 75, 81; turned
74; see also gastronome into a cultural phenomenon 21
200 INDEX

Sensory/sensorial: 1, 5, 32, 40, 45, 61, symbolic tribute to the individual

78, 87, 97, 115, 128, 153–4; 129; as the new catalyst of
enjoyment/pleasure 56, 60, 68, 102, sensibility 129; etymology of 132;
120; perception 3, 127 forerunner to the idolatry of
Sensuality: 26, 57, 61, 69, 71, 73, 90, individuality in show business 130;
108–9, 146 succession of 57; symbolic antidote
Sertoli, G. 163 n.15, 164 nn.16–17, to mechanization 131; worship of in
19–20 Japan 137
Seventeenth century 9, 27, 33, 105 Stylization of behaviors 6, 20, 28; of
Sexuality: 83; fear of 23 sensibility 38
Shaftesbury, A.A.C. 46, 47, 55 Subjectivity: discovery of 20
Shopping 96; window s. 99 Sublime: experience of 18
Simmel, G. 90, 92, 168 n.50 Sullivan, L. 106
Sin(s) 22; deadly 23 Summers, D. 164 n.32, 165 n.60
Sixteenth century 6, 11, 20, 36, 62, 88 Sumner, W. G. 92, 169 n.58
Sixth sense 11, 51, 59; see also sense(s) Sumptuary laws 19
Social: differentiation 33; Suprematism 122, 126
discrimination 60; eminence 25; Surrealism 122
fragmentation 135; prestige 20, 25;
pyramid 25; rank 34; stratification Tacitus 51, 160 n.1
21, 67 Tact 6, 9
Society: 1, 6, 14–15, 19, 22, 25, 39, Tarde, G. 92
52–4, 60, 65, 69–71, 73, 76, 83, Taste(s): 1, 23, 28, 29, 30, 33; acquired
91–3, 95–6, 98, 103–6, 117, 128, 44; adage of 12; adaptable,
131–4, 136, 138–40, 142, 150, impressionable and subject to social
157–8, 160, ancient 17; and cultural conditioning 34, 41, 44;
contemporary 3, 42, 155; court 20, aesthetic 40; affinity with tact 41;
24, 87; high/affluent 64, 85, 87, 143; and aesthetization of social identities
premodern 12; Western 16, 103, 157 103; and beauty during the
Socrates 107 Renaissance 13; and individual
Sombart, W. 25, 26, 157, 161 nn.14, 16, sensibility 103; and leisure 103;
19–22, 175 n.137 apartheid of 155; applied to all
Sophistication 16, 21, 35–6 forms of luxury consumption 87;
Sparke, P. 168 n.44, 169 n.13 arbitrary 12; as characteristic of an
Spencer, H. 92 artist or a period 10; as a
Splendor: desire for 16 commercial asset 14, 87; as a
Spoerry, F. 112 criterion for social aggregation 103;
Status 24–5, 34, 60, 66–7, 73, 89–90, as a cultural vs. a natural
100, 102, 104, 114, 122, 136, 157 phenomenon 40; as a faculty to
Stoicism 22 recognize the pleasurable 43; as a
Stolnitz, J. 54–55, 164 n.44 form of knowledge 1; as a French
Streamlining 112–4; as apocalypse of quality 37; as a genetically
good taste 114 determined trait 32; as a human
Style(s): 8, 10, 13, 15, 27, 34–6, 46, 65, faculty to distinguish beautiful
69, 75, 86–7, 90, 96, 98, 101, 105, from ugly 5; as a measure of
108–12, 118, 123, 127, 133, 135–6, pleasure 11; as a mirror of social
149–53, 155, 157; and originality 6; differentiation 33; as a natural
as a self-portrait 7; as dominant faculty 1; as a paradigm for all
ideal of taste 131; as prototypes of other members of a social class 47;
individual predilections 129; as as a projection of esteem 16; as a
 INDEX 201

social benefit 67; as a special faculty consumer society 103; purity of

of judgment 10; as a vehicle of a 68; relativism/relativity of 40, 41–2,
new mentality 21; as anchored to a 46; removed from the heat of the
psychological image 44; as senses 58; sensorial meaning of 1;
depending on perceptions 44; as shaped by culture 34; social and
equivalent to pleasure or delight 9; political dimensions of 18; spread
as prosperity detector 104; as of mass 106; standard of 48, 51;
sensorial Ur-experience 5, 28; as stylization of 35; symbolic freedom
shaped and established by social from the constraints of necessity
conditions 44; bad or depravated 69; disputing 48; universal adoption
10; battle between bad and good t. of as a means for individual
17; battle of 20; bifurcation of 69, expression 157; universal faculty
73; breviary of 55; preceding all experiences 41;
commercialization of 3; comparative unrefined 102
45; culinary 36; decline of pure 155; Tatarkiewicz, W. 163 nn.5–6, 164 n.39,
defining gastronomy 33; 165 nn.74–7, 79–80, 168 n.48
degeneration of bourgeois 105; Tattoo 107, 137–8
democratization of 100; detached Technology: 99, 109, 128, 147;
from the heritage of the past 141; idealization of 112
divergence of 58; divorce from social Temperament(s): 31, 40, 43–4, 119;
prestige 106; divorced from individual 12, 31; theory of 6
sensuality 57; each to his/her own Tertullian 26
12, 13, 57; enigma of 41, 45; Thirteenth century 33
equality of 49; excess in 20; Tokyo 136
exquisiteness of 49; figurative 13; for Touch 30
beauty 40, 51, 61; for beauty vs. for Troisgros brothers 36
good 56; for food vs. aesthetic 41; Twentieth century 3, 8, 27, 39, 73, 86,
form of civilization 41; founded on 101, 103, 110, 113, 116–17,
customs and habits 11; fueling the 119–20, 122, 131, 138–9
urge to consume 101; good to think
141; hedonistic 14, 45, 48; impure United States: 109–12, 124, 133,
73; in antiquity 16; in early French 143–4; as a bulwark of freedom
cuisine 36; individual 34, 40; 123; restaurants 145
influenced by style 34; innate and Universal Exhibition(s) 99
universal vs. acquired and cultivated, Utilitarianism 52
11; instinctive nature of 11;
instinctive vs. cultivated as a Van de Velde, H. 107, 169 n.17
reflection of class struggle 67; Van Gogh, V. 117
isolated from the body 58; lack of Vanity 26
106; metaphor of 2, 6, 11, 13–15, Veblen, T. 19, 92
65, 69; migration from fine arts to Vecchio, S. 161 n.11
mass society 116; modern 20, 21,44; Vercelloni, L. 167 n.10, 173 n.95, 174
odyssey of 1; of the élite 102; of the nn.114, 116–18, 175 nn.134–5
masses 117; of the palate relegated Veyne, P. 160 n.2, 161 n.17
to irrelevance 73; of the palate vs. Vice(s) 22
of the spirit 11; opiate nature of Virtue(s): 22, 24, 27, 32, 46, 67, 105,
acquired 45; organic phenomenon 121, 144, 146
40; physical 12; plebeian 102; Vocabolario degli Accademici della
political vs. theoretical dimensions Crusca 9
of 40; private 26; proliferation in Volli, U. 173 n.83
202 INDEX

Volnay 81, 167 n.23 Williams, R.H. 101, 169 n.9

Voltaire 10, 11, 41, 42, 91, 107, 160 Wine: anthropology and symbology of
nn.20, 22, 25, 163 n.3, 168 n.51 145; as a nutriment vs. as a pleasure
146; as a quality product aimed at
Waquet, D. 174 n.103 hedonistic consumption 146; as a
Warhol, A. 122, 130 symbol of prestige 146; as herald of
Weneger, C. 166 n.92 health 146; good to think 146;
Western: civilization 5; clothing and tasters 29, 49
dress 135; culture 28, 122, 128, 154; Worth, C. F. 86
democracies 123, fashion apotheosis
137; individual 139; luxury products Zeldin, T. 74, 167 n.3
135; sensitivity 20; society 16, 103, Zola, É. 95, 96, 98, 169 n.1
155 Zuccolo, L. 9, 10, 160 n.19
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