Connections/Taste

Diana: I'm Diana Greenwald. I am a summer intern at the Met. George: I'm George Goldner, I'm a curator of drawings and prints at the Museum. Diana: We are here today to discuss taste.

Diana: There's a really wonderful essay written by David Hume called "The Standard of Taste," and the trick of it is that he never actually puts forth any sort of standard except what he calls "the test of time," which is that

something continually and over an extended period of time has an aesthetic effect on numerous people. Can we have an aesthetic experience with that sort of pull over years and years and years

to something that comes from outside of our cultural vocabulary? George: Of course one can, and many people do. I think it is true that the more remote something is, the harder it is, the more work it is to understand it and

react to it and I think that's a function of education. So probably the areas that I'm better educated in, in general, I'm more responsive to the art of those places

works like the Merode Altarpiece, which is one of the greatest Netherlandish paintings in the world. But it's also true that just because you are immersed in something doesn't mean you like it.

In that case I don't love the Caracci but it does clearly document what is provably, by historical Diana: Yes. George: reckoning, an important moment. I think I would say that the things I know best, I have the most extreme reactions to, good and bad. I can't imagine that there's anything made in the east that I would dislike as much as I dislike

Courbet, whom I know and have detested for decades. Diana: Why do you hate Courbet? George: I think he's not only a gross artist and a vulgar artist, but he's someone who revels in

grossness and vulgarity. I think he's technically not a particularly brilliant artist.

He couldn't draw at all, which is a bad sign. And I think that part of his reputation is based on who he was and the kind of persona he was,

on being provocative rather than how wonderful his art is. Diana: So but is it still worth collecting, even if you don't like it? George: What should a museum's mandate be?

Is it to pick what's good irrespective of who the person was? I mean after all, Caravaggio was a terrible person by all accounts and there are a great many artists who had many unpleasant points of view that

most people today wouldn't like very much. Should we take them off the wall in place of people who are fashionable? Diana: More savory? George: I know this sounds very banal, I like artists who are

good. In other words, who can draw well, who make beautiful things. Art is a visual experience to me. Diana: Okay.

George: I always find it disturbing when one has to explain the beauty of a work of art. It's one of the reasons I never liked

modern art, is that it always comes with an incredibly long explanation and I always feel that that's buttressing something that isn't there.

It's like if you have to explain the ingredients of a meal before it becomes tasty, it's probably not all that tasty. So I think the very best things, I mean if you look at

Goya's colossus, there's nothing to know about it, I mean nobody knows what it really represents, and probably no one ever will know, but it's an amazingly powerful, haunting image

and just about everybody I know who's ever seen it finds it a real knockout. So

my understanding is museums do exist to elevate and to teach people, and to provide them with standards of different types. Diana: So is the primary way that a museum educates is by presenting objects that people could have a reaction to?

George: Yes, I think people should go to a museum and choose the things that they find personally engaging

and not be dragged around by what other people tell them is important or interesting or beautiful. And that

one becomes engaged with works of art in a natural experience the same way you do if you're driving along

in the country, one person will find one bit of landscape appealing, another person will not, and that's how you become engaged with it

and that the rest of it is contrived.