>>So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it.
This kind of assumes that all good artists have good taste. Some artists may have good taste, but may not be great artists themselves. Others may create great art, sometimes by chance, and understand its relevance post-facto (maybe as it becomes more contextually relevant?).
In my experience (some engineering, mostly product mgmt), taste is an emergent property. As some others have alluded, good taste can emerge from both intuition and thought/reflection. The hard part is articulating what makes one piece of art better than others. Most people can recognize the gap between paintings of an 8 yr old's painting vs. Bellini, but does that mean they have good taste? Many of us have some built-in, intuitive sense of taste. But to apply/execute on it, we need to be able to articulate it.
This kind of assumes that all good artists have good taste. Some artists may have good taste, but may not be great artists themselves. Others may create great art, sometimes by chance, and understand its relevance post-facto (maybe as it becomes more contextually relevant?).
In my experience (some engineering, mostly product mgmt), taste is an emergent property. As some others have alluded, good taste can emerge from both intuition and thought/reflection. The hard part is articulating what makes one piece of art better than others. Most people can recognize the gap between paintings of an 8 yr old's painting vs. Bellini, but does that mean they have good taste? Many of us have some built-in, intuitive sense of taste. But to apply/execute on it, we need to be able to articulate it.