Good taste?
Lecture by Nanna Ditzel DKDS, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design 12th of March, 1997.
“ There is certainly no need to work in the service of current good taste; it is big, broad and doing just fine. On the contrary, we must use our imagination, creativity and our visions of the society to create the things and the environment we believe in. ”
Nanna Ditzel
The prevailing taste has much in common with styles and fashion: They are introduced as and emerge from strong and groundbreaking work, often in reaction to the status quo. After a while, the shock effect wears off, the new is adopted and popularised, finding a generally acceptable expression. And so it continues, whether we like it or not.
So, what we can ascertain as designers is that there is certainly no need to work in the service of current good taste; it is big, broad and doing just fine. On the contrary, we must use our imagination, creativity and our visions of the society to create the things and the environment we believe in. You can do it based on your personal temperament. Some will choose strict and ascetic, but I do not mind if it is fun and festive, and I’m not opposed to pomp and circumstance.
We also have this amazing possibility of picking up paper and pencil or whatever tool we choose to plan and invent things that do not already exist in this diverse world.
We have learned from Poul Henningsen and other wise men that good taste is one of the worst things you can have, so I’m curious to see if anyone has anything good to say about the phenomenon.
Good taste can take on many different forms depending on the time and place, but fundamentally it is the accepted norms for a particular environment at a particular time and the better you follow and express these norms, the better your taste. This applies not only to clothing, homes and food but also to behaviour and the literature and art you choose. Of course, it is nice to have such norms; they make life easy and safe and give you a sense of belonging. It is a safety net, a learned pattern to use in place of independent judgement. In fact, being told you have good taste can be a dubious compliment because it means you make some pretty predictable choices.
The prevailing taste has much in common with styles and fashion: They are introduced as and emerge from strong and groundbreaking work, often in reaction to the status quo. After a while, the shock effect wears off, the new is adopted and popularised, finding a generally acceptable expression. And so it continues, whether we like it or not.
So, what we can ascertain as designers is that there is certainly no need to work in the service of current good taste; it is big, broad and doing just fine. On the contrary, we must use our imagination, creativity and our visions of the society to create the things and the environment we believe in. You can do it based on your personal temperament. Some will choose strict and ascetic, but I do not mind if it is fun and festive, and I’m not opposed to pomp and circumstance.
We also have this amazing possibility of picking up paper and pencil or whatever tool we choose to plan and invent things that do not already exist in this diverse world.
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