This is the approved final manuscript of the series editor’s preface to The Invention of Taste: A Cultural Account of Desire, Delight, and Disgust in Fashion, Food and Art by Luca Vercelloni, translated by Kate Singleton, published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2016, acquired by Routledge (Sensory Studies Series) in 2020.
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 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 to another German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, that 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 prerational as well as subjective character of this sense. De gustibus non est disputandum – “there is no disputing 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 elitist 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 ou useful, and came to centre 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, modelled on the unrestricted gratifications of the aristocracy. However, there was a contradiction embedded in this construction. On the surface it appeared to be open to everyman, 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,”5 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 humours 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”4 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 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.
In “Ease and Progress,” Vercelloni describes how the shock that came in the wake of the democratization of luxury and 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 turn is exemplified by Marcel Duchamp’s exhibition of an upside-down urinal under the title “Fountain” at the Salon of Independent Artists in New York in 1917. By taking the lowliest of everyday objects (a readymade at that) and exhibiting it as art, Duchamp succeeded at upsetting and mocking the established norms of art. Art after Duchamp would emphasize originality, or what is to say the same thing, 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 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-honoured 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 aestherics, it has its revenge in ratifying an unalienable 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. But the extent to which taste has spread since its metaphorization, and become the ground 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), as well as 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 – all this points to the necessity for a cultural account of taste, such as provided in this book, and gives the lie to the still popular expression De gustibus non est disputandum.
D.H., 30 September 2015
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. 243-260, 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. DEL
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. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2013, pp. 243-260.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1984.
Classen, Constance. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012.
Grant, George. English-Speaking Justice. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1985.
Hoffman, Viktoria von. Goûter le monde: Une histoire culturelle du goût à l’époque moderne. Brussels : Peter Lang, 2013.
Howes, David. “Introduction” in David Howes (ed.) The Sixth Sense Reader. Oxford: Berg, 2009, pp. 1-52.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000.
