ABSTRACT
It is important, first, to dismiss a certain popular idea of aesthetic taste, the idea enshrined in the familiar maxim that de gustibus non est disputan-dum. ‘It’s all a matter of taste,’ men say, thinking in this way to bring argument to an end and at the same time to secure whatever validity they can for their own idiosyncracies. Clearly no one really believes in the Latin maxim: it is precisely over matters of taste that men are most prone to argue. Reasons are given, relations established; the ideas of right and wrong, correct and incorrect, are bandied about with no suspicion that here they might be inappropriate. Societies are formed for the preservation of buildings to which the majority of people are thought to be indifferent. Anger is expressed at the erection of a skyscraper in Paris, or a shopping precinct in some quiet cathedral town. This anger has many causes, not all of them specifically ‘aesthetic’; but, on the face of it, it is quite incompatible with the assumption that in matters of taste dispute is pointless, that each man has the right to his own opinion, that nothing is objective, nothing right or wrong. In science, too, we find differences of opinion. Perhaps some people believe that the earth is flat, and form societies to protect themselves from the abundant evidence to the contrary. But at least we know that such a belief is the sign of a diminished understanding. Why should we not say, then, that a preference for the Einstein Tower over Giotto’s Campanile is simply incompatible with a full understanding of architecture? It could be said that there is more to be seen in the Giotto, that it possesses a visual and intellectual richness, a delicate proportionality, an intricacy of detail, that it is beautiful not only as form but in all its parts and matter, that every meaning which attaches to it upholds and embellishes its aesthetic power. A man who notices and takes delight in those things is unlikely to believe that the Mendelsohn bears comparison, even if he should admire its smooth contour and thorough conception. When we study these buildings our attitude is not simply one of curiosity, accompanied by some indefinable pleasure or dissatisfaction. Inwardly, we affirm our preference as valid, and if we did not do so, it is hard to see how we might be
seriously guided by it, how we might rely on it to fill in the gaps left by functional reflections in the operation of practical knowledge. Our preference means something more to us than mere pleasure or satisfaction. It is the outcome of thought and education; it is expressive of moral, religious and political feelings, of an entire Weltanschauung, with which our identity is mingled. Our deepest convictions seek confirmation in the experience of architecture, and it is simply not open to us to dismiss these convictions as matters of arbitrary preference about which others are free to make up their minds, any more than it is open to us to think the same of our feelings about murder, rape or genocide. Just as in matters of morality, and matters of science, we cannot engage in aesthetic argument without feeling that our opponent is wrong. ‘I had always’, wrote Ruskin, ‘a clear conviction that there was a law in this matter: that good architecture might be indisputedly discerned and divided from the bad; and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for debating about the genuineness of a coin without ringing it’ (1861: ch. 1). I should like to agree with Ruskin, if only because I am convinced that, in so many matters of architectural taste, his own opinions were fundamentally wrong.
