ABSTRACT
The instability of taste has become apparent since the eighteenth century, the time at which the existence of antithetical esthetic doctrines and taste cultures came into the open. Passionate differences existed earlier among artists and their supporters, such as the dispute of the Rubenistes and Poussinistes, but both sides debated, in the last analysis, within an agreed-on definition of art. By the eighteenth century, along with the development of the novel and the expansion of theater audiences, the rise of public art exhibitions and increased print distribution introduced truly divisive factors. The small cultivated public for art, as it existed in every country, supported a uniform idealistic view of art; it was now faced by a quantitatively powerful alternative. What might have happened is that the separate cultures would have acquired different vocabularies, just as they developed different functions. As this did not occur, the supporters of elite culture tried to get esthetic control over the diffusion and popularization of the arts by means of an existing vocabulary and on behalf of their own taste culture.
