ABSTRACT
Coda identifies the contradictions that are inherent in the persistence of the social value created by taste. Michael Bhaskar gives the privileged spectator/consumer of eighteenth-century taste pride of place in a twenty-first-century context. It may be more important to consider the possibility that the confrontation between the tastemaker and the algorithm, rather than making the tastemaker more important than ever, could reveal the insupportable contradictions of taste and the anachronism of its model of value. The contributors to the Persistence of Taste: Art Museums and Everyday Life After Bourdieu have demonstrated that taste persists by means of certain contradictions. Bhaskar briefly introduces the possibility that we might realise that we prefer curation by artificial intelligence, while concluding that it will be better to let tastemakers make 'wise choices on behalf of others' within the curation economy. In taste, the spectator is always the privileged agent of culture.
