Even though we call taste subjective because it varies from person to person it is an objective phenomena in the same sense that only one individual directly perceives pain.  A person experiencing pain has an open wound, an inflammation, ache, pinched nerve, etc.  When the source of the pain is located another person, a nurse, can verify that the pain experienced by the first person is in a causal relationship with the observed injury and take measures to alleviate the suffering.  This shows the subjective state of pain as having an objective status.  Time fluctuates, speeds up and slows down as the brain focuses in and out of attention, a subjective state, yet we call time objective.  A sufficiently articulate person can give reasons for what he likes and what he finds annoying.  He will also be able to give an account of development of his taste as an educational adventure.

Irony is recognized with a knowing look, an allusion of being in the know, or with one’s spoken references to another level of awareness usually as an attempt at humor.  We have rueful irony or sardonic irony but what one may mistake as irony may merely be earnest stupidity.  Irony is ambiguous, it can be hard to read, it goes over the listener’s head or it is ignored.  “You are a genius” said with a sneer might be insulting or it might be a complement withholding the full intention of the meaning of “genius” because we all know no one really is; never the less the speaker expresses his admiration.

  “Until 1901, the painting (“Sunset at Montmajour”) was in the collection once owned by van Gogh’s brother, said Marije Vellekoop the head of collections, research and presentation for the museum.  His widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, sold it to a Paris art dealer.  In 1908, the art dealer sold it to a Norwegian collector, Ms. Vellekoop said.  Shortly after that, she added, ‘it was declared a fake, or not an original,’ and the Norwegian collector banished it to his attic, where it stayed until he died in 1970.  The current owners purchased it thereafter.  

They took it to the Van Gogh Museum in 1991, Mr. Ruger said, but at that time, experts there said they did not think it was authentic.”   p C7 

Let us shift focus and assume that someone is moved by looking at an old painting in a museum in an unfamiliar city.  He does not break the spell with a glance at the label to find who the artist is or the date it was painted.  Assuming the viewer is sufficiently informed to make a judgment; he purposely ignores the information contained in the label to keep the innovative status of the work at bay.  The question of innovation then becomes an intellectual imposition; such knowledge may enhance or detract from the examination of the painting.  The initial experience is a matter of “taste” and the overlay of additional irrelevant information is the “after taste”.

Let us suppose a sculptor says he wants something of a near equivalence between the support and the object that sits on it.  If I understand him, and if I were to ask “why?” – if he did not answer that it was because he wanted to see what it looked like, we would go galloping down a endless slope of mirrors; the child’s discovery that there is no final answer; that which is opposed to the visual.

Consider an example of an artist who has had a transcendent experience, say while meditating.  She then paints a canvas in order to help her reach this mental state when she stares at it.  A friend of the painter, an art historian, declares it a masterpiece of minimalist art – and it is, in fact, beautiful – despite the intended use that will, be different than for a work of art.  Suppose she intends to destroy it when it no longer works as a tool for her mediation.  Can the painting be a work of art in spite of her having made it exclusively for a personal use?  Or consider another hypothetical case.  An accomplished artist declares himself, from this point in time, to be no longer an artist.  He leaves his gallery, severs all relations with the art world, and yet continues to make useless, art-like objects.  His new objects continue to evolve and have no obvious dissimilarities from his previous products but he makes them for different, non-utilitarian, contemplative, or decorative, reasons.  Can he continue producing objects as he has in the past and be exempt from the category of artist?  Perhaps whatever this individual has said about being an artist does not affect what he makes.  Perhaps his intentions and motivations play no part.  He may not be able to determine the meaning of his future production of objects, as long as the objects adhere to the standards of excellence that he has attained previous to his declaration.

We can contrast the two cases above with the intentions of an artist who, with permission from the proprietors, places indiscriminate trash in a gallery.  The trash might be accepted as an “artwork” and examined for his non-formal motives, such as his disdain for the art market and the hierarchy of art professionals.

Artworks are paintings, sculpture, photographs, and installations that are made by amateurs in their homes, art professors in universities, and serious artists with or without commercial affiliations. Artworks may, or may not, have intrinsic value or monetary value, other than what the artist believes they are worth.  Non-utilitarian fashion objects, as opposed to utilitarian fashion objects that are worn or carried, such as expensive shoes and handbags, are artworks that have a lot of monetary but little intrinsic value.  Rather, they are “meaningful”, “innovative”, “politically correct”, etcetera, and they may set historical precedence within the ever-expanding arbitrary modulations in contemporary art.  These objects and their producers are known to a wide audience and are bought, sold, and traded through primary dealers, collectors, secondary dealers, and auction houses.  Collectors of non-utilitarian fashion objects often collect to accumulate artworks of an individual manufacturer or artworks in an identifiable style within a specific time period, much as a stamp or baseball card collector will strive to complete a series.  This differs from, but is not exclusive of, collectors of non-utilitarian fashion objects who collect for speculation. They look for young unknowns with primary dealers or visit select graduate schools to find artwork made by students in their early twenties.  They buy the product in hopes the aspiring artist becomes sufficiently famous to profit later in the secondary market.  Part of the dynamic is based on the reputation of the collector, how acute his or her “eye” has been, and what his or her status is within the layers of the business of international art.  The better the reputation of the collector the greater the chance that the artwork known to be in his or her collection will gain in monetary value.

Richard Serra’s  “Equal Weights and Measures”, six rectangular annealed steel blocks rested in Gagosian’s gymnasium size Chelsea gallery in New York in 2006.  Each was 4’ 3” by 5’ 3” by 6’ 3” and, if I correctly remember, approximately 40 tons apiece, lined in a row with each lying on a different face.  This is as usual in the simple but elegant systems Serra constructs.  On three different occasions I circled and stood in their presence.  I say “presence” because I had not encountered anything like these, they were not like dense stone; these objects with their patina of steel and rust made basalt appear light.  My grasp of how and of what the objects were made contributed to the feeling of the pull and repulsion of such massive density, in its brute simple and austere beauty.

Each block pressed cracks radiating in the concrete floor as I observed visitors wander in and, after a glance or two, pause to read a label on the wall to sum up their experience.  A few lingered.  In an interview I read some years ago, Serra said “nothing sucks the space out of a room like a Giacometti”.   This has been my experience, and it is especially true when we see a Giacometti in a white cube without the distraction of paintings; the interior of a white cube can define space as absolute.  Serra’s six steel weights in a white, sky-lit space did not suck the space so much as breathe it.  The expanse of the room, with its natural light, let gravity push and pull the mass crushed into compactness beyond its original molecular structure.  The solidity of the blocks cancelled all poetic nonsense.  Here was a case of presence versus appearance like no other.  It was the exact opposite of a mythical, personal, iconic, or spiritual presence, not in the sense of the spiritual’s negation of evil, but that the material compression, identical with the rectilinear forms, grounded any generalities.