Letter from the Editor

Taste. Is there a more subjective word? Yours is yours alone, as is mine. I respect yours (you like slapstick, I hate it), and you respect mine (you wouldn’t choose Prokofiev, but you respect my love for his music). Simple. And in this time of great spiritual warfare, sometimes it seems like taste in our culture keeps us from despair. Yet the larger question of taste is a more complicated conversation, because in our world, it is both personal and societal. My own taste—classic clothes with a touch of gimmickry and fun versus gimmicky attention-grabbing clothes pretending to be classic—may be overshadowed by this moment’s collective taste for noise versus quiet.

And taste is not just about things. It could be a preference for spirit of generosity versus bad behavior or a taste for violence in film, art and books versus the comedy of errors. I like kissing. And shooting bad guys in movies. Go figure. It’s my taste, and sometimes it’s part of the collective. Isn’t that why Nielsen measures it and advertisers live and die by it and journalists report it? Collective taste brings with it some pressure and sometimes a bandwagon mentality. But it is the taste of many, and one thing we should have learned by now, what with that Bill of Rights that keeps hanging around our country, is live and let live.

We here at LA are not setting ourselves up as arbiters of taste. We embrace it all. There is no bad taste—just maybe a lack of imagination or personal and collective style that may, indeed, one day, find its way. After all, tastes change over time, and what was considered good or bad in the past in terms of art, fashion and, my particular peeve, manners surely finds new life. So we took our “Tastemakers” selections—those who influence our aesthetic sensibilities—very seriously. We didn’t fight about who gets to be included, but we sure discussed it a lot. We didn’t argue because we had at our helm my favorite arbiter of taste, Arts and Culture Editor Mayer Rus. His goal was to showcase those who are in the forefront of sometimes the newest, sometimes just plain iconic, work that affects the sensibilities of us all.

As I peruse our picks, I marvel at the wealth of talent in Los Angeles and the love our Tastemakers have for their work and for their city. For however you define taste, one thing is sure: We all know it when we see it.One more thing: Ending the package, you will find a box we call “Power and Grace.” It is our version of the list of powerbrokers in town. How do you get on it? First, you must be influential in your work, and second, you must be full of grace as you wield your power. It’s our way of saying it pays to be nice. And if you like the idea, we may keep doing it. As long as it’s tasteful.