Whenever Steven Pinker comes upon the subject of art in his masterpiece on evolutionary psychology, How the Mind Works,[1] he returns to Thorstein Veblen and Quentin Bell’s contributions to the psychology of status, which purports to explain the dynamics of fashion. To Veblen’s three “pecuniary canons of taste,” namely conspicuous consumption, conspicuous leisure, and conspicuous waste, Bell has added the fourth canon—conspicuous outrage. It says: “I’m so talented, wealthy, popular, and well-connected that I can afford to offend you.”[2] It runs in the face of all the dependencies that regulate our lives. According to Pinker, the last canon now dominates the other three in the worlds of art and culture.[3] Rereading these words for the third or fourth time since last November, when I bought the book, I could not avoid concluding that my postcards, which are addressed to the best and the brightest in the world of art, fit perfectly into Pinker’s framework. Art they undoubtedly are, for they are conspicuous in terms of the four canons of taste, and especially the last one.

Footnotes

1. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1998 (first published in 1997).

2. Op. cit., p. 501.

3. Op. cit., p. 502.