Systematizing Art Exploration

Article • 668 Words • Art, 2026 • 07/02/2026 • View in graph

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Developing Taste in Art

I’ve written about developing taste in art before, but I didn’t say how do do it. Taste is being able to discern why you like something, what about it spoke to you, why it worked for you personally. Once you know what you like and do not like, and are able to truly understand it, you are able to seek out things you like, and maybe even create some things too.

Art is one of the best things about being alive, and I truly think that there is stuff out there for anyone, it’s just about finding it. Luckily for us, we live in the Internet Information Age where things are way more accessible than ever before. Algorithmic feeds, while they have their problems, also allow really great recommendations, of similar things. Sometimes we want to go beyond what we just like and find things that are completely different and out of our comfort zone. This is where this guide comes in.

Pick something you already love (your seed), and decide right away whether it’s a specific creator or a genre (its seed type). Then pick one dimension/feature of the seed, a single way of relating your seed to other things, and hold it for the whole session. This is your exploration axis. The seed type is important because its about what you’re betting on, a person or a form.

If you like a certain person and you trust their artistic judgement, then you should like most of their works, especially if they have a defined style (Wes Anderson is a great example). Going along a genre/form allows you to find new people to take bets on. I really like exploring Director’s bodies of work. Less so for books though, I tend to go more by genre, but I still of course have my favorite authors.

Exploration Steps:

Pick a seed and decide its type, creator or genre, as above.
Pick one axis for the session:
- Audience: ask someone or Google, “if someone liked this, what else should I check out,” or check a “people also enjoyed” feature wherever you’re browsing.
- Mood/Aesthetic: describe the feeling rather than the category
  - “I want to feel like…”, “I want it to feel/look like…”
- Movement: for a creator, look up their scene and find peers in it; for a genre, look for what it grew out of or reacted against.
  - Each genre will likely have its own fandom with an agreed upon canon of the best representatives of the genre. It is good to start off with them, but to really gain an appreciation for the movement, you might need to go a bit deeper to things lost to history.
- Geography: search deliberately into a country or culture you haven’t explored/want to dive deeper into
  - While French and Japanese cinema are not monoliths for example, they do have different feelings and themes associated with them
    - Art is a reflection of culture!
- Lineage: look at explicit/implicit influences, what is it in response to or a continuation of?
- Form: ask what else uses the same technique or structure regardless of subject
  - Animation, Black and White, narrative devices, etc.
Find three or four neighbors along that axis, whatever strikes your interest.
- Google, Reddit, TikTok, Letterboxd, Goodreads: there are so many different ways to find things
- Every Noise At Once for music
Engage with them in any kind of way you want to. Try a little bit or all of it and write down what you liked or didn’t like about it.
- I think going in blind is best, and then looking up things afterwards. It can be important to validate or challenge your viewpoint. Maybe this was the author’s weakest work or you were lacking context to truly understand everything. You can always revisit stuff.
- I would strongly advise against marking something away as “not for you” but there is so much out there that it can make sense to at least turn your exploration efforts toward something else that might more readily bear fruit.

Systematizing Art Exploration

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