I read somewhere that your taste in art (that is the way you like or dislike a form of art) is acquired, not inherent. So no one is born with a liking for this or that type of painting or music. Is it right? Does anyone here knows how it happens?

Well, the claim that it's completely acquired would seem to be nonsense.  Even animals respond to music, and babies recognize pretty faces.

Obviously the brain responds to stimuli - and the more the senses interact with such stimuli, the more sophisticated and variegated the impressions of art become.

In some sense it would be like learning language.  The ability to learn language in inborn - the brain contains the fundamentals paths that allow a language to be learned - but obviously languages differ a great deal.

 I read somewhere that your taste in art (that is the way you like or dislike a form of art) is acquired, not inherent. So no one is born with a liking for this or that type of painting or music. Is it right? Does anyone here knows how it happens?

Music: there are of course universal principles that define, in a broad way, what makes for good music; I'm thinking of harmony, primarily - and humans do come in-born with knowledge of the harmonic series.* That being the case, we can see that a preference for Classical music over some contemporary artificial music, such as Serialism, is inherent and natural. On the other hand, a preference for Classical European over, say, Classical Chinese music probably falls more on the acquired side.

The same affinity for harmony (proportion, ratio) holds true for visual arts as well, since all is interrelated. In fact, in the 19th Century a curious pendulum instrument was invented called the harmonograph, which, by means of weights, pivots and swivels, is able to render a kind of visual equivalent for any musical interval. If you set it to draw a harmonious interval, the resulting illustration is symmetrical and orderly, often geometrically precise; however if you set it draw a discordant interval you will get a discordant-looking result. (As an aside, a lateral harmonograph [pictured below] produces some suggestive results on a symbolical level. If you set it to draw a unison, a ratio of 1:1, it draws a circle, which has long been held to be the symbol of unity; if you let it draw for a while, entropy turns the circle into an archimidean spiral, which is a symbol of creation or manifestation. And if you set it to an octave it draws a lemniscate ! The fact that these results are, in a sense, unsurprising - at least once one grasps the mechanical principles behind the harmonograph - doesn't make them any less suggestive.) The point of this sizeable diversion is to show that aural and visual art forms make use of the same principles; I believe it was Goethe who called architecture "music frozen in time". Again, it would follow that a taste for a romanesque over a VII church is inherent.



Now, I have heard some critics, usually older ones, speak of such-and-such race's "genius" or prediliction for a particular art form or mode of expression. I can't think of any really good examples at the moment, but it seems to me like a reasonable line of thought, so if we accept that one's blood has some effects on one's mental makeup, the lines between acquired and inherent begin to blur.

*Spoken vowels are musical notes, quite literally, and in hearing them we identify and differentiate them by their overtones. If we were not born with sensitivity to the harmonic series, we would never learn to speak. On another note, it's interesting that it's nearly impossible to sing any series of two tones out of tune, unless one receives external help. You can try for yourself: sing any note, then follow it with any second note - they will be harmonious, despite your best efforts to produce discord.