Art is not about being able to reproduce a scene optically (thereby rendering it abstract and ARTificial). The most abstract paintings are in fact the optically (hyper-)realistic ones. Art is not about imitating or expressing personal feelings. It's about expressing ideas. It's not about creating pleasurable esthetic experiences. You can find that anywhere (just take a morning walk through town, or nature, or blow smoke through incoming sunrays).
Art is about expressing worldviews (scientific experiments for example). About criticizing society. — Raymond
Fortunately we do not have to come up with criteria for good art, bad art, art at all. Culture, I hear, is a collective process, a cooperative product. — Bitter Crank
The quality of porn is not easy to measure. Not by a long shot.
— john27
That hasn't been my experience. — Bitter Crank
Art is not about being able to reproduce a scene optically (thereby rendering it abstract and ARTificial). The most abstract paintings are in fact the optically (hyper-)realistic ones. Art is not about imitating or expressing personal feelings. It's about expressing ideas. It's not about creating pleasurable esthetic experiences. — Raymond
Culture, I hear, is a collective process, a cooperative product.
Culture, tradition, elites,
— baker
and others. What constitutes good art, good music, good literature, good landscaping, good architecture, good sculpture, good... whatever is determined by the votes of everyone interested in the matter. — Bitter Crank
Hmmm... and there I was thinking we were discussing how we might arrive at criteria for good or bad. If it's just personal opinion then I have no real interest in discussions because I don't really care what others think. — Tom Storm
I don't really care what others think. — Tom Storm
Or are you suggesting with your term 'collective process' that there is an intersubjective agreement about what art can be considered good? — Tom Storm
What qualifies as art?
What makes art good or bad
more of a joke than a major plank — Bitter Crank
There is nothing mysterious about how this process works: we are social animals and we do look for clues among our people, our milieu, about what is considered good and not good. — Bitter Crank
I would propose that an element that is common to good art, and that is still consistent with the notion that there can be differing tastes, is that good art offers us a specific experience that is similar to surprise. Good art creates expectations, and subverts them, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously. — Reformed Nihilist
There's an interesting phenomena that, so far as I can see has been going on since time immemorial. Every generation, what is considered good breaks the conventions set by previous traditions. — Reformed Nihilist
This makes sense to me, but I don't think it's enough. Maybe necessary but not sufficient. — T Clark
I've thought about this from the other direction - New music often goes to outside sources to find new musical language, e.g. African music has become part of popular music in the US and Europe. As the world homogenizes, will we eventually run out of fresh sources and end up with all culture the same everywhere? — T Clark
There is something more than personal opinion and public acclaim that makes good art. — T Clark
There's artistic vision, truth, technical mastery, surprise, emotional insight, playfulness, complexity, narrative, simplicity, clarity, depth, history, humor, community.... and on and on. I don't know how to put all that together. — T Clark
Why should we do that? Is that really our job, or is that just one option among several others? — Bitter Crank
I'm in favor of the examined life. What is difficult about it is doing it in time for it to make a difference. — Bitter Crank
So how would we know when something was sufficient? Sufficient for what purpose, or to what end? — Reformed Nihilist
The socio-cultural world was highly local for any individual for most of human history, and we never seemed to run out of new art then, so I expect not. — Reformed Nihilist
Personal opinion and public acclaim do not make any art at all, any more than a stadium full of cheering fans make plays on the field. — Bitter Crank
The artist puts all that together. IF he or she is successful in putting it all together really well, there will be individual and public acclaim for 'a great work of art'. Probably -- it might take quite some time to appear, but it usually does, eventually.
People like good art. That good art is better than bad art, just like good food is better than bad food, is just my personal opinion. You can prefer bad art and bad food if you like. — Bitter Crank
BTW, I do not feel inadequate, — Bitter Crank
I do not feel inadequate, or that I am shirking my responsibilities by not posting THE definition of art, or a list of the elements of great art (or bad art). A) IF I were to post those things, there would still be disagreement. B) The question of what makes good art good has not been finally answered by many others. — Bitter Crank
Culture is changeable, and so does the definition of cultural products. Opinions are personal because we each experience the world (and art) individually. What meets the criteria of greatness today may not be on the list tomorrow. Johan Sebastian Bach was the IT composer, then he wasn't. A century later, he was revived. — Bitter Crank
Yes... well...that's what we're trying to figure out here. — T Clark
If you don't have anything by which to decide sufficiency, then how do you know that what I offered is insufficient? How do you play a game when you don't know what it means to win? — Reformed Nihilist
There's artistic vision, truth, technical mastery, surprise, emotional insight, playfulness, complexity, narrative, simplicity, clarity, idiosyncrasy, depth, history, humor, community.... and on and on. — T Clark
I don't know how to put all that together. — T Clark
In a previous post, I listed some of the factors I think go into deciding whether or not a particular work of art is high quality: — T Clark
Ok, but why must these things be accounted for? — Reformed Nihilist
It seems to me that it's pointless to try to answer a question if we don't have any way of knowing what a satisfactory answer looks like. — Reformed Nihilist
Don't mistake me, I'm not criticizing your attempts at answers in favor of mine, I'm criticizing the process. — Reformed Nihilist
It's a process that's worked for me before when I try to figure something out. — T Clark
It's a process that's worked for me before when I try to figure something out.
— T Clark
How do you know? Honest question. — Reformed Nihilist
If you don't know how to identify if you've found an acceptable answer, then how do you know that engaging in the process has worked for you in figuring things out? How could you tell that you had something figured out? — Reformed Nihilist
There is something more than personal opinion and public acclaim that makes good art. There's artistic vision, truth, technical mastery, surprise, emotional insight, playfulness, complexity, narrative, simplicity, clarity, idiosyncrasy, depth, history, humor, community.... and on and on. I don't know how to put all that together. — T Clark
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