How about 'em eh? I'm one. How about me, eh? :razz:

How about 'em eh? I'm one. How about me, eh? :razz: — Noble Dust

The Noble never go out of fashion although flesh to bones, bones to Dust, Dust to Dust! :joke:

wtf?

I asked you first. — Agent Smith

No, you did not ask me that. You asked is bad music bad? A very different question. You made an assertion that there is bad music. How did you make that assessment and can you provide an example?

Oh, there's bad music! And how! And how is it established? Well, a standard has to maintained, despite the constantly changing musical landscape. And the standard has to be maintained by gate keepers who are smart enough to understand how music is changing. — Noble Dust

What you have done here is make some somewhat random assertions. Give us an example of bad music and why.

And then once this is established for certain we can then go to Agent Smith's second question as to whether it counts as music.

wtf? — Noble Dust

A poetic rhapsody on your handle.

No, you did not ask me that. You asked is bad music bad? A very different question. You made an assertion that there is bad music. How did you make that assessment and can you provide an example? — Tom Storm

All I'm saying is that people seem to conflate bad music with no music.

All I'm saying is that people seem to conflate bad music with no music. — Agent Smith

You seemed to be saying more than this. My mistake. Well, yes as I have said, people conflate bad art with non-art. But bad art must be also be a thing if there can be good art. Hence my question - how do we determine good from bad?

Give us an example of bad music and why. — Tom Storm

how do we determine good from bad? — Tom Storm

It appears that, given what I said, there's no such thing as good art, there's just art!

I could have put Taylor Swift or the Rolling Stones up there too, What's the difference? That's the key issue at stake here? Or are you suggesting there are Platonic forms we access intuitively and as a consequence we just know what is bad and good?

The difference is that Taylor and The Rolling Stones are decent examples of pop music, whereas Godmack is not.

I guess we don't have anything further to say then. You're making claims with no justification.

Ah yes, my favorite past time. Making claims with no justification.

Ah yes, my favorite past time. Making claims with no justification. — Noble Dust

Is it? Do you not see my point? So far what you seem to have done is provide an example from personal taste using an appeal to self-evidence.

Ah yes, my favorite past time. Making claims with no justification. — Noble Dust

:rofl: No offense Tom Storm

None taken.

The difference is that Taylor and The Rolling Stones are decent examples of pop music, whereas Godmack is not. — Noble Dust

I sampled the codsmacked video. The visuals supported some sort of story, apparently. The instrumental part didn't interest me much, but it seemed competently performed, such as it is. The vocal parts were more often screamed than sung --presumably screaming is not singing, There were passages where the vocal parts were actually sung, and for this genre, sung well enough.

This isn't my cup of tea at all but I'd allow that it qualifies as "musical art"; probably not good--and certainly not great--musical art. What keeps it fro being "good"? extended effort, maybe. Pieces like this seem slapped together and the many edits make it more difficult to judge the visual part. In addition to being screamed, the text was inarticulate. I googled the text and decided that I hadn't missed anything; it doesn't add up to much,

Now I've told you this once before
You can't control me
If you try to take me down you're gonna break
I feel your every nothing that you're doing for me
I'm picking you out of me
You run away
I stand alone
Inside
I stand alone

There are so many good, very good, and great pieces of music art, all genres. What are some commonalities?

Performers are sufficiently articulate that they an be understood, (except in 'high art' opera or oratorio pieces where a vowel may be carried for sever bars up and down the scales)
Musicians perform professionally (high quality)
The content is complex, complete, adult (it's not bubblegum, like the Ohio Express's repulsive 1969 horror Yummy Yummy Yummy I got love in my tummy)

Quality and effort shows whether it's Mozart's Requiem or the latest chart topper, and so do a lack of quality.

(Lack of quality wouldn't prevent a piece from being popular among some group. The Ballad of Ethel Pump is disgraceful, but some people like it. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the buying public.

The vocal parts were more often screamed than sung — Bitter Crank

:rofl: Now you know.

It just dawned on me that the first port of call here is to be able to tell the difference between art and non-art; once that's under our belt, we can begin discussions on good/bad art.

Since art hasn't yet been defined, to talk about good/bad art is to put the cart before the horse.

Can the ocean be made wetter? No! So...

Since art hasn't yet been defined, to talk about good/bad art is to put the cart before the horse. — Agent Smith

We may not agree on the definition, but art has been defined and we have a working definition of it in our heads. Defining art again is a pleasant enough pass time, but it is not a requisite for most purposes. It might seem like a necessity to define the term before we can begin sorting out good from bad, but sortition (sorting out) contributes to the definition.

A lot of the ink spilled on the definition of art is actually in support of what we like and do not like, and why. THAT is what we quite properly care about.

Quality and effort shows whether it's Mozart's Requiem or the latest chart topper, and so do a lack of quality. — Bitter Crank

I disagree. And firstly you'll have a devil of a job explaining what 'quality' and 'effort' mean and how you can tell when they are embodied in a work. Effort? Mozart wrote most of his pieces with almost no effort - he was a genius (let's not count his unfinished requiem, he was sick). My dad put a huge amount of effort into his painting and he still sucked. So effort means zilch.

Quality? What do you say to the music academic who says that all pop music is junk, a debased musical form? How is quality revealed in painting? There are many people who think Norman Rockwell is a better artist than Picasso - how do we establish if they are right or wrong?

tell the difference between art and non-art — Agent Smith

I am content thinking that shoveling the snow off the sidewalk is not art and that Swan Lake is art. Granted, there is a fringy region between art and not art. Example: in 1968 I found a 90mm brass shell casing in the surf at Marconi Beach on Cape Cod. The shell had exploded, ripping the casing into a ragged 'V'. (The shell would date back to WWII.) The surf had smoothed the edges and given it a matte finish.

This found object could be mounted on a nice hunk of wood and be called a sculpture. I'm pretty sure it would pass muster as art for a fairly large number of people. I really like it, but I don't think it is art, any more than an interesting mollusk shell is art, beautiful though it may be. It's in that border zone where objects seem "artful" and are not.

From the other direction there are things that seem more like not-art objects, though they are claimed as art. Take Gunther von Hagens, known for his displays of preserved human corpses stripped of skin and dissected. They are 'plasticized' for preservation. Hey, very interesting! Not0-art, though.

What do you say to the music academic who says that all pop music is junk — Tom Storm

I would say that the music academic probably doesn't like pop music and is a musical snob besides. I can relate to his dislike. Once upon a youthful time, I was something of a musical snob and looked down on the popular music of the 1950s and early '60s. There was a lot of popular music I missed out on, because I was paying attention to archive folk music and classical stuff, or gamelan music, or whatever.

As I got older, I payed more attention to the pop music I had formerly shunned and found it had a lot more merit than I had previously credited it with.

I would say that the music academic probably doesn't like pop music and is a musical snob besides. — Bitter Crank

The question is how do we decide this is the case or if he is correct about pop's artistic merits?

Hey, very interesting! Not-art, though. — Bitter Crank

On what basis are you saying it is not art - personal opinion?

There are many people who think Norman Rockwell is a better artist than Picasso - how do we establish if they are right or wrong? — Tom Storm

They are not right or wrong about what they like, and what they like is probably what they judge to be better, more artistic. That's altogether understandable. Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post illustrations are part of my childhood, certainly; Picasso was not. Picasso and Rockwell aren't equivalent artists -- different times, different places, different environments, different sources of income, etc.

Picasso's imagination seems to have been much wider than Rockwell's, and he worked in several different forms. His "Mask" sculpture in Chicago is an example:



On the other hand, Grant Wood is underrated as a result of over-exposure and caricature. If this image were seen only in a museum, instead of a thousand cartoons...

They are not right or wrong about what they like, and what they like is probably what they judge to be better, more artistic. — Bitter Crank

Yes, but throughout this thread we have been discussing more than personal taste - potential objective criteria (you suggested effort and quality) by which to assess a work. It's even been suggested that bad art isn't worth calling 'art'.

I agree with you about Grant Wood. It's unfortunate when a work becomes over exposed and exploited. It is almost impossible to see properly.

This found object could be mounted on a nice hunk of wood and be called a sculpture. I'm pretty sure it would pass muster as art for a fairly large number of people. I really like it, but I don't think it is art, any more than an interesting mollusk shell is art, beautiful though it may be. — Bitter Crank

I think the act of mounting it on a block of wood is what would make it art. It would be an announcement that it should be seen as more than just an object. The frame draws you to step back and think about it from an aesthetic point of view, which is one of the definitions of "art" I find most satisfying.

They are not right or wrong about what they like, and what they like is probably what they judge to be better, more artistic. That's altogether understandable. Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post illustrations are part of my childhood, certainly; Picasso was not. Picasso and Rockwell aren't equivalent artists -- different times, different places, different environments, different sources of income, etc. — Bitter Crank

Rockwell is as much an illustrator as a painter. Even his paintings are really illustrations. Illustration is a different art than fine art painting, but it is worthy of respect. Different standards apply. I still vividly remember when my father read Verne's "The Mysterious Island" to my family. N.C. Wyeth's great illustrations were a big part of the experience. They still move me today. Put me right back lying on the floor as my father read.

On what basis are you saying it is not art - personal opinion? — Tom Storm

Let's say, "personal judgement". How else would anyone decide?

The starting point for von Hagens' corpus (so to speak) are dead bodies, for which he can claim no credit. The rest is taxidermy for which he can claim credit. As such it is, as I said, interesting. It isn't art for the same reason that a seashell isn't art, even if it is mounted in a nice display case. The clam did the work, not the finder. That doesn't mean seashells shouldn't be collected and displayed; it just means they aren't a "work of art" in themselves.

had von Hagens started with clay and made a sculpture in the form of a skinless body, it would not be in the not-art zone. It would be art, period, like Alberto Giacometti's sculptures: "He didn't sculpt heroes on horseback; he depicted everyday humans — and animals — struggling to get through the day. below, his 1951 bronze sculpture Dog (Le chien)