I wasn't really looking for a broad discussion about art... but what can I do...
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Norris2k said: What I meant implicitly is that if it keeps being a reference and source for years or centuries for valuable artists and professionals... it has to be something special. |
No, it doesn't, not necesarrily. It's possible that it is, but let me propose an alternative:
Art critics of the 17th century or so came to the conclusion that Shakespeare's work was good. So everyone who did not agree with this narrative was considered "not knowledgeable" about art. If you didn't agree, you lost credibility as a person of art and had to exit the art community, therefore only those who agreed with this stayed involved with criticising art. Every new person who wanted to mean anything had to agree from the get-go. so the notion that Shakespeare was good jumped from generation to generation, even though the reasons the original critics had liked it were long gone.
Maybe the very system we (or, more precisely, you) use to assess quality of art is built around the preconceived notions about existing art. In other words, maybe Shakespeare isn't good because it fits the definition of good art, but because the definition of good art was designed to fit Shakespeare (and other similar works, of course).
I remember a scene from a movie (I can't remember the name and I never saw it again), where an art teacher speaks to her students.
Teacher: What is good art? Here, my five-year-old son drew a hedgehog on this paper. Is it good art?
A student: No.
Teacher: Why not?
Student: People would have to say it is.
Teacher (lifts the drawing above her head and shouts): THIS IS GOOD ART!
Student: I meant the correct people!
Teacher: Oh, so suddenly some mysterious "correct people" decide what's good art and what's not?
This resonates with me, because that's exactly what I feel. I do not agree with your definition of good art. To defend your opinion, you can only resort to appeals to popularity or authority (the academia, art critics, etc.), which aren't very convincing, you have to undestand that.
You can make the argument that if the right people (or even most people) believe X is good art, then it necessarily is, because "good" is a subjective quality we as people get to assign, but then I can tell you that a 15th century slaver could use the same argument - that they as people got to define morality - so, if they believed owning slaves was okay. then it necessarily was.
| Norris2k said: Being first in fact matters. I will try to explain by an example. Van Gogh is an artist and painted a few good paints to say the least. If you make a imitation of his art and paint it better... you loose, because an imitation cant qualify as art. Art is a process of innovation, invention. And I'm not sure what would be the signification of painting some Van Gogh better than Van Gogh. |
In Red Dwarf (the show), the hyper-intelligent computer aboard the eponymous ship thought about re-writing Hamlet and... quote "de facto improving it".Now, this second version of Hamlet would be better in every objective way. If you claim the original would still be better (or more valuable),you have to claim one of two things:
a) Everything that was innovative and was considered good art at one time will always be good art, regardless of how it aged.
b) Temporal precedence is the biggest factor in being "good art" and every other factor (even merit) is meaningless.
I cannot agree with either. If a book comes out and a year after that a different author (for example the original author's son) releases the very same story with all minor plotholes fixed, better writing style, more believable dialogue etc.,I would consider the second version a) better, b) more valuable, c) more worth reading.
Too long? Sorry,
