| Psychotic said: I wasn't really looking for a broad discussion about art... but what can I do...
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? 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 qulity 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.
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) Tempral 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, |
I think it's very significant you are thinking like the computer from a show (which, I think, was intended to be ironic in the show : computers don't understand art).
Art is done by artists, right ? What kind of artist would just copy something old, improve it here and there, change the names, whatever, and claim that's art and that he got an objective "better" version ? He would not be an artist, it would not be art, and then, it would not be a better art. You can't distinguish art from innovation, that's right. And I would say you can't dissociate art from the artist, art from the history of art. And that's not just what I'm saying, what some kind of "references" or "clever" people are telling, or even what artists are thinking : that's what art is, that's how it's evolving, growing, created. Why do you think in 140 years someone didn't just came up with an improved version of "impression soleil levant", with better color or whatever ? Would anyone say "yeah, the color is better, that's better art" ? That's what you fail to understand, you reject the idea that someone decides what art is, what is good or not, and to go against this system of value, you need to make it a product, that don't have history, that don't have an artist, that doesn't include notion of inovation or personnality, that don't even have to be artistic. It's just pepsi versus coke, you decide. To put it simple, to go against the inequality of an authority on art, you need to fail, or genuinely fail to understand what art is. It's not coke versus pepsi.
