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NationofChange / Op-Ed
Published: Sunday 7 October 2012
“Before the age of information and computers, we took art as we could get it, and the simple existence of a painting or sculpture was proof enough of the piece demanding at least some kind of attention.”
How to Tell Good Art from Bad
I recently read an article on BBC about technology and the arts by Eyal Gever, a digital sculptor. The article brought up a question that I feel is extremely relevant to modern Americans and the modern world: What is true art?
The question used to be much simpler. Before the age of information and computers, we took art as we could get it, and the simple existence of a painting or sculpture was proof enough of the piece demanding at least some kind of attention. Now, with technology providing new tools to artists, and the massive accessibility of any and all people’s “art,” we have information overload. As a result, art in the last twenty years, has lost vital respect and attention by ourselves and our government.
So the question I found so compelling was that of the definition of “true art.” People need to understand how to identify “true art” and have a comprehensive definition to define what they are looking for. I would like to offer a definition of art and an explanation to support it which is as follows:
“True Art is an organized piece of work that effectively communicates a genuine human experience.”
There are some important concepts that the general public should make themselves aware of in order to appreciate the exciting new canvases that technology offers the art world. Here are some tips on identifying the real deal, without any outside influence or help.
- Know the medium : Now with technology offering so many avenues to painters, sculptors, and the like, it is vital to know what you are looking at. Knowing the medium allows you to evaluate the kind of work required to produce the piece.
- Know what you feel : Did the piece effectively communicate an emotion to you? When you experience the piece, no matter the medium, you should feel something. If you don’t, the piece may not be “true” art.
- Can you experience the piece in different ways: This is one of the big clues that what you experience is art. If you can evaluate a piece more than once to gain more insight on it, you may well be experiencing true art.
These tips are all given openly for you to take what helps and trash what doesn’t. My goal in this article was to give the public some guidelines on judging art for themselves so that we can enter an artistic renaissance and advance our culture’s art sophistication and refinement in the all important struggle for us to communicate with each other.
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ABOUT Caleb Jacobo
Caleb Jacobo is an independent writer living in Southern California. He runs the New American Scholar Project, an orginization focused on making great works of literature accessible for everyone. You can find out more about Caleb at his blog at calebjacobo.com. You can find out more about the New American Scholar Project here thenasproject.org.
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By Kiley Kroh
12 comments on "How to Tell Good Art from Bad"
October 08, 2012 1:07am
I feel to start with a root statement that may or may not communicate a tone:
Our Father, Who Art (in) Heaven.
Clearly in this statement, art is the verb to be; the movement or embodiment of that which is felt arising from a wholeness of being is a desire, inspiration, or project that is not other than our life.
The nature of what IS cannot be defined, but the Movement and Quality of its being can be honoured as it reveals itself as ... the embodiment of intuition, thought and feeling as the tangibility of life. If we are beholding of this then our lives express it.
Artifice is like the fig leaves in the Adam and Eve story. It is that capacity of mind to imagine its own reality or self along the lines of thought it wants to be true - and which it gives preference to, over and above the Current Flow of Being Itself. This sort of self-will seems to overlay a personal signature of achievement and possession on the Original and the True and subverts it innate meaning to its own self defined meanings. In the attempt to make itself real it seeks any and every kind of self validation at the level of form and appearance, and becomes forgetful and defended against the realm of the presence of life in which the tangibility and visibility is but the revealing and identifying of the communion and communication of Life Itself.
There is another thing I'd add; the self in its own illusion can only make copies of what is already real. There isn't a fake 11 dollar bill in circulation anywhere - though such could of course be a project for a conceptual artist to undertake!
The imitation of life necessarily uses something of life because there is nothing else to use. In this sense ,there is often something that can be felt as wheat among the tares in the attempts of man to make or communicate the good, the beautiful or the true. (To want to communicate the ugly or the dispiriting or the meaningless is an indicator that the mind involved has implicitly called such 'good' by the act of valuing it with his or her attention and intention).
The idea of a separate identity - endowing some kind of string-less puppet with autonomy - is itself the artifice of a thinking to which humankind has been asserting possession of and becoming possessed by. Yet this is act and not fact, and so there are all sorts of moments in its experience of itself that transcend its narrow self limitation as it stirs or is re-membered in a presence of being of which it is often hardly aware and yet IS the only Thing Going On - despite the overlay of imaginations which suggest otherwise.
To awaken to that life is moving all things one - in any moment or degree, is to be stirred by qualities of being that inspire, heal and harmonize, this naturally communicates or extends itself through the agency of its recognition. Such expression my yet be distorted and filtered by the mind of that one - and by our expressions, we become aware of such obstacle or block. This provides the life of inspiration and expression as a process of releasing 'self will' as a willingness to be as an instrument to the movement of being itself.
That life often communicates in ways that do not fit the old wine bottles is testimony to that we become blinkered and stuck in our thinking and our masks of artificial presentation.
It may be that to awaken and honour the movement of life draws us out of the apparent comforts and connection of the group that would (often unknowingly) stifle it - but that is not about being special so much as being alive and willing.
Every one of us is a special kind of artist. Our lives brush out from pallets of experience and desire that are both unique in expression and yet universal in nature. Art as something outside and separate from the Artist is the notion of a mind that has tried to separate itself from the Life that lives it!
"The seeing that it is good" is the recognition of God in the 'Creation'. That is of being moved or feeling stirred, of a shift from thinking to feeling.
Communication and communion are shared by nature and guided by the very intelligence that they express. The forms of communication can be usurped as an attempt at coercion or manipulation of life - but then the channel of true communication is lost while the mind engages self-wilfulness. (Until it neglects or forgets to do so - perhaps as a result of being stirred and troubled or transported by an experience for which it could not account nor control).
October 07, 2012 9:33pm
“True Art is an organized piece of work that effectively communicates a genuine human experience.”
communicates to whom? he might love it. i might hate it. and certainly, based on experience, one might not recognize the organization of a work. besides, any human experience is genuine. including boredom.
at first, i thought this article was a spoof. if not, the title of this article is arrogant. more art criticism claptrap.
October 07, 2012 5:22pm
“True Art is an organized piece of work that effectively communicates a genuine human experience.”
Name one human experience that isn't genuine. The very fact that we have an experience means it is genuine. Testing that position, how do we have a non-genuine experience?
I appreciate what you are saying though, and my question does not detract from your message. Even if we agree that all things intended to be art are art, there is bad art and there is good art, and all spectrums inbetween.
A worse problem is people who have no idea what art is or what its function is telling the rest of us--"that's stupid" or "that's not art." Really? Prove it. (Similar to all of the self proclaimed US Constitutional Scholars out there.)
October 07, 2012 12:54pm
This is a typical attempt to define visual art (or in this case, "true" or "good" art), and it falls short in a typical manner. Many people think they can craft a definition of art that includes the things they like and excludes the ones they don't, and seem surprised when others disagree. In this case, the author, who seems to be a literary sort, has borrowed from Poe's classic definition of literary merit, the elicitation of a "single emotional response".
While this may be true of fiction and poetry, which deal explicitly with human emotions, it has less relevance to visual art, which has a more peripheral relationship with them. An artist may paint something in a particular emotional state, but that's not necessarily communicated in the painting. A viewer may feel something when viewing a piece of art that's not related to what the artist had in mind. And a piece of art can have a mathematical beauty of its own which must be perceived intellectually, or in purely visual terms, rather than emotionally. The idea that every work of visual art is an embodiment of an emotional state is left over from the theories of the abstract expressionists, who championed the idea of art as pure emotional expression, unburdened by subject or other content. But how successfully they've managed to convey those emotions to viewers over the years is unclear.
The requirement that a piece of art, to be "true" (whatever that means) convey a "genuine human experience" lays an unnecessary burden on it for no apparent reason. Which human experiences are "genuine", and which are not? Can't one make art about human pretenses? Can't a work delve into the experiences of other animals? Would that make it false? Can't it be inspired by the beauty of interstellar phenomena, microphotography or the undersea world, which exist in their own right with little or nothing to do with humanity? Art is a larger thing than the author seems to realize, and I doubt that this little fence he's built will prove at all useful in distinguishing the "good" from the "bad".
October 07, 2012 12:19pm
"Art" is anything which can be presented to be observed by one of the five senses. Even smell -- isn't perfume a form of art? Good art evokes an emotional or intellectual reaction. A geometric pattern does not "communicate a genuine human experience," but it can please the eye. Some art (e.g. Piss Christ) effects a distasteful emotional reaction, so it is "good art" which is socially unacceptable.
October 07, 2012 11:30am
Very good. When teaching music, I use the triad: what evidence of originality do you see, what evidence of craftsmanship is present, is it expressive. These allow us to look at the craft and creativity, not just our reactions.
But I like the answer you gave, too.
October 07, 2012 11:06am
Does "Triumph of the Will" stack up as "good" art? Seems to meet the qualifications. "Genuine" human experience or ersatz? I don't think "Good/Bad" is the best approach. Take a look at Orwell's essay Good Bad Books http://www.george-orwell.org/Good_Bad_Books/0.html
October 07, 2012 10:56am
The other day I saw and heard a guy playing jazz guitar on a walkway at a Wholefoods. He was a very good player, very enjoyable. But everyone just walked right past him as though he were not there. Pushing their shopping carts making more sound than he could rise above. It struck me like something from a Kafka story. I think this relates to your topic somehow. Can people even notice good art if it appears somewhere where they're not expecting it?
October 07, 2012 10:15am
Oh, yes. Remember, if you don't understand it, it's bad art.
-Olaf
megooddrawguy.com
October 07, 2012 10:59am
Not necessarily. It might also be an inept artist trying to con the stupid.
More garbage is sold to the stupid as art than can be imagined.
Look at 99% of modern art/abstract.... just a big scam, scam artists ripping off the clueless and ignorant.
October 07, 2012 9:33am
I find this really valid. Coming from a background of women's history and fibre art, and knowing something about what I think is some very cutting edge kind of mixed-media and sculptural and information-age type of art intersecting with that, but not having an art-history or academic kind of background at all, I am very impressed with this as a start. I am an older person with a broad intellectual/political range of interests, and accessibility for all is a real passion for me as a largely accessible-educated person.
October 07, 2012 9:31am
Once upon a time, schools used to have art classes where youngsters were able to experience painting, clay, whatever creative idea came into the teacher's mind.
I firmly believe that art comes in many forms. A poem can be art every bit as much as a flower garden or a painting. The key is how it effects you, how it moves you. Having the ability to communicate those feelings is the other side of the coin. Nice to have but not needed. Art is for personal consumption. How you see it is most likely going to be different than how I see it.