You don't trust an artist, any more than you admire a scientist. — Pattern-chaser

Its because art is considered so subjective that we need to have this trust. If an artist is going to take us somewhere, like Picasso did with Cubism, then we have to trust that he’s doing it with some integrity (that may not be the best word), unlike the copycats who came along on his coat tails.

This is part of the problem for me. If the copycats come along, and because art is subjective that work is given as much value as the originator then it demeans the original and turns art into a commodity.

As for measurement, if you're trying to measure art - aesthetically or otherwise - in order to judge it, I think you may misunderstand art. :chin: — Pattern-chaser

At its most basic art, visual art for instance, can be measured aesthetically or otherwise. These are ‘The Elements and Principles of Art’: line, shape,form, colour, value, texture and space. A shape for instance is created when a line crosses itself, a shape is given form with tone.

Artists use these elements consciously and unconsciously.

There is no art that is "better" than other art; there is only art. You will find that you like some art, and don't like some other art. This is the nature of you (i.e. all of us humans), art and the world. — Pattern-chaser

Unfortunately what you’re talking about here is just consumerism, which maybe explains the state of art today.

The appreciation of art is something that art loving cultures have. The appreciation is of their own culture. To appreciate one's own culture is not equivalent to being elitist. One appreciates their own culture in the terms of the culture. One can do both appreciate art and acknowledge that not everyone appreciates the same sorts of things using those same terms.

Some people can appreciate different cultures' art on it's own terms. These people are not elitist.

Thinking/believing that one's worldview - about art - is better than an others' is not equivalent to being an elitist.

Art is a term used to merit a phenomenon.

You may look at this response and say, "that's art"; whether it deserves merit is down to logic.

How much effort? How skillful? Controversial?

Some items logically deserve bigger praise because expert judgement can deem it.

There is no elitism in raw judgement of art; some are better than others.

However, the way art is judged in the modern era may highlight elitism of opinion.

You may look at this response and say, "that's art"; whether it deserves merit is down to logic. — Schzophr

I would be interested to know how we might usefully and meaningfully (to humans) apply logic to the appreciation of art. :chin:

Just because something cannot be measured precisely it doesn’t mean it cannot be measured at all - or you wouldn’t have an opinion in the first place. — I like sushi

You can't measure objective (e)valuations at all, because there are none. People obviously have (e)valuative opinions, because we have psychological reactions to things, we apply our personal concepts (such as what we count as art or not), and so on.

If you shit on the floor and call it ‘art’ I ain’t gonna do more than regard you as an imbecile (unless you happen to be able to shat out some geometrically beautiful wonder. — I like sushi

At its most basic art, visual art for instance, can be measured aesthetically or otherwise. These are ‘The Elements and Principles of Art’: line, shape,form, colour, value, texture and space. A shape for instance is created when a line crosses itself, a shape is given form with tone. — Brett

You can measure the objective stuff in various ways, but the word aesthetic has value connotations (and other mental connotations) that can't be measured in the items in question. That stuff is about how we react to the items in question, how they affect us (or not) psychologically.

I’ve already stated several times things that can be assessed better by people with broader knowledge and know how. You agreed.

Shit in a can is not something I consider ‘art’ just because someone calls it “Conceptual Art”. I’ve made that explicit. Just because you call a banana a strawberry it doesn’t mean I have to agree. That is not to say such “Conceptual Art” is meaningless, only that I don’t class something that possesses meaning as necessarily being ‘art’.

We can disagree there no problems. If we’re talking about paintings or movies there are discernible differences in quality and just because we may have preferences and tastes we can still appreciate that quality - just like a classical pianist would appreciate death metal even though they may not find it massively appealing (they’d still likely be a better judge of the music than someone who is tone deaf and into boy bands).

You seem to be talking about taste/preference rather than quality.

You seem to be talking about taste/preference rather than quality. — I like sushi

I rather think that "quality" has strong associations with taste and with preference, although that is far from a definition of the word (quality). :chin:

And your posts seem to have strong association with banality :chin:

I’ve already stated several times things that can be assessed better by people with broader knowledge and know how. You agreed. — I like sushi

If you think I agreed with that, you didn't understand what I was saying.

No one can be more or less right in assessing anything, or assess things "better" or "worse," than anyone else. Period.

That's regardless of how much they know about the thing in question. Because there are no facts about quality re good, bad, better , worse, etc. Period.

So that's why no one can be more of an expert than anyone else when it comes to making value judgments, evaluations, etc.

We can disagree there no problems. If we’re talking about paintings or movies there are discernible differences in quality — I like sushi

No. There are no factual differences in quality (in that sense where you're alluding to the relative value of one thing over another). There are factual differences in things like shapes, colors, textures, lighting, etc. None of those amount to factual differences of quality. There are no facts that x visual composition is better than y visual composition, etc.

just like a classical pianist would appreciate death metal even though they may not find it massively appealing (they’d still likely be a better judge of the music than someone who is tone deaf and into boy bands). — I like sushi

What I said was that they might be more skilled in identifying the objective properties of the music--for example, they can maybe tell you that a guitarist is playing a run off of a locrian scale, that they're playing sextuplets, etc. None of that tells you anything about whether one thing versus another is better. That same thing goes for something like, "Guitarist A is playing a run off of a locrian scale, but half of his pitches are at least 20 cents off of standard tuning, and he's rushing his sextuplets, whereas guitarist B is conventionally 'on pitch' and he's right in the pocket rhythmically."--That doesn't at all amount to guitarist B being better than guitarist A. You can be an expert in identifying those differences, but they don't equate to anything being better than anything else.

If you're using "quality" to simply refer to "property," that's fine, but we need to make that clear, because when we're talking about aesthetics, "quality" conventionally has a value connotation. No one is going to read the word "quality" in an aesthetics discussion so that it refers to whether someone is playing a locrian or lydian scale.

That's a shame. ... That you have retreated from discussion to personal insults.

What I said was that they might be more skilled in identifying the objective properties of the music--for example, they can maybe tell you that a guitarist is playing a run off of a locrian scale, that they're playing sextuplets, etc. None of that tells you anything about whether one thing versus another is better. — Terrapin Station

:up:

Replace my previous comment with “Oh?” then. Eventually I guess you’ll say something more after a few “mm”s and “ah”s ... wake me up when you do ;)

I don’t care. You did agree several posts back - cannot be bothered pointing it out. To be frank I shouldn’t have bothered replying at all because I’m not interested in the dance you’re dancing ... didn’t even read past your first line.

Just being honest. Have fun, we’ll make better progress elsewhere I think. Sorry if I wasted your time (genuinely)

It seems a given in educated circles that Shakespeare and DaVinci created "better" art than, lets say, Michael Bay (makes movies that many would consider "low brow" like Transformers or Armageddon). Is there even a little justification for this? — ZhouBoTong

There's justification for it, and not only a little. Art has a purpose, and when we understand the purpose we can understand which piece of art fulfills it more.

How was art defined in this thread? Piece of art is human product with primary purpose to provide you with an impression of human experience through passive consumption (no interaction), usually through sight and/or sound.

A little exercise regarding quality of art is to think about art genres.

For example, a photograph can be an art, and so can a written story.

Is there a photograph that can give you more depth, width, impression of human experience - as a piece of art - then, for example, Chekhov's play or Dostoevsky's novel? Not only is there no such photograph, but it's impossible for there to be such photograph, since medium of photography itself is constricted (in terms of art's purpose) compared to the medium of written words.

Now, you can certainly see a photograph that can heavily tug your heart. But it's not because you are seeing art, it's because you are seeing a document - a documented picture of (sad) reality.

With that said, how much of a human experience was impressed into you through seeing Transformers movie? A certain amount, just as we can get a certain amount of nutrients from Coca-Cola. But can you find a piece of music or literature that impresses much more, much deeper and wider than that movie, or any movie for that matter? I would say absolutely yes. And if you couldn't do it now, it wouldn't be because of subjectivity, but because of lack of exposure and experience.

There are no objective purposes,

There are no objective purposes — Terrapin Station

- Hey coach, why did you lose all ten games from the start of the season?

- Lose? There are no objective purposes.

- You are fired.

Which has what to do with the fact that there are no objective purposes?

There are no objective purposes — Terrapin Station

- Hey man, what the f***? Why are you shitting your pants in the office? Go to the bathroom, what's wrong with you?

- To the bathroom? There are no objective purposes.

- You are fired.

If you believe that there are objective purposes and you wanted to support that, you could try to provide some evidence of objective purposes, for example. Talking about people subjectively having purposes in mind wouldn't do the trick probably (unless someone were arguing that there are no subjective purposes).

There are no objective purposes — Terrapin Station

- I almost puked. I just saw a man eating his own feces, through my window.

- Eating feces? What's the problem? There are no objective purposes.

- You are fired.

Of course, you could just post stupid stuff in a very OCDish way like a jackass, too. I guess that works . . . for something.

At least I wasn't labeling you with insults.

At least I wasn't labeling you with insults. — Henri

That would be better than the anti-conversation you're having. How about putting on your big boy pants and trying to have a real conversation about this?

I guess, keep insulting away, since that's better than "anti-conversation".

Is it that you're not capable of something like a philosophical discussion about this? Maybe you don't know how to support it?

Maybe you are the one who doesn't comprehend? So you resort to insults.