Perhaps political art is a good place to start, I accept that there are a few pieces of good political art, but most isn't. — Punshhh

Not to keep agreeing with you (which is boring around here), but what I think makes the majority of political art "bad" is that it has a concrete, direct, and specific message it's trying to communicate, and not only that, but it has a telos: to convert, to change the audiences mind. It functions the exact same way as Christian Contemporary Music, for instance: there's an orthodoxy of belief that needs to be maintained in the work, and there's a goal for outsiders to be converted through the work.

What makes this "bad" is that most political/religiously apologetic art ends up just preaching to the choir, rather than changing political or religious views or belief. I experienced this first hand working at a very artsy-fartsy, politically focused music venue in a major city; political works were presented all the time, and naturally the audience all agreed with the message. I guess at best maybe the work inspired the audience to be more politically active? But it's tough to make the claim that any of these works actually enacted real change. And as the works themselves were concerned, they were so far removed from what @csalisbury called a direct aesthetic experience, that I found it sad. The only exception from that experience was Pussy Riot; their show kicked ass because it was loud, fearless, profane and brimming with passion. Basically the opposite of the other works I saw. But to this day, I remember the aesthetic experience of that show better; the political message I can remember well enough, but it wasn't what stuck.

lol

Well I hope you're laughing out loud in astonishment at the brevity with which I accurately answered the question.

If art is bad, then - other things being equal - we have some reason to adopt certain attitudes towards it. Someone who, for instance, looked at it approvingly, would be adopting an attitude towards it that they have reason not to adopt towards it (which is just another way of saying that they would be adopting an attitude towards it that Reason does not approve of them adopting).

So bad art is art that Reason disapproves of, for that is the best explanation of why - strange circumstances aside - she would disapprove of us approving of it or creating it, or whatever.

Circular argument my friend.

No it isn't. Inferences to the best explanation are not circular arguments. And, to my knowledge, you are not my friend.

So bad art is art that Reason disapproves of, for that is the best explanation of why... she would disapprove of us approving of it or creating it, or whatever. — Bartricks

Does "she" refer to reason?

Yes. Reason with a capital 'R' that is. She's a person. Our 'reason' is a faculty that gives us some awareness of her attitudes. And 'reasons' are her attitudes.

All of which can be demonstrated by means rational. Though you, no doubt, would consider that circular.

Badly phrased. Concepts can't adopt attitudinal stances. You might say bad art is not in accord with reason. But that would be to misunderstand how art functions, which is to be just that creative product which is not a priori bound by any expressible criteria. Bad art lacks quality. And quality is contextual and the root of reason rather than its product.

Reason with a capital 'R' that is. She's a person. — Bartricks

Oh, I see. You're taking the proverbial. Have fun with that.

Back at you. I never said 'concepts adopt attitudes' did I? I said Reason adopts attitudes towards things. And I said that Reason is a person. Persons - and persons alone - adopt attitudes towards things.

Reason is not a concept. A concept is an idea. Reason is not an idea, it is something we have ideas 'of'.

Bugger off with the BS.

Just clarifying. That being the case, if I were to rephrase the statement in a clearer way, as in "the best explanation of why reason would disapprove of us approving of or creating bad art is that reason disaproves of bad art", would you not call that circular?

Question begging. What's BS about it?

You conflated an idea with the thing it is an idea of. A classic mistake.

I said Reason is a person and persons 'can' adopt attitudes towards things (for instance, you're a person and 'contempt' is the attitude you're adopting towards me).

Perhaps you think philosophers know already what Reason is. Well, that's a mistake as a cursory knowledge of the literature would tell you.

Just clarifying. That being the case, if I were to rephrase the statement in a clearer way, as in "the best explanation of why reason would disapprove of us approving of or creating bad art is that reason disaproves of bad art", would you not call that circular? — Noble Dust

That isn't what I said - I said that bad art is art that we have reason (lower case r) not to adopt certain attitudes towards. The kind of reason in question is an 'aesthetic' reason (a kind of normative reason).

The best explanation of 'that' is that Reason herself disapproves of the art in question, for typically if we disapprove of something we disapprove of others approving of it.

@Noble Dust

Don't feed the troll.

:up:

Sorry, can't resist. It is what you said; I quite literally re ordered your sentence in a clearer way; this is not disputable.

So far I am getting the message that bad art is not universal, but a personal judgment of what they already believe is unreasonable.

When most people say it it just means “I don’t like this” — khaled

:up:

And those that don't fall into "most" are just people that have studied art, established the criteria for "why they like/don't like this" and then attempted to create some authority so their opinion applies to the rest of us.

So far I am getting the message that bad art is not universal, but a personal judgment of what they already believe is unreasonable. — Invisibilis

That certainly fits my opinion. But there have been some long "Art" threads with a wide variety of opinions, so it may not work for everyone (and it looks like you just got merged into one of them).

And welcome to the forum :smile:

And those that don't fall into "most" are just people that have studied art, established the criteria for "why they like/don't like this" and then attempted to create some authority so their opinion applies to the rest of us. — ZhouBoTong

I think that's an oversimplification. Why does someone like or dislike something? This goes back to the concept of a direct aesthetic experience. Not to mention social/psychological factors; a common phenomena is taste being determined not by the individual, but by their environment. Yes, this means following the critics, but it also just means fitting into the social situation; if it's not cool to like Coldplay, I won't admit that I do, unless I have enough self confidence to do so. So taste is complex, and to suggest that that complexity can be boiled down and answer the broader question of what makes art "good" or "bad" feels like an oversimplification.

In other words the simple facts of taste (real or fake) and power structure within the art world don't actually have anything to say about the concept of a concrete aesthetic standard.

Bad art is a product that is created without skill and originality, but still with enough originality to qualify as art (not a mere copy).

If I draw a stickman on a scrap of paper, it is likely to be bad art since I am lousy at drawing in the first place and since a stickman would be quite a conventional idea. Still, it would be art since I drew it freely with my own hand and didn’t try to copy any specific stickman that I have previously seen. But if you tried to copy my stickman, it wouldn’t be art at all since nothing of what you made would be your idea.

Any original human creation anywhere must qualify as art (if it’s not copied). Art is everywhere, not just in art galleries and that’s why pretty much anything can in principle be admitted to a gallery. When something at an art exhibition appears to be junk, the question shouldn’t be “Is this art?”, but “Is it good art?”

The tragedy of modern art is not that the definition of art has been extended in comparison to past centuries but that the standards for good art has been blurred because of the great variety.

So taste is complex, and to suggest that that complexity can be boiled down and answer the broader question of what makes art "good" or "bad" feels like an oversimplification.

In other words the simple facts of taste (real or fake) and power structure within the art world don't actually have anything to say about the concept of a concrete aesthetic standard. — Noble Dust

I feel like I agree, but may be missing your exact point. The line you quoted from was me making fun of (or attempting to) the idea that someone else can tell me I am "right" or "wrong" when I say I like something.

Is taste so complex that it cannot be simplified to "I like it" or "I don't"? All of the factors you mentioned go into that "like" or "dislike".

I would also think that saying you don't like Coldplay when you actually do (they royal you, not you Noble Dust), is more a type of virtue signalling than it is a type of taste (your taste says you like it, period).

One can argue about whether art is good because one likes it and vice versa.

But it’s possible you could determine whether a piece of art was “good” or “ bad” on the same basis that you decide whether a person is good or bad. We might determine whether a person is good or bad by their behaviour, how they present themselves. A bad person would be dishonest, deceitful, misleading, a liar, misrepresents himself, mean spirited or insincere.

How do we make our decisions on whether a person is good or bad, where do we get the experience to understand this? Some of it, in its most rudimentary form, we learn as children. But as we mature we meet more and more people and it becomes difficult to know if you can trust someone. They can become very good at concealing their true nature. Sometimes we get fooled, then later we find the truth and learn. The fact is that bad people have particular characteristics we learn to recognise and use to get by among people.

Okay, you have defined a bad person showing certain behaviours qualified as bad _ a moralistic stance. What about bad art? Does a moral stance have anything to do with its creativity? If not, than what is the reference point, or stance, which points to bad art, or bad creativity?

But it’s possible you could determine whether a piece of art was “good” or “ bad” on the same basis that you decide whether a person is good or bad. We might determine whether a person is good or bad by their behaviour, how they present themselves. — Brett

Alright, back to arguing art with you again :grin: Let me know if I get too annoying.

There are only a few people in history where there is near universal agreement on them being good or bad, so that seems to suggest how difficult it would be to come up with universal measures for art.

A bad person would be dishonest, deceitful, misleading, a liar, misrepresents himself, mean spirited or insincere. — Brett

For me, someone could absolutely be all of these temporarily and still be good. I would go as far as saying each of those traits, or all of them in combination, could be used to accomplish good things.

Now, I am also happy to say that those are typically negative traits that should generally be frowned upon. Similarly, I could say that MOST stick-figure art is bad. But to create true objective parameters, they would have to be universal; and because "good art" is often created by atypical geniuses, this seems impossible. Notice if I paint a clock it is terrible, but if Dali paints a clock it is good.

I wouldn't mind some general guidelines or parameters that OFTEN define "bad art" but I don't think you could sell me on anything universal.

Remember I still think Transformers is better than MacBeth.

And just to provide an example, despite me not liking him, Shakespeare is a perfect example of an atypical genius. There is a whole movement of anti-stratfordians who argue that Shakespeare could not have written these stories because he is just a townie. Only some wealthy noble would have the depth and breadth of knowledge to write that. But that is elitist BS nonsense. The vast majority of rich and educated could not write those books either. It is hard to define genius before we experience it, and that is what art rules would feel like to me.

I am just writing what comes to mind here -

Cannot an artwork which copies something still be good art. Most landscapes and portraits are copies. Or an artist recreating the same scene, dance movements, or language are making copies. What if the second version is 99.9% copy and it turns out that perhaps the 0.01% difference somehow becomes decidedly good art.

Cannot an artwork be good art without conventional art skills, such as painting, drawing, grammar, movement. What if skill is not all about rules and self-controlled. What if intuition displays more skill than can ever be learnt and/or practiced?

Yes, what if intuition of what is good and bad is the key. If so, what is it about intuition that makes good/bad art?

For me, someone could absolutely be all of these temporarily and still be good — ZhouBoTong

Relativist games. How does it work for you on the street, in a bar?

Brett Okay, you have defined a bad person showing certain behaviours qualified as bad _ a moralistic stance — Invisibilis

Ditto for you.

First of all, I'm sorry I'm late. I didn't read your 500 comments carefully for lack of time.I hope I'm not repeating other comments.

The difficulty in defining art is so great that dictionaries return us to undefined terms such as "beauty" or list the branches of art. I think this definition is either not possible or so vague that almost everything could be art: noises, things or stains without any deliberate form.

Total abstraction has taken over the art scene. A new definition of art would be "Art is anything that enters art museums, is sold at art auctions or exhibited at art exhibitions.

I think the situation is catastrophic for art because of some causes that I would like to discuss here:

-There are no objectifiable aesthetic values but totally subjective tastes.

-Absolute elitism. Art does not have to respond to a more or less numerous public, but is accepted or rejected by a minority of critics who choose according to their tastes or particular interests and are not accountable to anyone.

-Commercialization. The only objective value is the market price. Art has become a commodity.

The result is that what you see or hear in an art space is just money in disguise.

There is an urgent need for a new definition of art that can distinguish between art and banknotes.

Agree all you like, I discussed philosophy with people I agreed with for years before I came to forums. Forums require some disagreement to work, which I found awkward to begin with.

but what I think makes the majority of political art "bad" is that it has a concrete, direct, and specific message it's trying to communicate, and not only that, but it has a telos: to convert, to change the audiences mind.

Yes, it presents you with what might be a good work of art and claims that a political position is good because it is associated with the good work of art. Also it can become sloganistic and be used as a tool for populism. This process can devalue the art, or a genre of art and the artist, or artists in the genre. A good example is Nazi Art Deco art, it also extends to a lot of Art Deco art as well, which is a shame because there was some good art which has largely been erased from history.

What makes this "bad" is that most political/religiously apologetic art ends up just preaching to the choir,

Yes, for the choir it becomes a mantra and for others it is a slogan being forced on them.

I guess at best maybe the work inspired the audience to be more politically active?

That is ok until the process and the message become divisive, or deceitful. As in the Brexit debate for example. "just get it done"

The only exception from that experience was Pussy Riot; their show kicked ass because it was loud, fearless, profane and brimming with passion.

Yes, I was very impressed with their performance, I was surprised the authorities tolerated it.