It's cliched, sentimental. It panders to its audience instead of expressing the artist's vision. It's a trademarked company, not a particular artist's work. It's basically a cheap emotional handjob.

Interestingly enough, Samuel Butcher, original Precious Moments "artist" was treated for bipolarity. Does that gain him any artist cred for you?

and then there is that white square painted on a white canvas that was in my art history book that is worth millions. Ridiculous? Yes. And then there is the idea of of finding beauty in simple things (not that I think the white on white square is beautiful or art).

I think art is twofold: what the creator intended, and what the viewer gleans from it. Even if the creator intended something that was completely commercial and pop and mercenary, if someone finds it stirring or inspiring or moving or whatnot, It can be art, even if it's bad art. I won't begin to touch on photographs of genitalia or animals and humans with their tissue burned away to reveal their veins or cans of tomatoe soup or swirling plastic shopping bags because I absolutely hated hated hated American Beauty. But even the grotesque and disturbing and mundane can be art, even if I don't like it.

Art can be unintentional. Art can be Mother Nature/Dog (typo, but I'll leave it). Birds scattered along telephone wires, looking like so many notes of music, unphotographed, to me it is still art. I didn't create it, nobody captured it with their Pentax SLR and sold it as a postcard, but it is still art, to me.

And as shallow as I find Bay's movies, like many music videos, of which I think Bay is related to (I haven't checked his IMDB page), I find some of his imagery beautiful --as much as I find it overdone by his ownself.

Loved The Rock, (Ed Harris!) loved Armageddon for all it's popcorny fun (Bruce Willis!), cared not one jot for Transformers or Bad Boys.

Does that gain him any artist cred for you?

Nope. Not every crazy person is an artist. Not every artist is a crazy person.

I'm just saying that those that pursue art are self selected to being more sensitive (not in the weepy "sensitive" stereotype but simply more attuned to nuance) and that the pursuit itself is stressful and isolating which tends to exacerbate things.

Aside from that, Hec, I'm assuming you can tell that he didn't mean it when he started drawing those figures. Or you could tell when he stopped drawing it and was being farmed out?

Allyson, Bernard Sumner from New Order was part of an experiement where they tested the effect of Prozac on creativity. I read an interview once where he felt that it made his lyrics flatter and less deep.

Aside from that, Hec, I'm assuming you can tell that he didn't mean it when he started drawing those figures.

Meaning it doesn't make it art. There are plenty of sincere and awful writers out there. Original and well-executed are the axes of my standard for quality. And, now that I think of it, I'm going to insist that high quality is one of the distinctions between art and Not!Art.

Certainly there are going to be artistic failures but those are (I think) related to taking artistic risks. Exploring new forms. Learning them on the job. Stretching beyond your strengths to give your work more reach.

I have absolutely no doubt that anti-depressants can negatively effect creativity. I also don't think that has anything to do with the wanky Romantic tortured artist stereotype.

It's cliched, sentimental. It panders to its audience instead of expressing the artist's vision.

David, you know I am the elitistest elitist that ever elited, but, I'm gonna have to call this opinion crazy, my fren. You thinking a work sucks does not make it any less a work, and doesn't actually say anything about whether the work successfully gets across a point to people other than you.

And even if a work objectively sucks: you haven't explained why suckitude and art are mutually exclusive.

I also don't think that has anything to do with the wanky Romantic tortured artist stereotype.

Again, I don't think we have to limit ourselves to Young Werther. That trope and a long list of damaged creators extends well into the 20th century. As a stereotype it's probably even more potent as a myth in the 20th century than in the 19th. I mean, Blake and Byron weren't particularly depressed and mopey and tortured. Neither was Shelley, nor Keats. Coleridge definitely. Coleridge qualifies.

Please ignore my capitalisation of Romance, Hec. I was more stapling my hand to my forehead that referring to a particular genre.