it still has tremendous currency as a myth

Enh. Still makes me puke. I've watched that myth hurt people. I don't think I've ever seen it help.

I don't think I've ever seen it help.

I didn't say it was helpful, just resonant.

David, who is your arbiter of what's good art?

I didn't say it was helpful, just resonant.

I never said it wasn't resonant, so if you were indeed making an a argument counter to mine there was some misunderstanding.

Bad art is art which fails in either originality or execution or both. When it fails in that way it fails to meet the standard for Art.

By your consensus-of-quality logic, a novel may increase and decrease in quality over the course of years, and be art one year (and in the literary canon) but not the next. All those artists who didn't get discovered till after they died didn't improve as artists upon dying, did they? And theatre that the Victorians adored, that we think of as hackneyed and masturbatory now, that stuff doesn't stop being art, does it?

David, who is your arbiter of what's good art?

Every culture generates its own standards. Dana is more than willing to explain why Achilles is a hero instead of a total prick to the ancient Greeks.

Here's what I'm against: it's all subjective. That's pure bullshit. Everybody here knows what they mean when they describe something as well-written. Whether they've bothered to articulate what their standards are or not, they have some sense of those standards.

Those standards are culturally and historically derived and (necessarly) subject to argument and disagrement. In essence, every new movement in the arts is part of that argument. When you displace the previous dominant cultural strand you're asserting other values. The Impressionists advance one set of aesthetic values over the academic art that preceded them. Cubism posits different values. Abstract Expressionism makes a different case.

Punk disagreed with sixties rock music. Hip Hop reframes the argument entirely. And so on.

But to say that there are no standards is both disingenous and completely ignorant of art history.

a novel may increase and decrease in quality over the course of years, and be art one year (and in the literary canon) but not the next.

That is exactly what happend to Chandler, Hammet, Dickens and Austen. None of which were considered anything but popular art in their time.

They were popular what? What is that noun there?

They were popular what? What is that noun there?

Popular art which, as you well know, references something closer to artisanship. Craft.

Do not play the game of sophistry with me, oh Nuttykin. If you want to make the case against Low/High Art distinctions that's one thing, but if you want to deny critical standards altogether I'm going to presume you're fucking with me.

Also, I will amend my previous comment to say that the artistic worth of Chandler, Hammet, Dickens, Austen has changed over time. They are not treated as simply entertainment anymore but their intrinsic artistry has been recognized outside the context of their era.

Really? Do you want to run a tally on American writers of the 20th century? You don't think you'll come up with a higher tally of suicide, mental illness and alcoholism than the general population? Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Plath, Styron...

Writers who committed suicide is a big list.

I don't have a list of every human being who died over 100 years and all their demographic data. And I don't think you do, either. If we can expand the sample beyond "people famous enough to have pages on Wikipedia", this UK analysis has the highest suicide rates for male vets and female gov inspectors. (Female artists are on the list, between teachers and health care workers of various kinds.) In the US, white female artists are mentioned again, along with white male physicians and black guards. That piece mentions a second study which found higher rates for those in "mining, business and repair services, wholesale and retail trade and construction." Overall, I'd say that economics and politics have lot more to do with suicide rates than chosen careers.