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.

OK, my turn to get pretentious. Warning: A long-winded (for me) rant to follow, and I'm going to break it up over several posts for easier consumption.

I was at a party in Chelsea in the early 90s, and there was a group of artists there. As the night went on, and the artists got more and more stoned, I listened to their conversation. For several hours straight, they talked about only three things: How smart they and their friends were, how talented they and their friends were, and how cool they and their friends were.

Now this was during an economic downturn, and making a living as an artist in NYC must have been very tough. I realized at the time that they were trying to convince each other, and themselves, that they were doing something worthwhile with their lives.

I realized later that what they were talking about had broader implications, and that what we know as art is something that exists along several axes: Intelligence, Talent/Technical skill, and Coolness. There is also a fourth axis, Empathy, but guys don't sit around late at night talking about how empathic they and their friends are.

The thing to remember is that the Intelligence and Talent axes are absolute. Given any artist, it theoretically possible to rank the artist's intelligence and talent empirically. The Coolness and Empathy axes, however, are relative to the observer. I believe two people can look at a piece of art, and have wildly different views about how cool and empathic the art is, and they could both be valid. This makes me a cultural relativist.

You really can't judge whether something is art or not without examining it on the four axes. As far as Michael Bay is concerned, I think we all can agree that there is little that intellectually challenging about his work, and that he would rank low on the Intelligence axis. His technical skill is good; not everyone can deliver movies with nine-figure budgets. But there is little that is truly outstanding about his skills, he would rank at or just below average among his peers in Hollywood.

Coolness and Empathy, however, are much more complicated subjects, and if you go back and read through the thread, these are mostly what we're talking about here. I'm going to discuss both in posts below.