God this task is hard

I stated earlier that art is successful if it provokes a reaction in people. But what if you have a piece of tat that simply provokes a reaction of horror at its complete lack of skill, instead of evoking the emotion it was supposed to? Look at this... thing, dredged up from the wonderful place that is deviantart.



It's clearly trying to portray some kind of melancholy, but instead all you see is the flaws. The background perspective is strange to say the least. There seems to be some kind of vanishing point going on with the trees but the water just spreads up the page instead of vanishing anywhere. There is no interaction between the character and the water she is standing in - the character herself seems to have a spine like a poker and only possesses one finger. I could go on. But is my distaste the same as that against works of modern art?

I think the severe backlash against work such as Hirst and Emin's is because people are feeling the emotions they are meant to be feeling when they experience the work, and they don't like what they feel. A lot of modern art does not adhere to typical 'right and wrong' rules like perspective because they may be exploring a different area, so they cannot be assessed on the same criteria.

The criteria for good and bad art needs to depend on what the work was trying to achieve. If it achieves the mood and evokes the feeling it was meant to, then it is a success. You can then go on to examine other points such as following rules of perspective and colour theory. Judging art by set rules is impossible, both because art constantly challenges rules themselves and because criteria that apply to one piece will not apply to another. How can you mark a sculpture to the same set of rules as a 2D sketch? They require completely different levels of viewer interaction.

It is at this point where the 'it' factor comes in again, as mentioned previously. So I suppose a lot of things come into play when assessing whether something is good or bad.

Does it achieve the mood/ portray the thing it was meant to?

Does it adhere to rules of art?

Does it have the 'it' factor?

Do I like it?

All these things must contribute, but it is hard to say how much emphasis should be put on each point. "Do I like it?" is perhaps the least important point for neutrally judging a piece of art, but it is a diffcult question to avoid. The 'it' factor should perhaps not come into play, but inevitably does in giving a piece impact. The implementation of the rules of art and the achievement of the mood the piece was supposed to portray are probably the most important factors. They also intertwine with each other. A piece like the one above can have a mood it is trying to convey, but may be let down its adherance to artistic rules. On the other hand, a piece may be technically very good, but lack any particular mood direction.

Ultimately a piece needs to do what it's supposed to, which is where yet another problem comes in, because who gets to decide that?