'How do you know when your art is good?' | Hacker News Reader

'How do you know when your art is good?'

ask-polly.com

24 pointsjger1523 comments

It's not a question worth asking. Good for what anyway? If you're making art for profit then it's good enough if you're selling it. Otherwise, what does it matter if anyone but you and/or the folks you specifically made it for think about it?

A better question is surely "what will I do differently next time?" Good or bad, nobody will consider their last bit of art to be perfect.

I didn't really follow the answer in the article. I couldn't tell if it was smug self-consolation or if I lack some kind of meta-self-awareness that makes people write so much drivel about showing art in public.

It's absolutely a question worth asking. You identified two senses of the word "good": financial gain and the approval of others. But that's not what we mean when we say that a work of art is good. There is an intrinsic difference between a student film and a Kubrick film, or between a pulpy romance novel and Dostoevsky. It's hard to define, but it has something to do with mastery of the medium, unique vision, technical innovation, and insight into the human condition.

Even in your comment, doing something differently next time presumably means there is some notion of “improvement” which takes us back to some idea of art being good or not.

Feels like maybe it is a question worth asking after all, since it guides future decisions about what to make and how to make it.

One dimension of improvement could be “did the piece I finished/delivered realize my internal vision of this piece?”. In the sense that when you are executing a work you might not feel it captures what you set out to achieve, and may know/not know what was needed to rectify that. Kind of like the old Ira Glass quote on taste vs skill.

I'd say, you probably know when your art is good (or not) if you know a lot of art, a lot about art and a lot about art criticism --- and you're able to emotionally detach yourself from what you made yourself to evaluate it. If you operate in those circles, you might know people who are similar. You can ask them to take a look at it, without telling them it's yours.

This is the way, deep study of old and new artists you admire, and looking through lenses

your art is good when it triggers emotions in those who consume it.

your art is excellent if you can capture your emotions in it

your art is masterwork if you can design your emotions for capture.

It can't be just any emotion. Or at least not according to Clive Bell's theory. If it just requires emotional response many things could create emotional responses but not necessarily be art, e.g. reading a simple newspaper article, or some news broadcast.

Bell states that there needs to be an "aesthetics experience" produce by "significant form". My understanding of "significant form" is that if you were to look at the piece, with no knowledge whatsoever what it is, you would still feel a sense of "aesthetic emotion" due to the form of the object, and how it's put together. That's what he considered art. E.g. people can look at a Mondrian piece devoid of meaning, but yet get an "aesthetics experience" from it.

You make art for the making, not for the appraisal. When you've made the art, see how you feel. If you feel bad about your art, it's an opportunity to meet some challenging feelings and see how they're getting on. If you feel good, bonus!

This is why I find museums super boring...

When you start finding people making generative AI models copying your art style.

I like this Ira Glass take which assumes you have good taste or a good critical eye to create.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GHrmKL2XKcE

I create pottery and I never sell it. So I can't evaluate my art by the level of profit. I sometimes sit in the dead of night, listening to music, and suddenly I catch a glimpse of a piece of work and see it in the gentle light showing perfect curves that I don't see in any other work out there. In that moment I feel that I can die having created it, and at that moment I am sure that my art is good. (Provided you must have seen enough professional works and criticism in the field.)

When folks enjoy it or it is thought provoking. The "art" gatekeeping is one of those things I will literally never understand.

Gatekeeping (social proof) is what people turn to in the absence of objective criteria. Nobody needs gatekeepers to decide who the best athletes are.

Gatekeeping gives power to the gatekeepers. It's literally one of the easiest social phenomena to understand.

Power at what cost though

At a cost that is not born by the gatekeepers.

(Deadweight losses accrue to society. It's the standard privatised profits, socialised losses dynamic. Which market-based economies absolutely love. And yes, that means society-as-a-whole loses.)

Annoying and meaningless pontifications about what classifies as art.

it comforts the disturbed, and disturbs the comforted

When it's all consuming to make it and creating it is self destructive behavior for the artist?

When it’s well known enough to be a vehicle for money laundering.

When other more established artists get inspired/copy.

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