I spent 4 years studying photography, and not once was beauty ever mentioned. Only since returning the faith have I started to pursue beauty. Beauty instills within us a pursuit of the ideal, a fleeting glimpse manifested to steer our hearts to that which never was and never will be. A guiding force that articulates our soul. Wish me luck in attempting to grapple with beauty.
Jack Parker there is a difference between using the word “beautiful” and developing the skills to create something has qualities of objective and transcendent beauty.
In response to your opening comments, it's true. Cicero is quoted as saying, "If only it were as easy to prove what is true, as it is to disprove what is untrue."
Great respect for this video. My critique is that not all works of art need “inspire us to be better than what we are” or something like that. There’s plenty of art that is dark, but exploratory, skillful and honest, like many metal bands do for me. I think rather that beauty does that. Great job man.
I think good art has a storytelling quality and gives insight to the community and culture that creates it. This can apply to the masterpieces of Westrrn art as well as traditional art from the world's cultures.
If you see art as a story that spans the dawn of humanity then you can see the various contexts and perspectives that art works live in the giant story of it. This includes the bad and good and everything in between. Every time an art work is made it adds to the grand story. Like spilled liquid, the story of art expands into every nook and cranny. Some of those places are less than appealing. some are flat out disturbing and perverted. So goes the heart of man as it makes and adds to the story be it horrible or beautiful.
I think yayoi kusamas art is very beautiful. It makes me feel lovely and it's lively. It excites my senses. It isn't really revelatory, it's very simple, nor does it offer a glimpse of heaven. It's a lovely optical illusion which makes me marvel at the brain and it's perception. Yayoi was trained very much in the academic Japanese style of painting as well and found herself rebelling against it. Not all of us find the art you like interesting. It's in fact possibly too predictable and boring for some of us. I'm glad that the institution of art broadly recognises this and rewards people who make stuff that I like, and I wonder why it is that people like you can't take the taste you have, appreciate it and let others like what they like? I hope you also have listened or read John Berger, it may change and broaden your narrow perspective on art. And by this I don't mean that what you like isn't art- that is what you're doing to people like me though. I'm only saying that art is very broad and that is just one kind of expression. Why limit it only to your preferences?
I think about objectivity in art all the time. A lot of things go back to Essentialism vs Existentialism -- whether meaning/purpose/value precedes of proceeds from a material existence. I believe 'Art' is an objective reality, though a difficult one to pin down.. Here are my seven criteria for what makes something 'Art' vs merely 'artistic' (or like art): Does it spur sentiments about or promote the Good, the True, and the Beautiful? Does it inspire us to create, or to grow as persons? What are the intentions of the ‘artist’? Does the work have any deeper meaning or symbolism? Does it promote deep thinking and contemplation? Does it connect the viewer in some way to ‘the bigger picture’? - That is, to time/place, history, culture, ideals, or the human condition? Does the work require genuine skill, talent, finesse, expertise, awareness or prowess from the ‘artist’? If it doesn't match at least five of these seven, it probably isn't really Art.
I feel like what it really means by beauty is in the eye of the beholder is the idea that anything can be art which gives the person the full power to define whatever art is. This idea leads to erasing traditional ideas, and create something that is new. Many people believe it is subjective becuase it supports the idea for freedom of diversity in any type of beauty, there is no moderation in that idea. For me, It is really hard to define beauty but there is also objective beauty. Beauty for me is 50 percent subjective and 50 percent objective.
Thank you so much for this. As a classical musician, I am always trying to explain to people why I prefer older, more traditional music to modern. While I do enjoy some modern music, I find that there is something missing from it that makes it different than music from the past. Art was created to exhibit beauty and glorify God. I think that people have tried to take God out of it, therefore turning it into something worldly rather than heavenly. Art reflects the culture that it was created in.
It's somewhat ironic that you say that, because classical music marked a turning away from God toward the human being. It was medieval and much renaissance music that was God-oriented. The Baroque period changed that, the Classical period diverged from it even more, and the Romantic period altogether abandoned it and became expressionistic and subjective (with exceptions of course).
If art is just for itself, it will loose its meaning. If art is for evil or secular, it will become propaganda. If art transcends itself, it will become transmitter of Beauty.
I studied art for almost my entire adult life and still have no idea how to answer that question. The only definition of art I feel comfortable with is that it is short for Arthur. This was a great first dive into art and I commend your humility. Although I would say that you answered “what makes beautiful art”
All you show is older romantic stuff, one could argue that that is decoration and skill. You should also look at for instance works by Gerhard Richter, you're not going to like all of them, maybe you'll like none, but if your mind is open there is incredible beauty , skill, talent and experience to be found in his paintings. The abstracts don't depict anything, instead they are the thing themselves and are only there to look at for what they are. There's no deeper meaning. But i can promise you that the appeal is not just that he's in vogue, or that it's a place for the rich to invest or park their capital in. Those things are true and facts, but there's a reason he is at the level of appreciation and value he is at. The best abstracts can touch your soul deeper than any figurative work. Obviously you can disagree, that's ok, but i've traveled a lot in my life, seen most of the major museums in Europe and the USA and love a vast amount of styles, i own 18th century paintings all the way to 2022 made paintings. All i'm saying is that it is not as simple as you put it/think it is. Tastes differ and evolve with experience.
Robert Pirsig basically asked this same question in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - “What is quality?” Is it purely subjective or is it objective? He ended up rejected both viewpoints, proposing instead a third frame of reference that triangulated both. Quality (and by extension good art) must encapsulate both. It must be embraced by the majority (at least within a given culture) and not be limited in its appreciation to the capricious whims of an elected few AND it must also possess objective markers of both discipline and skill that are universally recognized as being difficult to acquire. I would add a third criteria that in order for it to shape society it must also be unique. To this authors point - it could be a spectacular copy and possess quality - but its not going to shape a culture unless it presents something unique and meaningful to that culture in some way. Just my 2 cents.
Spencer Arnot when I was really into art and going to galleries on a regular basis I had a simple criteria for myself. Good art had a balance of 3 things, Head Hand and Heart.
First comment? Thank you for your work. It has been most helpful for orientating myself towards God, and using RUclips for a more positive purpose. I share your opinion on art, I am not an enthusiast of modern art at all.
As an artist, I wanna cry. Thank you so much for this video. Beauty is not really in the eye of the beholder, but it is rather that our eyes behold beauty. We identify it within existence and capture it calling it art. Art is an expression of the harmonizing, radiating, wholeness of existence--and that is not something we merely make but discover and behold.
As an artist I disagree with the premise but agree with the conclusion. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder because people can only percieve the universe in terms on their own unique and special experiences. Like someone said, "there is no good or bad in art. Only interesting and uninteresting"
I would say that certain eyes are trained to see certain kinds or levels of beauty, but I do not think it is just that someone says it is so it is, or that someone can have an untrained eye. It is like cooking. My dad might love burnt food, but it is objectively not good cooking. It is cooking, but not skillful or whatever other criteria. People make genuinely ugly and disturbing artwork that gives a sense of oppression and even a sense of terror. People destroy beautiful architecture to erect ugly buildings and it is oppressive. I respect your thoughts, and I am inclined to disagree.
@@zelie1155 I do not believe one should even use the words "objectively" and "good" in congruence with each other. I also do not think skillful is an attribute of "good". It does not take any skill outside your average human to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Many people would still say PB & J's are "good", they may even say "objectively" so.
Hi Brian. I am a Christian artist who values highly the Renaissance high point of Christian art and gradually came to respect certain modern and postmodern artists so I was interested in your perspective. I think the best writing on navigating this topic is still Art and the Bible by Francis Schaefer, because most secular theory I read became so interested in the postmodern progressive movement it ignored the artists themselves. Schaefer as a Christian articulated an argument that the art critic must be fair to the artists intentions while appraising their work. So while he personally felt abstraction lacked the ability to speak in the same way as representational work, to be fair to the artist would be to consider their intentions and evaluate them on that basis even if you perceive a lack in a modern or postmodern work on an objective basis. For your positive ideas of what should constitute good art, the one I’d push back against is the idea that it must engender a sort of positive feeling of hope or humility in the viewer. The reason is I think, for Christian artists, and good secular artists will also follow this pattern, there is a duty to represent sin and disease in the world as part of truthfully representing the fallen world. Hamlet is about a man driven nearly to suicide by his doubt. The distinction I would make is purpose and context. Art relishing in sin for shock value has no positive purpose for the shock value. Goya’s depictions of Demons on the other hand seem to express a deeply Christian revulsion of the satanic. In connection with your point about public art, I also don’t think the place of “dark subject matter” art is in the public square. On the other hand, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment depicts real barbarism to illustrate the horror of hell in contrast to heaven, and church goers would have had that directly in front of them during services. I think the Christian worldview provides a better picture of the world to examine evil than does the secular worldview, which can’t see any potential purpose for evil in the world, but my main point is there have to be opportunities for good artists to stare evil in the face and try to find what this says about God’s world in order to avoid treacly “God’s Not Dead,” type art. Leonardo Da Vinci’s studies of beautiful and ugly heads illustrate the point too. Drawing ugliness teaches you something about drawing beauty, because your act of drawing could have a beautiful intent to the portrayal of evil.
From an artistic and technical perspective: right use of color, contrast, shapes, light, hamony, perspective and compositiion, conveying a meaning. From a esthetical perspective: the personal views/experiences/taste of the individual and how those relate to the art work.
I am a visual artist. Beauty is divine. It comes through me but is not from me. To become a conduit for Beauty, I open myself up. This is done through prayer. I pray.
I'm not sure that inherently by itself these statements are satanic. I first ask the person who stated this are they being literal do they seriously mean what they say or are they just being flippant and funny.
I think one of the underlying problems is that my generation does not know how to think critically and hates the idea of possibly upsetting someone. PS. Love your content, Hope to see more on topics like this.
As a philosopher, I am so happy to see someone defending the proposition of objective beauty/aesthetics. It is truly an intellectual quagmire to me when I see people state that beauty is in the eye of the beholder yet assert in the very next statement that rap is better than classical music or that they hate the style of a particular car because of a faulty aesthetic feature. Thus, holding it to an objective standard
In the examples you gave, it is perfectly reasonable to assume they are holding these things to subjective standards, thus they would be statements of preference rather than descriptive statements.
@@CobaltSerpent i'd agree that the examples are not great per se. However, note that when the disagreement arises it is true that there are arguments given to demonstrate or convince others to agree to the aesthetic position. Namely, they appeal to an objective a priori set of universals to which they may find common ground as to then move the abstraction to the incarnation of the situation
I’ve been thinking of an possible additional trascendental, but haven’t elaborated on it: it would be COMMUNION. Being, oneness, truth, good and beauty... if they are really such, they should generate communion in a certain way.
4 года назад+1
There's a book from the Catholic Brazilian philosopher Carlos Nougué called Da Arte do Belo, where he brilliantly shows the objective nature of beauty. I don't think it has an English translation, but whenever it gets one you should read it
This is the 5th time this year that I've wanted to comment "this is your best video yet" but then looked back at previous videos and realised that I can't decide. You're [sport metaphor meaning doing exceptionally well] with topic+discussion+execution these days.
You are the most calm human being I have ever encountered, very nice video about how art does not support our conscience lives in America. Finding out the 1st Pollack went up in a Rockefeller Bank displayed to ALL who entered, was enough for me to realize the "Art Dealer" was the person who determined what art was going to be in the future. "Piss Christ" was all I needed to see to know we are being manipulated on a mass scale and unfortunately people fall prey to programming from TV and Movies.
You lost me at the painting of the town on a hill with the mountains. I could go into detail, but the overall impression, Bob Ross meets Thomas Kinkaid.
The same criteria applies to music. If a piece of art can be hung upside down without making a difference, then a song could be played backwards without making a difference in which case neither would be art.
Yes, art encompasses music, but to be honest Brian's focus is on visual arts, mainly because he is a designer, I think. Still, he made a couple of videos on the importance of church music (with which I definitely agree as a musician) and he is sensitive to that theme as well. In my answer to his call for models of good art I included the Ars Nova movement and late Baroque music, precisely because I felt that an answer limited to figurative arts would not be enough.
It's called canone inverso, Johan Sebastian Bach was probably the most prominent composer if this particular kind of music, he even made piece where you can play it backward or reverse the pentagram. Was Bach not a real artist then?
@@astrol4b Well, that's a point. But the force of a canone inverso resides in its being composed so that it "sounds good" in both directions, it is a supreme homage to Bach's idea of music and not done for the pure taste of reversal. I think the OP was referring to a random piece of music played backwards. If you do that to a piece of music which was not conceived for that, the result is definitely worse.
Yeah you can make a painting that can be viewed from different angles just so you can make a piece of music that can be played backwards and still be coherent (skyward swords opening theme ballad of the goddess is a great example of this) Your art is only limited by your creativity,
Beauty is objective, just like morality. However, just as my moral life will result in differences with yours (I live in different places, love different people, and will be faced with different moral problems) so to does my aesthetic preferences differ from yours. Thus, beauty is objective, but it may be manifest to us in different works of art. I tend to prefer the Northern Renaissance than the Italian, but I do not think everyone should, just as I don't think everyone shares the same moral vocation. Also, Munch is a great artist and shouldn't be lumped in with the artists you consider "ugly." His aesthetic qualities reflect his tragic youth. There is a place for terror and sadness in beauty. Anyone who has experienced beauty knows that things can be terrifyingly beautiful.
“Beauty, while it is hard to define because it exceeds our limitations, it is far more real than our subjective preferences would allow” That statement hit the nail on the head.
Does it? It's kind of an empty statement. Beauty is purely subjective, but that doesn't make it not real. Beauty is built purely on preferences, but this preferences are very real to the individuals that have them.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." This is true because you are advocating for what you believe is true and is beautiful, that doesnt have to stand for me as we all have our prefrences. You do have the option to look at art you like and not look at art you dont like. That is the beauty I enjoy and like. The fact that we are alowed to have different things we like, and thats why we dont have a standard for what is beautiful.
Exactly. He missed that entirely and just makes an argument for a kind of aesthetic: the technical skill replicating the beauty inherent in nature. Many of the pieces he called ugly are the ones I revelled in.
My remaining question is this: When it comes to painting, what's the point of trying to be realistic (as you and many others seemed to suggest) when photography does all that? What is the point of being a painter and not a photographer? Why master painting when nowadays we have it easier with photography? There is no coincidence at the creation of photography, artists become more and more personal... It's a dilemma
So much art that is now loved by the wider public was initially derided as ugly by both the established critics, academics and the public. It took a handful of art world people to promote it and not give up and time eventually gives its verdict. No-one is imposing art on you. Where you can find no value, others can find value, just like listening to music, we've different tastes.
During the third Reich the Nazis had an art display for "degenerate art". Next to each piece they put the price that it was bought for to outrage the guests primed to be angry. The artworks in this exhibit we're incredible, but they didn't fit the aesthetic that the fascists wanted them to fit A lot of these pieces were made by Jewish artists or other minority artists. Modern hatred of non-standard art carries on that reactionary view of art
Aristotle speaks about this very subject and it is worth looking into. He says that for art to be beautiful it must have a sense of unity, imitation of nature, and proportion. He then gives his reasoning and focuses in on other aspects as well. You can read about them in his "Poetics".
This was crazy inspiring. I would even venture so far as to say that the section exploring what defines art was in itself...art. Here it is in bullet points form for those of us who need it like this: Art should be: 1. Revelatory: = It should communicate a vision that the artist has captured or perceived that the rest of us can benefit from. It could be: a. A rare experience of beauty b. A form that is rarely seen c. A movement that inspires us to our highest calling. 2. It should be skillfully produced: = The sacrifices an artist makes to hone their skill vs. someone who doesn't put in the effort. 3. It should be unique: = Not enough to be able to photocopy unless you can access and penetrate insights and visions that have not yet been seen. 4. It should inspire us. = It should produce feelings of: a. humility in its viewers. b. aspirations to do and be better ourselves. c. ignite an understanding that we're capable of great things if we access virtues. 5. IT SHOULD BE BEAUTIFUL: = An attribute of being that transcends all the other categories. = Beauty is hard to define because it exceeds our limitations. = It is far more real than our subjective preferences would allow. = Difficult to understand because it requires us to look up and outside ourselves. Responses to beholding overwhelming beauty: a. Humble ourselves before it and recognize that it is greater than us. b. Refuse that humility and try to rationalize it in narrow and simplistic terms i.e. saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder: it's of our own creation and subject to our own whims and designs (people have different preferences). Thomas Aquinas: _"The conditions for beauty are wholeness, harmony, and radiance"_
5:58 You can also see that as a way to promote the original work. Look at it like this, if your art is good enough to make people copy it or sketch it over and over then that would just really show how valuable your art is and how much of an impact/inspiration it gives.
Some artists are so talented but they create nothing but paintings of mega realistic animals that do nothing to inspire or arouse any emotion other than the realisation that whoever did the painting has talent, some paint rough but thier paintings can hit hard, its not always about technical talent
I appreciate the video, and I agree with the idea that public investment into questionable art works is tied to institutional frameworks that don’t necessarily reflect the reality of the public, but I do not quite agree with the premise, which is to say what is “good” art. I think the video conflates “good” art with “being” art; that is to say, art must be good for it to have any value. Unfortunately, although you may be well versed in Aquinas, you don’t really mention much about what takes place in artistic discourse. For example, the “it’s art because I say it’s art” emerged from the Dada movement, whose point was precisely to critique institutional power in determining what criteria allowed certain art to be taken seriously, so they challenged it by placing a urinal in a gallery and exhibiting it as art. You also understand that art communicates something, but you think that communication should be limited to “inspire and uplift”. But modern art emerged in many ways as a response to a democratic spirit, with the notion that anyone should be able to practice art, whether trained or not; anyone should be able to express themselves. Finally, if art is transcendental, both of the previous examples I gave did precisely that, they pushed the boundaries of what was taking place in art in the moment...and in that sense it didn’t require people to understand it in an educated way. If something is transcendent, then it escapes, goes beyond, anything previously understood; it is new, it is original. This is why we understand memes today. Not all art is good, but the question remains, why must it be good?
.... appreciate your mind getting out of bed, and actually working constructively, deductively, logically, and discriminating (not the political term). good on you man. may the great st. thomas illuminate your steps
For me "good art" comes from the desire of wanting to know, love and understand ourselves and our God. Humility is inevitable when making it and how it touches people seems to be a mystery as well as a miracle. As a contemporary landscape painter I see it as a form of prayer. Thank you for these videos.
I've been a pro artist for 30 years or more. Art is fundamentally judged by it's beauty. Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder. Something horribly hideous might touch me in a way that I find beautiful beyond the way it looks. Let me explain further. An abstract work that functions as a field of color and texture in an otherwise plain room, it's a piece of jewelry for the wall. But some night you stumble out of bed and on your way to the kitchen for a drink of water, you see the painting and fall in love. You don't fall in love with the painting. You just fall in love. This is why it's nearly impossible to quantify art in the way you would like to. For countless centuries people have studied art. You can't reinvent this wheel as a hobby. I agree that the "art world" is obscene. Most of us working artists sell to a couple of collectors, maybe work with a dealer sometimes. We aren't part of the art world. People need art for their walls that doesn't cost a million dollars after all. What makes good art? Deliberation. When someone with talent deliberately creates their art, it's good. There is no formula. That idea is frankly a bit silly.
@@lukayaroslav9914 Everybody has talent. Obviously not everyone has the aesthetic sensibilities to be an artist. But I think if they are deliberate enough in the execution, then it would probably be of some value.
@@lukayaroslav9914 yeah, but can the public always be trusted? It comes down to individuals and their preferences. All of these bitter folks trying to codify what is or isn’t good art as doctrine reek of a fascistic mindset
Sry, if you find modern art depressing, that’s fine. But there is now valid answer to the question wich art is good art. We’re living in a time where we have divergent aesthetic all around. And if you would look on to the young artist you would notice that there is a shift in the art world. Who should decide wich art is better than an other art and how? And wich skill ist more value than an other? You need skill to find some new and you need skill to make a good concept. And I admire this. I don’t need to like the approaches but it needs still skill. And also for example in music composers think about an concept and work on it for years. And some just write there chord progressions in days, who is making more sacrifices? Also to say that people need to be better educated to find there own kind of art. Because you’re forgetting that most artist and composers are highly educated and there find beauty in many different categories. Some find simplicity beautiful, some finde in chaos beauty. There is no final answer. Every person, culture and groups find there own answer!
Art is communication, good art is good communication, good art can communicate ugliness, but then, we kept our notions of beauty and ugliness apart from our concepts of art, didn't we? To communicate ugliness is easy, to communicate beauty is hard. To communicate beauty through ugliness is particularly difficult, those are GREAT artists (Dostoyevsky, Dante, and so on). Artists that just manufacture ugliness, and nothing else, may not be "bad", bad they are definitely cheap.
If something is made to be enjoyed its art. Whether you enjoy it or not its art. Some listen to rap and despise country. Others listen to Rock and despise rap. Just because you don't find any interest in the girl next door dosen't mean the man across from you won't either. Art is a pool of subjectivity, it's best not to argue on what makes it good. If you look at something and like it it's good. If you look at something and don't like it it's bad. Simple as that. What makes a song good? It sounds good. What makes a painting good? It looks good.
Art and Design are completely different things, Design is based on deciding factors. Designs purpose is to fulfill something, be it an attractive look, functionality etc.. Art is expression in any way shape or form. And more importantly it expresses what the artist wants it to. As such there can not be good or bad art. There can be tasteful or tasteless art based on what we perceive as beautiful, appropriate etc.. Art also doesn't need to be revelatory, if the artists intent is to depict chaos and decides to blindly throw paint he can do so. If his intent is to depict a boring numb scenario he can do so. In the eyes of the Artists he has depicted what he wanted to. Art also doesn't need to benefit us as the viewer, it needs to follow what the Artists want to depict. otherwise it wouldn't be art, it would just be a product, made to appeal, not to convey. Art does not be to be skillfully produced, because if the Artist wants to convey something in a way he isn't accustomed to its still art. It doesn't matter if they know how to paint bodies properly. They want to convey something through the medium of painting, they might not want to draw anatomically correct humans. If they want to draw anatomically correct humans they will have to follow the design of the human body. If we say that the Artist that took more sacrifices to paint more realistically is better we are saying that he is better in design, not in art. Because design isn't subjective. furthermore Art is by definition unique, because its produced by a unique person. Even if it is very similar to a different piece from a different artists, even if both artists took the same inspiration and tools, as long as the artists didn't plagiarize each other or try to copy a different work the pieces are unique. If they do copy an Art style they now follow a design. Proportions, colours, etc.. Art does not need to inspire humility in us, it needs to inspire whatever the artist wants to inspire. I feel your arguments miss the points of what art is supposed to be. There can be no objectivity in something that is by definition 100% subjective. If the Artists decides that his art is supposed to be pleasant to view, he consciously or subconsciously chooses designs that appeal to him and that he wants to follow (Nature, The Human body, even certain shapes). But if the goal is to make unpleasant Art, that doesn't mean its bad art. because being restricted is not what expression is about. In short, there are ways to depict things in a more pleasant way. But Art does not have to follow these parameters as it isn't about that, its about expressing oneself. I agree, the buildings we have to experience everyday are an eyesore, but the discussion in that case needs to be in which capacity architects should function as public servants or artists. And not if its good Art since that discussion is completely redundant.
Thanks. I'm wondering who would be chosen to create the criteria for a definition of what makes good art. I also notice you selected pieces of art which were created on canvas. Do you not include other forms of art like music, photography, film, etc? I have been a subscriber for a while and I never heard your question about commenting on what our choices are for good art. So, with this in mind I would like to submit some of my choices, though I could not state any names: 1.canvas: Anything that uses light as the main feature, 2.photography: There's an image which shows an environment above and below the water line, which includes a dear above and a fish below, 3. film: Quiet, 1917, and other films which use great film making techniques while including a well crafted strong story, 4. books: I prefer just good quotes so I'm not the best source in this category, 5.What I call ingenuity: small pieces of transportation in which the engineering is completely changed and is still used to travel instead of simply displayed. Whether you consider all these categories to be considered art or not, maybe you could check them out. This is not the entirety, but it is difficult to recall names.
My idea of good art is art that is good in the general sense of "good". Not the "good" as "this potato chips is pretty good!", but he same "good" we experience when we see an honest act of charity, or when we admire nature, or when we love and feel loved. When applied to art, that's the main reason I think beauty is brought upon, because beauty is a good thing for us to experience, though admittedly by my definition it's not even a true requirement, nor the only parameter for art to be good. But it definitely helps.
This is what William Reichard said: "You get to determine what is good and bad art. It's completely subjective. You can trust 'authorities' to make these judgements for you, but it's much more fun to make them yourself."
Very well thought out material, I almost heard a little bit of Sir Roger Scruton. I think it is important for every artist to pause and clearly define the purpose of art and the type of art worthwhile making.
Art is subjective so there will never be a definitive agreement. Take maybe the most Artistic of creative crafts, Music. I love Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin and think if it as the Pinnacle of Art in music. My 11 year granddaughter disagrees and she loves Ariana Grande. Art is like that. Art isn’t math there is no right and wrong answer. Because getting an answer depends on who is giving it.
I think B (RUclips username) put forth a basic foundation for the concept of art that is rock solid. I can't imagine someone disagreeing with it. Art is about expressing ideas. Sure it's open-ended and a bit vague, but it's grounding. It keeps us from calling anything and everything "art" because it roots the idea to an external and sensible purpose. It keeps art in a proper place, in its own place. "Art for art's sake" is an articulation of an idolatrous attitude toward it. Art, like everything else that exist, including you and I, exists for God's sake, and by extension for the sake of human flourishing.
I know this an old video so responses are unlikely but if anyone does have insight on my question please help provide an answer :D. What does one think about art that might captivate the more gruesome aspects of life? Whether it would be in the physical or emotional sense. As Catholics, the passion of Christ is something that we often meditate on as it is a vital point of our redemption. The chaplet of Our Lady of Sorrows is one of my favorite prayers as it goes further into the passion and talks about how the Mother of God suffered and shows the vital role she plays in the church. I’ve noticed that those who are more traditional tend to sort of downplay these type of art pieces but I don’t know if it’s necessarily right to completely dismiss them. I’m hoping this makes sense, I’ve only recent had the interest into participating into a more contemplative lifestyle so idk if what I’m asking might be me missing some other information that I’m not taking into consideration. Once again if anyone has an answer let me know!
What you're talking about is your own values and what brings you a sense of enrichment. You can tell by your hair, your dress sense, the s[eed and variation of your speech and your environment what kind of aesthetic suits you and brings you a sense of connectedness. This idea you have of what makes good art has nothing to do with art, its about how you like to feel, and you want things to trigger that feeling in you through your senses. What you like visually has the opposite reaction in me, i find it boring, ugly and repulsive. What you dislike makes me feel energised, joyful and vibrant and filled with possibilities
This is a necessary subject. But it is terribly difficult to generalise about. So often in conservative circles you get the argument that Raphael made beauty, therefore if we copy him we will make beauty too. This is why I am very glad you made the point about originality. No artist ever became great by imitation. And if you are going to venture something new (even as an avowedly religious artist) you risk doing something that traditionalists will find ugly. The argument about all the good art being old is spurious. Most of the old art is rubbish that has been sifted out by time. Of course most of the new art is rubbish too. I think beauty is a category eminently worth striving for so long as one remembers that it can take difficult, disconcerting forms.
My basic belief is that the arts communicate, in ways that do not require words, verbiage, the preeminent form dominating modern communication. Because the ideas art shares are in forms modern viewers are less accustomed to, it can take time to become versed in the "language" used. Art can be ennobling, but I find older classical styles to be trite, intending to convey generic or anachronistic religious or mythical lessons that we largely ignore today. But current art can still be interesting, thought-provoking, paradoxical, while also being complex, simple, polished, crude, plain, masterful, playful or beautiful. Not all Art need be enshrined in a temple, and to a strong degree far too much contemporary art is made more for Stadium sized viewing, and any intimacy or subtlety is drained when it is only possible to install in a huge museum space. It is a fatal mistake for any working artist to conflate their artistic contributions with a pricetag, notoriety, market acclaim, etc. As with music, everyone knows a local savant who plays for tips in dive bars and bistros; artists abound, in every community, largely unappreciated and definitely unrewarded.
My friend, if you are interested in what art was in a more traditional worldview, and the problems with what it has become today, I highly recommend reading the small collection of essays by Ananda Coomaraswamy titled "Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art". The main distinction as it stood out to me seemed to be in the very use of the word "art". Nowadays we talk as if art we're an object, "this painting is art", or "is this toilet art?", but this was not how the word was once used. Originally "art" meant only what we would now mean when we said something like "the art of painting", or "the art of toilet making". Art was not a thing, but the way in which things were made well. As Coomaraswamy puts it, "Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made." I won't go into it here for fear of writing an essay-comment, but it seemed to me that a great deal of the subsequent philosophy he discusses ramified out of this simple distinction. I was in the holidays before my final semester of studying a bachelor of fine arts last year when I read the collection of essays, lets just say I finished my degree with some very different ideas about where I was going and what I was going to be doing in life.
With all due respect your fourth criterion is useless. Art should inspire us? Where does that leave art that unnerves us, that saddens us, or angers us. Where does that leave the work of technical masters like Zdzisław Beksiński and Francis Bacon? I’m not denying that there should be technical standards of art, but saying art should instill in a specific set of emotions is antithetical to the entire purpose of the art.
My main disagreement is that art has an obligation to be beautiful. It can be and it's great when it can inspire a sense of awe and connection to something higher, but I don't under stand why you brush off art that instills a sense of chaos or anxiety. My view is that art has an obligation to be honest (when it's trying to be something more than aesthetically pleasing). If we only every produced art with goal of glorifying beauty, i'd feel would be being collectively dishonest as a society by pretending these other aspects of our experiences don't exist. Sometimes art that reflects feelings of anxiety, depression and chaos can help people process through or understand those emotions better
This is a discussion my friends and I always have when visiting an art gallery: is it good art and why or why not? IMO it's pretty easy to identify good design; it not only has to look appealing but it also has to function well as it was intended. Identifying good art seems to be much more subjective. To me, if it looks like a 5 yo could have done it then it's not art. To others, if you have to work at trying to figure out what it is then it must be genius. Is good art subjective? I'm not sure you answered that question.
I think your critique of "if a 5yr old can do it, it'a not art" is valid. That would fall under the criterion of craftsmanship (the etymology of 'art' is close to craftmanship btw), and I think is one of the aspects that's a bit easier to qualify. Even the 5 year olds, in their classroom doodling away in art class, can recognize that a few of their peers can do things that the rest can't. I think of it like supply and demand, a skill being more valuable if it's very rare. Some art exhibits look like something that literally anyone could do, if they were inclined to do so.
>if you have to work at trying to figure out what it is then it must be genius. this can easily become something artists can hide behind, so you shouldnt really take it too seriously. if no one can find its meaning then it doesnt automatically mean no one is smart enough. it could just mean that the artist isnt good at conveying meaning
Instead of trying to pick what art is good and what art is not good try to engage with the art itself. Instead of trying to push them into binary categories of good and bad actually engage with the art
I'm sure that beauty must have integrity, a purpose, and clarity. If the piece of art we are observing exhibits these points, it resonates objective truth, and the human heart is wired for objective truth, ☘☘☘ St. Thomas Aquinas is the expert. Pax Christi.
Eastern Catholics see iconography as a part of tradition. So "uniqueness" is not really a category for good iconography; rather, iconography should visually depict, not the author's interests, but the dogma of the Church.
As an art teacher, I found this video FASCINATING! I suspect that we would all benefit from a better definition of our terms, but who has time for that in a 10 minute RUclips video? As you continue to consider your position on this, it might be worth considering WHY artists make the art that they do. It's difficult to judge the worthiness of any project when you don't know its purpose. As an observer of art, you've laid out your aesthetics here. If your goal is a unifying criteria for good art, the next step I would encourage is to consider the reasons why art - in all its varieties - is created in the first place. The artists' evaluation and the viewers' evaluation may be different. If you're interested, here's a video that I made for my students that might add to our conversation: ruclips.net/video/y4iT5S9-ch8/видео.html
I don't know if I fully agree with Holdsworth on this. Personally, I think the Mona Lisa looks boring and I would rather look at an impressionist or even a Jackson Pollock painting. But if you thought the Mona Lisa was better, there's no way I could prove you wrong, so I do think there's some subjectivity to it.
I spent 4 years studying photography, and not once was beauty ever mentioned. Only since returning the faith have I started to pursue beauty. Beauty instills within us a pursuit of the ideal, a fleeting glimpse manifested to steer our hearts to that which never was and never will be. A guiding force that articulates our soul. Wish me luck in attempting to grapple with beauty.
Men will slay dragons for beauty. So of course when art becomes perverse and chaotic, we have men who pursue perversity and chaos instead of beauty.
What are you talking about? I never studied photography formally, but photographers frequently call photos "beautiful".
Jack Parker there is a difference between using the word “beautiful” and developing the skills to create something has qualities of objective and transcendent beauty.
That's a poem, that is..
Good luck my friend and stay strong 💪! Beauty is magnificent
"A garden shed cosplaying as an imperial star destroyer" LOL that's really quite accurate
I guess that would be an ideal venue, for that matter, for a Star Wars (😍) Convention.
(By the emoji above you can tell I'm a really huge fan. 👍)
I get a lot more meaning out of the chaotic anger of a Jackson Pollock than I do from a scenery painting.
But what about a Van Gogh or a Sickertt ?
Same dude, this take on art is ridiculous too lol.
In response to your opening comments, it's true.
Cicero is quoted as saying, "If only it were as easy to prove what is true, as it is to disprove what is untrue."
Great respect for this video. My critique is that not all works of art need “inspire us to be better than what we are” or something like that. There’s plenty of art that is dark, but exploratory, skillful and honest, like many metal bands do for me.
I think rather that beauty does that. Great job man.
I think good art has a storytelling quality and gives insight to the community and culture that creates it. This can apply to the masterpieces of Westrrn art as well as traditional art from the world's cultures.
Good kid mad city
If you see art as a story that spans the dawn of humanity then you can see the various contexts and perspectives that art works live in the giant story of it. This includes the bad and good and everything in between. Every time an art work is made it adds to the grand story. Like spilled liquid, the story of art expands into every nook and cranny. Some of those places are less than appealing. some are flat out disturbing and perverted. So goes the heart of man as it makes and adds to the story be it horrible or beautiful.
I think yayoi kusamas art is very beautiful. It makes me feel lovely and it's lively. It excites my senses. It isn't really revelatory, it's very simple, nor does it offer a glimpse of heaven. It's a lovely optical illusion which makes me marvel at the brain and it's perception. Yayoi was trained very much in the academic Japanese style of painting as well and found herself rebelling against it. Not all of us find the art you like interesting. It's in fact possibly too predictable and boring for some of us. I'm glad that the institution of art broadly recognises this and rewards people who make stuff that I like, and I wonder why it is that people like you can't take the taste you have, appreciate it and let others like what they like?
I hope you also have listened or read John Berger, it may change and broaden your narrow perspective on art. And by this I don't mean that what you like isn't art- that is what you're doing to people like me though. I'm only saying that art is very broad and that is just one kind of expression. Why limit it only to your preferences?
I think about objectivity in art all the time. A lot of things go back to Essentialism vs Existentialism -- whether meaning/purpose/value precedes of proceeds from a material existence.
I believe 'Art' is an objective reality, though a difficult one to pin down.. Here are my seven criteria for what makes something 'Art' vs merely 'artistic' (or like art):
Does it spur sentiments about or promote the Good, the True, and the Beautiful?
Does it inspire us to create, or to grow as persons?
What are the intentions of the ‘artist’?
Does the work have any deeper meaning or symbolism?
Does it promote deep thinking and contemplation?
Does it connect the viewer in some way to ‘the bigger picture’?
- That is, to time/place, history, culture, ideals, or the human condition?
Does the work require genuine skill, talent, finesse, expertise, awareness or prowess from the ‘artist’?
If it doesn't match at least five of these seven, it probably isn't really Art.
Matthew Bateman 👌🏻
I feel like what it really means by beauty is in the eye of the beholder is the idea that anything can be art which gives the person the full power to define whatever art is. This idea leads to erasing traditional ideas, and create something that is new. Many people believe it is subjective becuase it supports the idea for freedom of diversity in any type of beauty, there is no moderation in that idea. For me, It is really hard to define beauty but there is also objective beauty. Beauty for me is 50 percent subjective and 50 percent objective.
Thank you so much for this. As a classical musician, I am always trying to explain to people why I prefer older, more traditional music to modern. While I do enjoy some modern music, I find that there is something missing from it that makes it different than music from the past. Art was created to exhibit beauty and glorify God. I think that people have tried to take God out of it, therefore turning it into something worldly rather than heavenly. Art reflects the culture that it was created in.
By removing God they've removed the soul. As with a human being, if you remove the soul then art becomes sterile, dead, vegetative, decadent.
A lot of modern music has no tune, no melody that one can remember and recall after hearing the performance.
It's somewhat ironic that you say that, because classical music marked a turning away from God toward the human being. It was medieval and much renaissance music that was God-oriented. The Baroque period changed that, the Classical period diverged from it even more, and the Romantic period altogether abandoned it and became expressionistic and subjective (with exceptions of course).
If art is just for itself, it will loose its meaning. If art is for evil or secular, it will become propaganda. If art transcends itself, it will become transmitter of Beauty.
Check out this video: "Sacred Geometry of Sound, Frequency and Vibration - ROBERT SEPEHR". He explains the effects sounds and music can have.
I studied art for almost my entire adult life and still have no idea how to answer that question. The only definition of art I feel comfortable with is that it is short for Arthur.
This was a great first dive into art and I commend your humility. Although I would say that you answered “what makes beautiful art”
There is, of course, the school of thought which demand that true art is only "art done for art's sake."
All you show is older romantic stuff, one could argue that that is decoration and skill. You should also look at for instance works by Gerhard Richter, you're not going to like all of them, maybe you'll like none, but if your mind is open there is incredible beauty , skill, talent and experience to be found in his paintings. The abstracts don't depict anything, instead they are the thing themselves and are only there to look at for what they are. There's no deeper meaning. But i can promise you that the appeal is not just that he's in vogue, or that it's a place for the rich to invest or park their capital in. Those things are true and facts, but there's a reason he is at the level of appreciation and value he is at. The best abstracts can touch your soul deeper than any figurative work.
Obviously you can disagree, that's ok, but i've traveled a lot in my life, seen most of the major museums in Europe and the USA and love a vast amount of styles, i own 18th century paintings all the way to 2022 made paintings.
All i'm saying is that it is not as simple as you put it/think it is. Tastes differ and evolve with experience.
Robert Pirsig basically asked this same question in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - “What is quality?” Is it purely subjective or is it objective? He ended up rejected both viewpoints, proposing instead a third frame of reference that triangulated both. Quality (and by extension good art) must encapsulate both. It must be embraced by the majority (at least within a given culture) and not be limited in its appreciation to the capricious whims of an elected few AND it must also possess objective markers of both discipline and skill that are universally recognized as being difficult to acquire. I would add a third criteria that in order for it to shape society it must also be unique. To this authors point - it could be a spectacular copy and possess quality - but its not going to shape a culture unless it presents something unique and meaningful to that culture in some way. Just my 2 cents.
Spencer Arnot when I was really into art and going to galleries on a regular basis I had a simple criteria for myself. Good art had a balance of 3 things, Head Hand and Heart.
First comment? Thank you for your work. It has been most helpful for orientating myself towards God, and using RUclips for a more positive purpose. I share your opinion on art, I am not an enthusiast of modern art at all.
First! Congrats!
As an artist, I wanna cry. Thank you so much for this video.
Beauty is not really in the eye of the beholder, but it is rather that our eyes behold beauty. We identify it within existence and capture it calling it art. Art is an expression of the harmonizing, radiating, wholeness of existence--and that is not something we merely make but discover and behold.
A lot of people hate beauty, it makes them feel inferior and they want to destroy it.
A lovely response and so true,
As an artist I disagree with the premise but agree with the conclusion. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder because people can only percieve the universe in terms on their own unique and special experiences.
Like someone said, "there is no good or bad in art. Only interesting and uninteresting"
I would say that certain eyes are trained to see certain kinds or levels of beauty, but I do not think it is just that someone says it is so it is, or that someone can have an untrained eye. It is like cooking. My dad might love burnt food, but it is objectively not good cooking. It is cooking, but not skillful or whatever other criteria. People make genuinely ugly and disturbing artwork that gives a sense of oppression and even a sense of terror. People destroy beautiful architecture to erect ugly buildings and it is oppressive. I respect your thoughts, and I am inclined to disagree.
@@zelie1155 I do not believe one should even use the words "objectively" and "good" in congruence with each other. I also do not think skillful is an attribute of "good". It does not take any skill outside your average human to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Many people would still say PB & J's are "good", they may even say "objectively" so.
Hi Brian. I am a Christian artist who values highly the Renaissance high point of Christian art and gradually came to respect certain modern and postmodern artists so I was interested in your perspective. I think the best writing on navigating this topic is still Art and the Bible by Francis Schaefer, because most secular theory I read became so interested in the postmodern progressive movement it ignored the artists themselves. Schaefer as a Christian articulated an argument that the art critic must be fair to the artists intentions while appraising their work. So while he personally felt abstraction lacked the ability to speak in the same way as representational work, to be fair to the artist would be to consider their intentions and evaluate them on that basis even if you perceive a lack in a modern or postmodern work on an objective basis. For your positive ideas of what should constitute good art, the one I’d push back against is the idea that it must engender a sort of positive feeling of hope or humility in the viewer. The reason is I think, for Christian artists, and good secular artists will also follow this pattern, there is a duty to represent sin and disease in the world as part of truthfully representing the fallen world. Hamlet is about a man driven nearly to suicide by his doubt. The distinction I would make is purpose and context. Art relishing in sin for shock value has no positive purpose for the shock value. Goya’s depictions of Demons on the other hand seem to express a deeply Christian revulsion of the satanic. In connection with your point about public art, I also don’t think the place of “dark subject matter” art is in the public square. On the other hand, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment depicts real barbarism to illustrate the horror of hell in contrast to heaven, and church goers would have had that directly in front of them during services. I think the Christian worldview provides a better picture of the world to examine evil than does the secular worldview, which can’t see any potential purpose for evil in the world, but my main point is there have to be opportunities for good artists to stare evil in the face and try to find what this says about God’s world in order to avoid treacly “God’s Not Dead,” type art. Leonardo Da Vinci’s studies of beautiful and ugly heads illustrate the point too. Drawing ugliness teaches you something about drawing beauty, because your act of drawing could have a beautiful intent to the portrayal of evil.
From an artistic and technical perspective: right use of color, contrast, shapes, light, hamony, perspective and compositiion, conveying a meaning. From a esthetical perspective: the personal views/experiences/taste of the individual and how those relate to the art work.
I am a visual artist. Beauty is divine. It comes through me but is not from me. To become a conduit for Beauty, I open myself up. This is done through prayer. I pray.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" has the same energy as "Do what thou wilt"
I'm not sure that inherently by itself these statements are satanic. I first ask the person who stated this are they being literal do they seriously mean what they say or are they just being flippant and funny.
What do you think the author who coined "Do what thou wilt" meant by it?
Have you read the books from which that phrase comes?
@j s hail Satan
Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. Thank you for skillfully articulating this and making me think more deeply.
I think one of the underlying problems is that my generation does not know how to think critically and hates the idea of possibly upsetting someone.
PS. Love your content, Hope to see more on topics like this.
The fact that this comment would make sense under practically any video in 2020. Lol
It's genetic. People who're genetically ugly, gravitate towards ugly things. While beautiful and moral people, search for beauty.
@@beastvicious8672I think it’s the opposite, ugly people gravitate towards beautiful things.
@@andrzejszpak688 Nope. Dysgenic people want the world to be dysgenic.
As a philosopher, I am so happy to see someone defending the proposition of objective beauty/aesthetics. It is truly an intellectual quagmire to me when I see people state that beauty is in the eye of the beholder yet assert in the very next statement that rap is better than classical music or that they hate the style of a particular car because of a faulty aesthetic feature. Thus, holding it to an objective standard
In the examples you gave, it is perfectly reasonable to assume they are holding these things to subjective standards, thus they would be statements of preference rather than descriptive statements.
@@CobaltSerpent i'd agree that the examples are not great per se. However, note that when the disagreement arises it is true that there are arguments given to demonstrate or convince others to agree to the aesthetic position. Namely, they appeal to an objective a priori set of universals to which they may find common ground as to then move the abstraction to the incarnation of the situation
I’ve been thinking of an possible additional trascendental, but haven’t elaborated on it: it would be COMMUNION. Being, oneness, truth, good and beauty... if they are really such, they should generate communion in a certain way.
There's a book from the Catholic Brazilian philosopher Carlos Nougué called Da Arte do Belo, where he brilliantly shows the objective nature of beauty. I don't think it has an English translation, but whenever it gets one you should read it
This is the 5th time this year that I've wanted to comment "this is your best video yet" but then looked back at previous videos and realised that I can't decide. You're [sport metaphor meaning doing exceptionally well] with topic+discussion+execution these days.
Me: knows nothing about art
Brian: Makes this video
Me: Well well well, then let's find out
there's not much to know
You are the most calm human being I have ever encountered, very nice video about how art does not support our conscience lives in America. Finding out the 1st Pollack went up in a Rockefeller Bank displayed to ALL who entered, was enough for me to realize the "Art Dealer" was the person who determined what art was going to be in the future. "Piss Christ" was all I needed to see to know we are being manipulated on a mass scale and unfortunately people fall prey to programming from TV and Movies.
You lost me at the painting of the town on a hill with the mountains. I could go into detail, but the overall impression, Bob Ross meets Thomas Kinkaid.
The same criteria applies to music. If a piece of art can be hung upside down without making a difference, then a song could be played backwards without making a difference in which case neither would be art.
doesn't art encompass music?
Yes, art encompasses music, but to be honest Brian's focus is on visual arts, mainly because he is a designer, I think. Still, he made a couple of videos on the importance of church music (with which I definitely agree as a musician) and he is sensitive to that theme as well.
In my answer to his call for models of good art I included the Ars Nova movement and late Baroque music, precisely because I felt that an answer limited to figurative arts would not be enough.
It's called canone inverso, Johan Sebastian Bach was probably the most prominent composer if this particular kind of music, he even made piece where you can play it backward or reverse the pentagram. Was Bach not a real artist then?
@@astrol4b Well, that's a point. But the force of a canone inverso resides in its being composed so that it "sounds good" in both directions, it is a supreme homage to Bach's idea of music and not done for the pure taste of reversal. I think the OP was referring to a random piece of music played backwards. If you do that to a piece of music which was not conceived for that, the result is definitely worse.
Yeah you can make a painting that can be viewed from different angles just so you can make a piece of music that can be played backwards and still be coherent (skyward swords opening theme ballad of the goddess is a great example of this)
Your art is only limited by your creativity,
Beauty is objective, just like morality. However, just as my moral life will result in differences with yours (I live in different places, love different people, and will be faced with different moral problems) so to does my aesthetic preferences differ from yours. Thus, beauty is objective, but it may be manifest to us in different works of art. I tend to prefer the Northern Renaissance than the Italian, but I do not think everyone should, just as I don't think everyone shares the same moral vocation.
Also, Munch is a great artist and shouldn't be lumped in with the artists you consider "ugly." His aesthetic qualities reflect his tragic youth. There is a place for terror and sadness in beauty. Anyone who has experienced beauty knows that things can be terrifyingly beautiful.
“Beauty, while it is hard to define because it exceeds our limitations, it is far more real than our subjective preferences would allow”
That statement hit the nail on the head.
Does it? It's kind of an empty statement. Beauty is purely subjective, but that doesn't make it not real. Beauty is built purely on preferences, but this preferences are very real to the individuals that have them.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
This is true because you are advocating for what you believe is true and is beautiful, that doesnt have to stand for me as we all have our prefrences. You do have the option to look at art you like and not look at art you dont like. That is the beauty I enjoy and like. The fact that we are alowed to have different things we like, and thats why we dont have a standard for what is beautiful.
Good and bad, the intellect divides, love unites. Art doesn't have to replicate the tedium of craftsmanship. Cave paintings are inspirational too.
Exactly. He missed that entirely and just makes an argument for a kind of aesthetic: the technical skill replicating the beauty inherent in nature. Many of the pieces he called ugly are the ones I revelled in.
I happen to like Starry Night.
I LOVE a lot of Van Gogh’s stuff, and his quotes too - we got to see some of his pieces up close in the National Gallery in DC last year
My remaining question is this: When it comes to painting, what's the point of trying to be realistic (as you and many others seemed to suggest) when photography does all that?
What is the point of being a painter and not a photographer? Why master painting when nowadays we have it easier with photography? There is no coincidence at the creation of photography, artists become more and more personal... It's a dilemma
Great content as always. Reminded me a lot of Roger Scruton's documentary about beauty
A fantastic work. R.I.P. Sir Roger.
I think art represents ideas and we can critique ideas. If a piece of art represents an idea well I think it’s good art.
Therefore, art has a twofold goodness: good in its idea and good in its expression thereof.
So much art that is now loved by the wider public was initially derided as ugly by both the established critics, academics and the public. It took a handful of art world people to promote it and not give up and time eventually gives its verdict. No-one is imposing art on you. Where you can find no value, others can find value, just like listening to music, we've different tastes.
During the third Reich the Nazis had an art display for "degenerate art". Next to each piece they put the price that it was bought for to outrage the guests primed to be angry. The artworks in this exhibit we're incredible, but they didn't fit the aesthetic that the fascists wanted them to fit
A lot of these pieces were made by Jewish artists or other minority artists. Modern hatred of non-standard art carries on that reactionary view of art
I'm really glad you made this video, this is a topic on which the discourse really needs to change
Aristotle speaks about this very subject and it is worth looking into. He says that for art to be beautiful it must have a sense of unity, imitation of nature, and proportion. He then gives his reasoning and focuses in on other aspects as well. You can read about them in his "Poetics".
This was crazy inspiring. I would even venture so far as to say that the section exploring what defines art was in itself...art.
Here it is in bullet points form for those of us who need it like this:
Art should be:
1. Revelatory:
= It should communicate a vision that the artist has captured or perceived that the rest of us can benefit from. It could be:
a. A rare experience of beauty
b. A form that is rarely seen
c. A movement that inspires us to our highest calling.
2. It should be skillfully produced:
= The sacrifices an artist makes to hone their skill vs. someone who doesn't put in the effort.
3. It should be unique:
= Not enough to be able to photocopy unless you can access and penetrate insights and visions that have not yet been seen.
4. It should inspire us.
= It should produce feelings of:
a. humility in its viewers.
b. aspirations to do and be better ourselves.
c. ignite an understanding that we're capable of great things if we access virtues.
5. IT SHOULD BE BEAUTIFUL:
= An attribute of being that transcends all the other categories.
= Beauty is hard to define because it exceeds our limitations.
= It is far more real than our subjective preferences would allow.
= Difficult to understand because it requires us to look up and outside ourselves.
Responses to beholding overwhelming beauty:
a. Humble ourselves before it and recognize that it is greater than us.
b. Refuse that humility and try to rationalize it in narrow and simplistic terms i.e. saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder: it's of our own creation and subject to our own whims and designs (people have different preferences).
Thomas Aquinas:
_"The conditions for beauty are wholeness, harmony, and radiance"_
5:58 You can also see that as a way to promote the original work. Look at it like this, if your art is good enough to make people copy it or sketch it over and over then that would just really show how valuable your art is and how much of an impact/inspiration it gives.
Some artists are so talented but they create nothing but paintings of mega realistic animals that do nothing to inspire or arouse any emotion other than the realisation that whoever did the painting has talent, some paint rough but thier paintings can hit hard, its not always about technical talent
I appreciate the video, and I agree with the idea that public investment into questionable art works is tied to institutional frameworks that don’t necessarily reflect the reality of the public, but I do not quite agree with the premise, which is to say what is “good” art. I think the video conflates “good” art with “being” art; that is to say, art must be good for it to have any value. Unfortunately, although you may be well versed in Aquinas, you don’t really mention much about what takes place in artistic discourse. For example, the “it’s art because I say it’s art” emerged from the Dada movement, whose point was precisely to critique institutional power in determining what criteria allowed certain art to be taken seriously, so they challenged it by placing a urinal in a gallery and exhibiting it as art. You also understand that art communicates something, but you think that communication should be limited to “inspire and uplift”. But modern art emerged in many ways as a response to a democratic spirit, with the notion that anyone should be able to practice art, whether trained or not; anyone should be able to express themselves. Finally, if art is transcendental, both of the previous examples I gave did precisely that, they pushed the boundaries of what was taking place in art in the moment...and in that sense it didn’t require people to understand it in an educated way. If something is transcendent, then it escapes, goes beyond, anything previously understood; it is new, it is original. This is why we understand memes today. Not all art is good, but the question remains, why must it be good?
"Wholeness, harmony and radiance" I like that. Thanks for sharing
Thank you. I'm looking fkr ways to explain why good art is good, since schools nowadays don't teach art fundamentals.
.... appreciate your mind getting out of bed, and actually working constructively, deductively, logically, and discriminating (not the political term). good on you man. may the great st. thomas illuminate your steps
For me "good art" comes from the desire of wanting to know, love and understand ourselves and our God. Humility is inevitable when making it and how it touches people seems to be a mystery as well as a miracle. As a contemporary landscape painter I see it as a form of prayer. Thank you for these videos.
Giacometti makes beautiful art . I don't like much modern art but I loooooove his art .
I've been a pro artist for 30 years or more. Art is fundamentally judged by it's beauty. Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder. Something horribly hideous might touch me in a way that I find beautiful beyond the way it looks. Let me explain further. An abstract work that functions as a field of color and texture in an otherwise plain room, it's a piece of jewelry for the wall. But some night you stumble out of bed and on your way to the kitchen for a drink of water, you see the painting and fall in love. You don't fall in love with the painting. You just fall in love. This is why it's nearly impossible to quantify art in the way you would like to. For countless centuries people have studied art. You can't reinvent this wheel as a hobby. I agree that the "art world" is obscene. Most of us working artists sell to a couple of collectors, maybe work with a dealer sometimes. We aren't part of the art world. People need art for their walls that doesn't cost a million dollars after all. What makes good art? Deliberation. When someone with talent deliberately creates their art, it's good. There is no formula. That idea is frankly a bit silly.
What if someone who is not talented makes art? Does that mean their art is automatically bad?
@@lukayaroslav9914 Everybody has talent. Obviously not everyone has the aesthetic sensibilities to be an artist. But I think if they are deliberate enough in the execution, then it would probably be of some value.
@@gregorysgarrison I think since art is very subjective, a good art is the art that appeals to the public the most.
@@lukayaroslav9914 yeah, but can the public always be trusted? It comes down to individuals and their preferences. All of these bitter folks trying to codify what is or isn’t good art as doctrine reek of a fascistic mindset
@@bm4114 Yes. There is no objective measure on art. That's why I based it on what general people like.
Sry, if you find modern art depressing, that’s fine. But there is now valid answer to the question wich art is good art. We’re living in a time where we have divergent aesthetic all around. And if you would look on to the young artist you would notice that there is a shift in the art world.
Who should decide wich art is better than an other art and how? And wich skill ist more value than an other? You need skill to find some new and you need skill to make a good concept. And I admire this. I don’t need to like the approaches but it needs still skill.
And also for example in music composers think about an concept and work on it for years. And some just write there chord progressions in days, who is making more sacrifices?
Also to say that people need to be better educated to find there own kind of art. Because you’re forgetting that most artist and composers are highly educated and there find beauty in many different categories. Some find simplicity beautiful, some finde in chaos beauty. There is no final answer. Every person, culture and groups find there own answer!
Brian, you are such a blessing and a breath of fresh air! God bless your intelligence, perspicacity, and courage to speak the truth.
Art fills the soul. If the work doesn't fill you, then isn't good art. Nature is God's art, is a way to see it
Art is communication, good art is good communication, good art can communicate ugliness, but then, we kept our notions of beauty and ugliness apart from our concepts of art, didn't we? To communicate ugliness is easy, to communicate beauty is hard. To communicate beauty through ugliness is particularly difficult, those are GREAT artists (Dostoyevsky, Dante, and so on). Artists that just manufacture ugliness, and nothing else, may not be "bad", bad they are definitely cheap.
Skip to 5:13 for enumerated arguments
You hit the nail on the head: it’s an issue of incentives with in academia.
First painting at 1:49 is by Albert Bierstadt. One of my favorite landscape artists and a member of the Hudson River School
That building looks pretty cool actually
This is so perfectly expressed. No standers for art. It’s about money and who controls it. I believe most people hate it
If something is made to be enjoyed its art. Whether you enjoy it or not its art. Some listen to rap and despise country. Others listen to Rock and despise rap. Just because you don't find any interest in the girl next door dosen't mean the man across from you won't either. Art is a pool of subjectivity, it's best not to argue on what makes it good. If you look at something and like it it's good. If you look at something and don't like it it's bad. Simple as that. What makes a song good? It sounds good. What makes a painting good? It looks good.
CS Lewis talks about this in The Abolition of Man, it's very insightful.
Art and Design are completely different things, Design is based on deciding factors. Designs purpose is to fulfill something, be it an attractive look, functionality etc.. Art is expression in any way shape or form. And more importantly it expresses what the artist wants it to.
As such there can not be good or bad art. There can be tasteful or tasteless art based on what we perceive as beautiful, appropriate etc..
Art also doesn't need to be revelatory, if the artists intent is to depict chaos and decides to blindly throw paint he can do so. If his intent is to depict a boring numb scenario he can do so. In the eyes of the Artists he has depicted what he wanted to. Art also doesn't need to benefit us as the viewer, it needs to follow what the Artists want to depict. otherwise it wouldn't be art, it would just be a product, made to appeal, not to convey.
Art does not be to be skillfully produced, because if the Artist wants to convey something in a way he isn't accustomed to its still art. It doesn't matter if they know how to paint bodies properly. They want to convey something through the medium of painting, they might not want to draw anatomically correct humans. If they want to draw anatomically correct humans they will have to follow the design of the human body. If we say that the Artist that took more sacrifices to paint more realistically is better we are saying that he is better in design, not in art. Because design isn't subjective.
furthermore Art is by definition unique, because its produced by a unique person. Even if it is very similar to a different piece from a different artists, even if both artists took the same inspiration and tools, as long as the artists didn't plagiarize each other or try to copy a different work the pieces are unique. If they do copy an Art style they now follow a design. Proportions, colours, etc..
Art does not need to inspire humility in us, it needs to inspire whatever the artist wants to inspire.
I feel your arguments miss the points of what art is supposed to be. There can be no objectivity in something that is by definition 100% subjective. If the Artists decides that his art is supposed to be pleasant to view, he consciously or subconsciously chooses designs that appeal to him and that he wants to follow (Nature, The Human body, even certain shapes). But if the goal is to make unpleasant Art, that doesn't mean its bad art. because being restricted is not what expression is about.
In short, there are ways to depict things in a more pleasant way. But Art does not have to follow these parameters as it isn't about that, its about expressing oneself.
I agree, the buildings we have to experience everyday are an eyesore, but the discussion in that case needs to be in which capacity architects should function as public servants or artists. And not if its good Art since that discussion is completely redundant.
Thanks. I'm wondering who would be chosen to create the criteria for a definition of what makes good art. I also notice you selected pieces of art which were created on canvas. Do you not include other forms of art like music, photography, film, etc? I have been a subscriber for a while and I never heard your question about commenting on what our choices are for good art. So, with this in mind I would like to submit some of my choices, though I could not state any names: 1.canvas: Anything that uses light as the main feature, 2.photography: There's an image which shows an environment above and below the water line, which includes a dear above and a fish below, 3. film: Quiet, 1917, and other films which use great film making techniques while including a well crafted strong story, 4. books: I prefer just good quotes so I'm not the best source in this category, 5.What I call ingenuity: small pieces of transportation in which the engineering is completely changed and is still used to travel instead of simply displayed. Whether you consider all these categories to be considered art or not, maybe you could check them out. This is not the entirety, but it is difficult to recall names.
My idea of good art is art that is good in the general sense of "good". Not the "good" as "this potato chips is pretty good!", but he same "good" we experience when we see an honest act of charity, or when we admire nature, or when we love and feel loved.
When applied to art, that's the main reason I think beauty is brought upon, because beauty is a good thing for us to experience, though admittedly by my definition it's not even a true requirement, nor the only parameter for art to be good. But it definitely helps.
5:34 i immediately thought about mozart and beethoven, you can see it even in their sheetwriting
This was the exact type of video I was looking for. Thank you and may God continue to bless your work.
But creating a criteria would also dereased Creativ Freedom. Also a valid question, who are we to Think what Art is and what Not ?
This is what William Reichard said: "You get to determine what is good and bad art. It's completely subjective. You can trust 'authorities' to make these judgements for you, but it's much more fun to make them yourself."
I would greatly appreciate if you create more videos on this topic! Your thought and criterias are very beautiful and inspiring!
Love the channel! However does this argument presuppose the artists purpose to society?
Ok now this is epic
I wouldn’t say good art needs to be skillfully made, I’m certain many parents would argue on the contrary.
Very well thought out material, I almost heard a little bit of Sir Roger Scruton. I think it is important for every artist to pause and clearly define the purpose of art and the type of art worthwhile making.
Check out the sacred art of Giovanni Gasparro. His work really is amazing.
Woah thanks for throwing his name out there, I just searched his stuff. His pieces are gorgeous 😦
Art is subjective so there will never be a definitive agreement. Take maybe the most Artistic of creative crafts, Music. I love Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin and think if it as the Pinnacle of Art in music. My 11 year granddaughter disagrees and she loves Ariana Grande. Art is like that. Art isn’t math there is no right and wrong answer. Because getting an answer depends on who is giving it.
I think B (RUclips username) put forth a basic foundation for the concept of art that is rock solid. I can't imagine someone disagreeing with it.
Art is about expressing ideas.
Sure it's open-ended and a bit vague, but it's grounding. It keeps us from calling anything and everything "art" because it roots the idea to an external and sensible purpose.
It keeps art in a proper place, in its own place.
"Art for art's sake" is an articulation of an idolatrous attitude toward it. Art, like everything else that exist, including you and I, exists for God's sake, and by extension for the sake of human flourishing.
I know this an old video so responses are unlikely but if anyone does have insight on my question please help provide an answer :D.
What does one think about art that might captivate the more gruesome aspects of life? Whether it would be in the physical or emotional sense. As Catholics, the passion of Christ is something that we often meditate on as it is a vital point of our redemption. The chaplet of Our Lady of Sorrows is one of my favorite prayers as it goes further into the passion and talks about how the Mother of God suffered and shows the vital role she plays in the church. I’ve noticed that those who are more traditional tend to sort of downplay these type of art pieces but I don’t know if it’s necessarily right to completely dismiss them.
I’m hoping this makes sense, I’ve only recent had the interest into participating into a more contemplative lifestyle so idk if what I’m asking might be me missing some other information that I’m not taking into consideration. Once again if anyone has an answer let me know!
One of my favorite classical pieces is The Pieta. So detailed and pretty!!!
As an artist I strongly agree
Ayn Rand has many enlightening viewpoints on what art IS and IS NOT
How interesting l will look that up. She has always interested me greatly. Thanks
@@galegrazutis964 of coarse. Look up the Ayn Rand lexicon which has little snippets of her information like “art”
What you're talking about is your own values and what brings you a sense of enrichment. You can tell by your hair, your dress sense, the s[eed and variation of your speech and your environment what kind of aesthetic suits you and brings you a sense of connectedness. This idea you have of what makes good art has nothing to do with art, its about how you like to feel, and you want things to trigger that feeling in you through your senses. What you like visually has the opposite reaction in me, i find it boring, ugly and repulsive. What you dislike makes me feel energised, joyful and vibrant and filled with possibilities
Chat, what is the name of the painting shown at 1:50 ?
Your hair is art .
This is a necessary subject. But it is terribly difficult to generalise about. So often in conservative circles you get the argument that Raphael made beauty, therefore if we copy him we will make beauty too. This is why I am very glad you made the point about originality. No artist ever became great by imitation. And if you are going to venture something new (even as an avowedly religious artist) you risk doing something that traditionalists will find ugly. The argument about all the good art being old is spurious. Most of the old art is rubbish that has been sifted out by time. Of course most of the new art is rubbish too. I think beauty is a category eminently worth striving for so long as one remembers that it can take difficult, disconcerting forms.
My basic belief is that the arts communicate, in ways that do not require words, verbiage, the preeminent form dominating modern communication. Because the ideas art shares are in forms modern viewers are less accustomed to, it can take time to become versed in the "language" used. Art can be ennobling, but I find older classical styles to be trite, intending to convey generic or anachronistic religious or mythical lessons that we largely ignore today. But current art can still be interesting, thought-provoking, paradoxical, while also being complex, simple, polished, crude, plain, masterful, playful or beautiful. Not all Art need be enshrined in a temple, and to a strong degree far too much contemporary art is made more for Stadium sized viewing, and any intimacy or subtlety is drained when it is only possible to install in a huge museum space.
It is a fatal mistake for any working artist to conflate their artistic contributions with a pricetag, notoriety, market acclaim, etc. As with music, everyone knows a local savant who plays for tips in dive bars and bistros; artists abound, in every community, largely unappreciated and definitely unrewarded.
Really good video tackling a difficult subject, thank you for your contribution !
My friend, if you are interested in what art was in a more traditional worldview, and the problems with what it has become today, I highly recommend reading the small collection of essays by Ananda Coomaraswamy titled "Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art". The main distinction as it stood out to me seemed to be in the very use of the word "art". Nowadays we talk as if art we're an object, "this painting is art", or "is this toilet art?", but this was not how the word was once used. Originally "art" meant only what we would now mean when we said something like "the art of painting", or "the art of toilet making". Art was not a thing, but the way in which things were made well. As Coomaraswamy puts it, "Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made." I won't go into it here for fear of writing an essay-comment, but it seemed to me that a great deal of the subsequent philosophy he discusses ramified out of this simple distinction. I was in the holidays before my final semester of studying a bachelor of fine arts last year when I read the collection of essays, lets just say I finished my degree with some very different ideas about where I was going and what I was going to be doing in life.
With all due respect your fourth criterion is useless. Art should inspire us? Where does that leave art that unnerves us, that saddens us, or angers us. Where does that leave the work of technical masters like Zdzisław Beksiński and Francis Bacon?
I’m not denying that there should be technical standards of art, but saying art should instill in a specific set of emotions is antithetical to the entire purpose of the art.
My main disagreement is that art has an obligation to be beautiful. It can be and it's great when it can inspire a sense of awe and connection to something higher, but I don't under stand why you brush off art that instills a sense of chaos or anxiety. My view is that art has an obligation to be honest (when it's trying to be something more than aesthetically pleasing). If we only every produced art with goal of glorifying beauty, i'd feel would be being collectively dishonest as a society by pretending these other aspects of our experiences don't exist. Sometimes art that reflects feelings of anxiety, depression and chaos can help people process through or understand those emotions better
This is a discussion my friends and I always have when visiting an art gallery: is it good art and why or why not? IMO it's pretty easy to identify good design; it not only has to look appealing but it also has to function well as it was intended. Identifying good art seems to be much more subjective. To me, if it looks like a 5 yo could have done it then it's not art. To others, if you have to work at trying to figure out what it is then it must be genius. Is good art subjective? I'm not sure you answered that question.
I think your critique of "if a 5yr old can do it, it'a not art" is valid. That would fall under the criterion of craftsmanship (the etymology of 'art' is close to craftmanship btw), and I think is one of the aspects that's a bit easier to qualify. Even the 5 year olds, in their classroom doodling away in art class, can recognize that a few of their peers can do things that the rest can't.
I think of it like supply and demand, a skill being more valuable if it's very rare. Some art exhibits look like something that literally anyone could do, if they were inclined to do so.
>if you have to work at trying to figure out what it is then it must be genius.
this can easily become something artists can hide behind, so you shouldnt really take it too seriously. if no one can find its meaning then it doesnt automatically mean no one is smart enough. it could just mean that the artist isnt good at conveying meaning
Instead of trying to pick what art is good and what art is not good try to engage with the art itself. Instead of trying to push them into binary categories of good and bad actually engage with the art
Hey are you still in Edmonton??
Yes. :)
I'm sure that beauty must have integrity, a purpose, and clarity. If the piece of art we are observing exhibits these points, it resonates objective truth, and the human heart is wired for objective truth, ☘☘☘ St. Thomas Aquinas is the expert. Pax Christi.
What does cos play mean
Can you think of anything more beautiful and more creative than the human. God is an amazing Artist.
I knew this was going to be good. Looking forward to the sequel. 😁
What is the painting at 6:44?
Eastern Catholics see iconography as a part of tradition. So "uniqueness" is not really a category for good iconography; rather, iconography should visually depict, not the author's interests, but the dogma of the Church.
What is the art piece around 1:53 with the angels(?)?
As an art teacher, I found this video FASCINATING! I suspect that we would all benefit from a better definition of our terms, but who has time for that in a 10 minute RUclips video? As you continue to consider your position on this, it might be worth considering WHY artists make the art that they do. It's difficult to judge the worthiness of any project when you don't know its purpose. As an observer of art, you've laid out your aesthetics here. If your goal is a unifying criteria for good art, the next step I would encourage is to consider the reasons why art - in all its varieties - is created in the first place. The artists' evaluation and the viewers' evaluation may be different. If you're interested, here's a video that I made for my students that might add to our conversation: ruclips.net/video/y4iT5S9-ch8/видео.html
I don't know if I fully agree with Holdsworth on this. Personally, I think the Mona Lisa looks boring and I would rather look at an impressionist or even a Jackson Pollock painting. But if you thought the Mona Lisa was better, there's no way I could prove you wrong, so I do think there's some subjectivity to it.
Exactly right. Jackson Pollack is one of the most misunderstood artists in the modern era.