What makes a good work of art?

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I wouldn't call a lot of modern artworks "art" at all.

Modern days art is like this: You s**t in a can and exhibit it in a museum. You call it art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit

Or you take a rock and let the local municipality pay for the exhibition of this rock somewhere in a towns square.

Whereas traditional art is about carving this rock and making a sculpture that represents something.

You have to do some kind of work to whatever object you want to call art, in order for this to actually be art at all.
Ie. if it's a rock, you need to carve it to represent something else than a rock. If you don't, it's just a rock, its not art.

Good art should be measured into how much work has been done to make it represent whatever it represent, and the detailedness of the artwork.

I'm not saying abstract art is not art, there's a lot of good abstract art as well. But at least it should represent something, convey an idea and have some level of detail and show that it has been crafted in some way or the other.

A blank canvas is NOT art!

Artist's s**t is an artwork from 1961. It's somewhat of a moot point to complain about that.

However, to engage with your complaint seriously: since artworks have become mechanically reproducible, the singular artwork has sort of lost the attributes you demand from an artwork. I mean, you can have all that. you can have incredibly detailed statues and figures of anime characters which can rival Bernini sculptures - except, they're plastic, not marble, and they're mass produced. But why bother to chisel marble? it's a pain, and plastic can be 3D-modelled on a computer and printed into the most amazing shapes.
So, the difference is not so much in the intricateness of the shape, the meaing of the thing represented - but the laboriousness and in being "the original", of which there is only one.
So, you want it to be produced by an artist, not some chinese toy company.
The artist's s**t in a can is exactly that - it's an artist's product, no one but this artist could have produced this can of s**t. What it is not is the shape of something, with intricateness and detail - but you can buy that for a fiver from a chinese toy company.
And that is the meaning of the artist's s**t in a can. It's a comment on this split between artisanal work and mass produced objects thst fulfill all the checkboxes, wothout being this magical "original" artwork.

When Andy Warhol started mass producing artworks, he went into a different direction: he reproduced mundane object, soap boxes, and displayed them as artworks. The way they were printed, in a mass production environment, made them no more special or different than the boxes he copied. And he stumped art critivs with this: he questikned this idea that a piece of art needs to be this "original" thing the artist produced and whoch only the artist could have produced.
But people liked it anyway. So - what is an artwork? - well, any object that is presented to the audience as an object of aesthetic appreciation.

in comes the rock: there have been a few rocks displayed as artworks, so I don't know which one you're referring to - but my question would be: was it a good rock? ... in east asia, beautiful rocks have been cherished for centuries.
Was it big? was it an insane effort to get into the place it now is in? - isn't it amazing and harrowing with what might our species is reshaping the surface of the planet?

but my final question to you: modern art began 150 years ago, it has a history, developments and theory. Art is what artists, who engage with this history, and art critics and collectors are interested in. After 150 years, those interests are no longer the same as in the late 19th century - but yours are.
It is not clear what makes good art, but art historian Peter Doorly suggests: if you engage with art's history, with the way people think about it and the ideas floating around, you'll be able to judge, and you will be able to at least understand why in 1961, artist's s**t in a can was art, and why it probably would go ignored today.

and if you don't like it, you can still find depictions of scantily clad women with swords on the side of some vans here and there, just like in the 19th century paintings.

What makes a good work of art?

In broader terms, I guess it's something that engages you. Makes you feel.
It can be joy, anger, disgust, or sadness; it can encourage you to revolt, start a political movement, or write a book; it can change your views on war, same sex marriage, the national state, or religion.

If you get upset over modern art being called art, I guess that means that piece of art was pretty good.

/Mats

I kinda agree with you, and when a "Famous" artist sells their art for an obscene amount and they have hardly done a thing and a toddler could have done better, one has to ask who the idiot was who paid for it and how the artist continued to be famous?


In other lines of work, if one usually works hard and brings out quality then one is thought highly but if one brings out bad work, ones reputation plummets. How come this does not happen in art?

I can see some art that brings about texture and feeling, but to merely take an unchanged obsticle and call it art as if it is ones own work is cheating. One has to do something beyond that.

I am into model railways. Pete Waterman who is well known in the music business (I am not sure how he is well known but he is as I don't follow music that much) also loves his trains! Now someone approached him thrilled to show him their model but the model was a straight out of the box ready made model. Pete rightly asked "What have you done to it?" because Pete was looking for a form of creativity and I understand where he is coming from as most people can save up and go out to their nearest model railway shop and buy a model locomotive. There is no skill involved to do that.
However when one has personally worked on the model to have done something to it, or if one has made ones own model then it is something creative and special. Even something crude that did not quite go to plan is better than just nipping out and buying something ready made. Why? Because it shows thought and creativity, and I have fallen in love with peoples creations that they have made themselves and I value them far far more then any mass produced factory made model.
This is what I call special. This is what I call art!

Passion.

Good art makes me feel sick, even when it's beautiful.

It stirs a mix of emotions which are hard to process all at once, and results in kind of a form of nausea.

It's well-explained here in SFU, but I had this awareness even beforehand:

^What you describe sounds like scenic boat ride. I've never heard of good art=nausea. I thought it would be the opposite, good art = joy, exhilaration. But what do I know.

Wait....

You have described something that I find with some forms of music and why I tended to avoid beautiful music as it makes me cry and if I cry I can't cope with the emotions so for the first 15 to 20 years of my life music was something I would shy away from... And I am wondering about my Dad because he would not want to listen to music so I came from an almost musicless background. I wont say there was no music... But it was limited music. My Dad avoided music because when he was at school he really desperately wanted to be part of the school quire but he was not allowed to because he was found to be tone deaf. I am not tone deaf. I am quite accurate in tone just like my Mum is. I am told my timing is not always right. I used to play the violin but I gave it up when at the age of around 14, where I wanted to play "My type of music" and if I continued in it I would have to follow orcestra stylw music which was just not me, and pass exams in classical music which was also not me... Also to do the violin lessons we were supposed to miss a different lesson each time so we would not fall behind... But it ended up always being the same lesson which was Geography and I loved Geography! I had to already deop History to do Geography as we were not allowed to do both..

I have tried to break out of this in a way recently and I had missed out on such a lot, but I have just recently had a major step back in this.

But yes. Also sometimes when certain things are too much one can feel a sickly feeling... But I can't think of examples.

One big misconception is, like, "I could have done that" - well, you didn't.
You sometimes/often have to take into consideration the work before, education, coming up with the idea etc. A brick on a stool with some spray paint on it could have taken years to actually make.
But it can get a bit silly when a seemingly child-made piece is supposed to be "a comment on blablah, and refers to a work by <some famous artist>..." or whatever. I'm not too fond of art that needs an arts degree to understand, but to each their own.

ETA: And even if the piece of art took "no time" to create, it can still be genious

/Mats

Last edited by mohsart on 28 Dec 2021, 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't mean nausea to the point you stick your head in the toilet and throw up, or you need to go rest. I just mean that many emotions are triggered on different levels in your conscious or subconscious mind. For me, when I have to process more than one emotion at once for any reason, I get a "flood" or "tsunami" feeling inside. It makes me catch my breath, or feel a little dizzy. I think it's part of my Alexithymia.

Sometimes positive emotions like "yearning", "longing", or utter "amazement" from art can make me feel temporarily breathless too. Van Gogh does that to me - a painting like Starry Night on the Rhone or The Poppy Field stir something really deep in my psyche, and even though joy is one of the emotions, that sense of swooning can make me feel faint.

I don't go about swooning at cereal boxes or soda cans even though they might be well designed. There's something communicated person-person (or universe-person if you will) by incredible works of music, fine art, and literature. Don't forget that not all great art is joyful. Sometimes the subject matter of art, books, or music is revolting, upsetting, or infuriating (war, mental health, violence, injustice) and we all know it can be "great art" as well.

Well, i agree about kitsch, Andy Warhol style stuff, It can be well crafted, but has no 'soul' (it's rubber soul) doesn't stir up much feelings (in me.) I wouldn't class that as "great art," In fact i hate the modern art scene and all it's pretensions. That is one of things i really do not care for. I agree, Great art is powerful and moving. But also subjective. Tragedy is often the ingredient of a great work of art. There can be a dark beauty to things. Certainly it's not all sunshine and lollipops. I guess, catharsis is a part of it too. To be considered good art in my eyes, it has to have IMPACT. Meaning it stimulates an emotional response.

I’m not a fan of modern art… especially conceptual art, but I’ll always defend it against comments like “my kid could have done better than that”

Basically, art makes you think or it evokes a response, particularly an emotional response. I’ve seen works of art in Rome and Florence which have been emotionally overwhelming… but I’ve also seen conceptual art which has made me go “wow”.

I'm not a fan of Surrealism for that reason. ^ It will often elicit a cognitive response for me (wow, that's interesting -- how did they achieve that?), but there's no emotional pull. I'd label a lot of Surrealism as "good art" or "great art" depending on the artist's technical use of elements, but if it doesn't catch my breath or make me feel emotionally disoriented, I don't consider it great for me.

A good work of art must be successful at what it's trying to do, whether we like it or not.

As the artist: if you enjoyed making the artwork.

This.