What Makes Good Art?

I've done a few videos in the past criticizing certain persuasions within art and music especially as it relates to sacred art and sacred music but I have to admit it's not hard to debunk something it doesn't take a particularly courageous or brilliant person to focus on criticizing and debunking it is however quite difficult to assert something that is true in its place something that could then be subject to that same potential for debunking and so to be fair to those ideas and movements and persuasions that I've criticized in the past I thought I should stick my neck out there and take the harder road and propose a criteria that produces good art and I want to do this not only to be fair to some of those other persuasions and ideas that I've criticized in the past but also because we this is a conversation that we as a society desperately desperately need to be having because art and design are extremely influential on our psychology and our sense of well-being for example if every library in the world drew inspiration from the ideas in art and design that produced public places like this and I expect that occasions first Eddy would be a lot more attractive for most of us than they currently are instead we have to slouch our way into buildings that look like this which they just erected in the city that I live in nothing says love of learning like a garden shed cause playing as an imperial star destroyer art and design have the power to reassure us in a sense of hope and peace and comfort and beauty or they can produce in us a sense of chaos anxiety nihilism and frankly just ugliness so it matters a lot that we have some kind of well understood criteria that we can measure our art against and say this is good art and this isn't but unfortunately the current state of affairs is one that insists that that no such criteria exists slogans like beauty is in the eye of beholder and it's art because I say it's art dominate contemporary conversations about art and no surprise this state of affairs heavily favors the interests of the art establishment and art dealers like imagine if there was a product out there like say an electronics product like a TV a stereo or a computer or maybe something more significant like a car or a house for which there was no criteria to evaluate its value or its merit imagine if the vendors of such products convinced the general public that their wares were good simply because they said they were good and then if you object they would denounce you as old-fashioned closed-minded and unsophisticated and so you just have to bow to those societal pressures and buy their products without knowing whether it will improve your quality of life or potentially have the opposite effect we would look at that and say no that's manipulative coercive and unjust but when it comes to art and design that is the approach that is imposed on us and which is reinforced by our education system no less and so now the art dealers if they want to collect on their big payday all they have to say is wow they've done it again it's so brave so courageous so forward-thinking we'll start the bidding at $100,000 please and then hapless City Council's and other politicians and administrators who want to reassure themselves of their cosmopolitan credentials will happily spend that kind of money on art that is bewildering and oppressive to the public and again this happens because there is no criteria that we all recognize that we can all then appeal to to judge the merit of a particular piece of art by other than our emotional response to it which is of course no more valid than anybody else's emotional response to it and as just a side note anecdote in preparation for this video I asked my facebook followers to share with me what they thought were examples of some of the best art ever produced and notice I didn't say what's your favorite piece of art I said what do you think is the best art ever produced and predictably I was on the receiving end of a range of examples and styles but of the styles that are begotten of movements that would say the art and design is relative and it can't be quantified in terms of its merit or its quality not a single person made that statement instead they enthusiastically submitted their favorite modernist or post modernist pieces because at bottom we all admit that that's a valid question well if it's a valid question then there must be a valid response an invalid answer to that question and this is my best attempt at it which I will admit from the outset is probably incomplete and quite crude so I think it would benefit from ongoing feedback and conversation which I look forward to in the comments number one it should be revelatory it should communicate a vision that the artist has captured or perceived that the rest of us could benefit from so this could be perhaps a rare experience of beauty it could be a form that is rarely seen or maybe a movement that inspires us to our highest calling number two it should be skilfully produced if there were two artists with similar instincts and raw talent but one of them makes great sacrifices and takes great pains to hone their skill and their craft and that discipline whereas the other does not then the one who makes the great sacrifices should be recognized as having more merit in the art that they produce number three I think it should be unique thank you someone who has mastered the paintbrush and can skillfully reproduce some of the greatest masterpiece that are out there well I don't think it's really art unless it's unique unless they've produced something original it's not enough just to be a photocopier reproducing stuff that's already been done unless you can access and penetrate insights and visions that have not yet been seen then I don't think it's really good art number four it should inspire us it should produce feelings of humility in its viewers as well as aspirations to do and be better ourselves it should ignite within us an understanding that human beings including ourselves are capable of great things if we only tap into the virtues that are accessible to any of us number five it should be beautiful now by beautiful I don't mean it should be delicate or flowery by beauty I mean that it should be an attribute of being that transcends all of our other categories and I wish I could spend a lot more time on this and maybe I will do another video on this but I'm conscientious of the length of these videos so I will try to leave you just with a few breadcrumbs that you can use for further study beauty is a transcendental like I alluded to earlier there some theologians are in the habit of saying that God is beauty just like he is goodness and he is truth which means that beauty while it is hard to define because it exceeds our limitations it is far more real than our subjective preferences would allow when we encounter something that is difficult to understand because it requires us to look up and outside of ourselves there seems to be two responses to that that I that I'm familiar with one is to humble ourselves before it and to recognize that it is something that is greater than us the other is to refuse that humility and to try to rationalize it in narrow and simplistic terms and that's what beauty is in the eye of the beholder does it's a way of saying that beauty is of our own creation and it is subject to our own whims and designs and the only supporting argument I've ever heard for this notion is that people have different preferences so obviously beauty couldn't be objective well look at what happens when someone posts one of those pretty simplistic middle school order of all operations math questions on facebook you get an array of responses that are far more diverse than you would to a work of art but yet we don't look at that and say well therefore all of those answers those diverse answers they're all equally valid it could just as well be evidenced that we need better formation and education among the people responding well I would say that the same is true for beauty and our appreciation for it st. Thomas Aquinas said that the conditions for beauty are wholeness harmony and radiance and so I would invite you to look into that a little bit more and see what he had to say about that and I don't really know if he was right but I expected he was a lot closer than the people who look at all the different kinds of preferences that are out there and therefore conclude that they must all equally be valid thank you so much for watching that I really hope that you enjoyed it and that you got something out of it and if you did and you want to consume more content like this then please consider subscribing to my channel or if you saw this on Facebook then like my page and follow along if you're on YouTube it's not enough anymore to subscribe because YouTube wants to think that it can tell you what you should watch instead of what you actually want to watch so in this case you actually have to hit that little bell to be notified as to whether or not I've uploaded something more recently so please subscribe and hit the bell at the same time that really helps me out a lot and if you could consider sharing this among your social network that helps me a lot too and if you want to support the making of these videos please consider supporting my business which is a communications and strategic marketing company who specializes especially in branding and web design and this is especially catered towards ministries and apostolates and parishes we have a parish web design system that we've built specifically for parishes and churches that is affordable but also beautifully packaged and easy to use so if you're interested in that check out my business which is holdsworth design.com and hit the contact button in the navigation and get in touch and we can figure out if there's a good fit for you there

Channel: Brian Holdsworth

Views: 32,535

Keywords: Brian Holdsworth, Holdsworth Brian, Worthy Commentary, Modernism, Ugly Modern Art, Contemporary Art, Traditional Art vs Modern Art, Postmodern art, Why is Modern Art So Bad

Id: SFwKMA2-tKo

Length: 10min 23sec (623 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 04 2020