The World of Myth Magazine

Does a work of art need to be technically good to be good art? While writing these articles I have quite often found myself thinking about this, and most often when talking about a work of art that is not by classical or traditional definitions beautiful. It is an interesting question.

There is an idea that art is just about beauty. If art is too strange or too modern, then it is just meaningless pretension. Such thinking suggests that the landscapes of the Neo-Classical or Romantic era are worth more than modern art, or contemporary art like Tracy Emin or Damien Hurst because it has an aesthetic quality that does not need to be interpreted or examined, only appreciated. You often do not hear an opposite to this, very few people will say that a work like A Dead Shark Isn't Art by Hurst, which is a dead shark in a display case, is worth more than Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David, which is a beautiful and technically outstanding painting in a grand, Romantic (capital R) style. It can be hard to deny at times that paintings like Napoleon might stir a lot more grandiose emotions than most contemporary pieces, but is beauty alone the objective of art? What is the point of art? And what even is art?

When most people think of art that is technically good or skillful, they tend to think of something that has been able to reproduce something in the real world as closely as possible, such as a sculpture. Skill, however, is in art very difficult to define exactly – as it is in any creative endeavor. There are different kinds of skills and talents in creative works- a painter like Van Gogh is able to provoke a response from the viewer even if his paintings are not exactly realistic. A painter like Salvador Dalí is able to build landscapes that while attractive resist logical sense. A painter like da Vinci was skilled at capturing the emotion of his subjects. These three different skills are not comparable, and there is a whole world more to art than just these three qualities.

Taking everything considered as art then surely 'art' is simply 'an individual's self expression'. Obviously, this is so uselessly broad it could apply to anything from an intricate sculpture of some classical hero to a chair, or even to a smile. Sometimes art does not need or can be interpreted – it is only the expression of emotion, and sometimes it is not pleasant emotions, like a lot of Outsider Art. Outsider Art is art made outside of the art establishment and is often made by people who are institutionalized and are using creativity to help deal with traumas or mental illnesses. Art can also simply be an image of beauty, or an attempt to create something in line with an aesthetic ideal. A lot of Soviet Realism depicts an idyllic, pastoral life of abundant fields and generous meals for smiling workers, and there is not necessarily any interpretation needed to understand the artist's intentions. A lot of the time Soviet Realism was just propaganda.

It would be remiss to not say this is oversimplifying, but the point is that a work of art does not need to be a puzzle piece, with an interpretation needed, to appreciate it. Despite the surface nature of many Soviet Realist works, the ability in a lot of them to depict their subjects realistically and naturally is impressive, like in the example above. This is in contrast to Outsider Art, which can be much more crude:

Our example of Soviet Realism required more technical skill to produce than our example of Outsider Art, but does this make one more important or valuable than the other?

If we accept that art is an individual's expression, how can we really give any work of art an objective value? In a sense, we cannot – the capitalist truism that everything is worth what the buyer will pay is very much true. Personally one of my favorite pieces is Cafe Terrace at Night by Vincent Van Gogh, which according to the US Supreme Court is worth $200 million. But there is no correlation between my appreciation of it and its market value, and there will be people who do not like the painting at all. Since the painting is so famous, is the value just based on a consensus?

What if something is a work is crudely made but is about some important topic, or has a rich symbolism to it, and even in its own way beautiful? A lot of early Christian art, for example, was very crude.

Especially when compared to the masterworks of the renaissance, such as this in the interior of the dome in the 'il duomo' cathedral in Florence:

But they are both beautiful works. And how do we define 'beautiful'? Like in a lot of Outsider Art or like the work of H.R. Giger or Beksinski, expressions of pain can potentially be beautiful.

So again, does a work of art need to be technically good to be good art?

Honestly, no. The crudeness seen in a lot of medieval work was not because of a lack of talent, but that was very often because it was the style that was favored at that time. They did not want things to be realistic representations of a thing, like a monk or a cat, because they could see them in everyday life. They liked slightly more abstracted representations of the subjects, in the same way, cartoons are not drawn and animated to look exactly like reality. The Simpsons is not worth less than Friends, they are just different styles of presenting a story and comedy. The same applies to different styles of art.

I simply do not think that the skill of the artist determines the quality or worth of art. Something like a contemporary art piece like A Dead Shark Isn't Art might not have required the compositional skill of Michelangelo's mural on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, which I personally like more, but it does not mean that one is of some greater intrinsic quality. A lot of the time the argument against contemporary art like Damien Hurst is that anyone can do something like that and call it art, but even if that was true – not everyone did do it. It was an expression of something using the tools at hand, a bit like a painter during the Renaissance. Just because something like A Dead Shark Isn't Art might not be as easily appreciated, does not mean that it cannot be appreciated. It is still art, an expression of something – whatever the artist wanted to express, technical skill might be a contributing factor in how its people appreciate it, but it is not the only factor.