What Makes Art “Good?”
There is a sculpture at the overlook between Viking Commons and the Performing Arts Center on the Western Washington University campus entitled “For Handel” by the artist Mark di Suvero. There are lots of other sculptures on campus, but this one really stands out. I notice it whenever I pass by; it’s hard to miss being that it’s 27 feet tall, made of steel, and bright red. It also is set apart from other sculptures on campus because of its setting — an overlook of the city of Bellingham and Bellingham Bay, with mountains in the distance. The statue itself kind of looks like it might have been leftover materials from a construction site piled up and painted red, but it’s not. It’s art. It’s a sculpture that an artist was paid to build. Whenever I pass by and notice the statue, I wonder what other people think about it. Do they consider it good art? Do they even consider it art? This leads to the ultimate question, what is art and what makes it good?
I’ve never taken an art appreciation class, and I have no idea what people look for in a piece of artwork to consider whether it’s good. I guess “For Handel” was considered good enough for the people in charge of these things to have made the decision to hire and pay Mr. di Suvero to build it. I imagine that someone who was on the committee to choose an artist to build a statue in that space knew of Mr. di Suvero and happened to like his work, or at least considered him to be a well-known artist, and thought he would make a good choice. It seems like oftentimes good art is considered to be good because the art or the artist is well known rather than because of other things.
When asked to name a piece of good art, many people might respond by naming the painting “Mona Lisa.” I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t know what the “Mona Lisa” looks like. It’s very popular. But I’ve never heard anyone express what it is about that particular painting that they like or what makes it good. It started me wondering, is it popular because it’s good, or is it good because it’s popular?
I decided to Google the question “What makes art good?” and see what I could come up with. I found an article where experienced art world professionals were asked this question and here is what some of their answers were:
“Art that is unique in conception and well executed.”
“Art that is trying to tell us something, or told us something we should not have missed, or is about to tell us.”
“It has to be something that engages you, on one of a million levels, in person, and establishes a memory that remains positive.”
“I like something where the intensity of the experience of the person making it comes through. Maybe somebody is turned on by the nature of the materials, a psychological issue or some kind of narrative.”
“Good art is beautiful, regardless of its appearance, just as there is beauty in a good mathematical proof.”
“Good art is uncompromisingly honest, unselfconscious, bold, ambitious, enlightening, original, challenging, and a feast for the senses. It doesn’t necessarily have to have all of these qualities, but at the very least it has to keep you coming back for more… and never ever bore.”
To summarize these statements, good art is something that is beautiful (although beauty is in the eye of the beholder), engages you and is a feast for the senses (although every person viewing it can be affected differently), never boring (by whose standards?), unique and well executed (is there a rubric for that?), challenges us, and tells us something or is about to tell us something (huh?). It seems that “good art” is defined very differently by different people and is very subjective. What is good to one person may not be good to another. Probably the truest and best answer to the question “What makes art good?” was the one in which the art world professional said, “You know it when you see it.”
So what does this mean about how we as humans define art? So many people have different answers. I remember going to an art museum when I was a little kid and one of the pieces of art consisted of some straw and a single nail enclosed in a Plexiglas container. I remember thinking that that was something I could have come up with, and I’m no artist. I don’t know if I would consider that art to be good (or even art), but I do know one thing: good or not, it did cause me to think and feel. If we define art as anything that makes us feel or gets us to think, then that opens up a whole new world of what is considered art. To tell you the truth, when I find myself at the overlook, I almost always go out of my way to take a few seconds to look at the natural beauty there — the bay and the mountains. Even though I think the sculpture there is cool and I probably would have loved to help build it, I don’t find myself really studying and appreciating it like I do the nature surrounding it. I have noticed that I’m not alone in this, as I rarely see anyone just standing and staring at the sculpture, but I do notice others looking out over the city and bay. Does that mean that nature is art? When I read the art world professional’s response “there is beauty in a good mathematical proof,” that made me start to think about other things in my life that I might consider art, like the electronic microcontroller projects I have made or the robotics programs I have written. The feeling of satisfaction (and sometimes frustration) and the way these projects were a form of self-expression for me helps me to imagine what Mr. di Suvero might have felt about his sculpture.
I also started to think about one of the concepts of “place” that Lynn Staeheli (1) noted, which is place as context, and how that applied to the sculpture at the overlook. Place as context involves the idea that place influences how people feel, encourages human action and inspires certain behavior. For example, people are often quiet and respectful at places like church and war memorials (even in art museums). Art also can influence how people feel, encourage human action and inspire certain behavior. In fact, those attributes might contribute to a good definition of what art is.
The conclusion I have come to about art and what makes art good is this: Art can be defined as anything that makes us think and feel. Popular art is not necessarily good art; it’s just well known. The sculptures and other art we see on campus are not necessarily good art. The choices that were made about what paintings and sculptures to display on campus could not have been made based on what was considered good art, because whether or not art is good is entirely an individual thing, based on how you as an individual are affected, positively or negatively, by viewing the art. Feeling happy or sad or disgusted or disturbed or angry or joyful when viewing the art? That’s good art.
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