Judging Art and Poetry: Quality or Identity?

How do you know if a work of art is good? How do you know if a poem is good? We are talking about something more than just “I like it.” I can like any number of things and at the same time realize it’s not really the best of its kind. I can also judge a work of art as being great while also not particularly liking it. This means artistic judgment must go beyond beauty merely being in the eye of the beholder. There have to be some kinds of standards by which to judge works as being good or bad, better or worse.

This is a difficult thing to do. Because it’s difficult, a lot of people try to weasel their way out of making those judgments. The argument that beauty is in the eye of the beholder is one such way of trying not to judge a given work. So, too, is “poetic license.” Or “it’s all a matter of taste,” as though anyone’s taste is as good as anyone’s else’s taste. Yet, we don’t want to waste our time reading everything to find out what’s good, or looking at every art work, or listening to every piece of music. We want there to be some sort of filter, yet nobody wants to be that filter. The work is simply too hard.

Unfortunately, we seem to have found an easy way out. We don’t have to judge the quality of a work of art — we can just determine if the work is produced by the right kind of person. Those who argue that we have been reading “too many” white, Western male authors, viewing too many white, Western male painters, listening to too many white, Western male composers are really trying to take the easy way…