3 ms·
It's not a question worth asking. Good for what anyway? If you're making art for profit then it's good enough if you're selling it. Otherwise, what does it matt
by jemmyw 3y ago
It's not a question worth asking. Good for what anyway? If you're making art for profit then it's good enough if you're selling it. Otherwise, what does it matter if anyone but you and/or the folks you specifically made it for think about it?
A better question is surely "what will I do differently next time?" Good or bad, nobody will consider their last bit of art to be perfect.
I didn't really follow the answer in the article. I couldn't tell if it was smug self-consolation or if I lack some kind of meta-self-awareness that makes people write so much drivel about showing art in public.
- hnthrowaway121 3y agoEven in your comment, doing something differently next time presumably means there is some notion of “improvement” which takes us back to some idea of art being good or not. Feels like maybe it is a question worth asking after all, since it guides future decisions about what to make and how to make it.
- beisner 3y agoOne dimension of improvement could be “did the piece I finished/delivered realize my internal vision of this piece?”. In the sense that when you are executing a work you might not feel it captures what you set out to achieve, and may know/not know what was needed to rectify that. Kind of like the old Ira Glass quote on taste vs skill.
- fasterik 3y agoIt's absolutely a question worth asking. You identified two senses of the word "good": financial gain and the approval of others. But that's not what we mean when we say that a work of art is good. There is an intrinsic difference between a student film and a Kubrick film, or between a pulpy romance novel and Dostoevsky. It's hard to define, but it has something to do with mastery of the medium, unique vision, technical innovation, and insight into the human condition.