Can a work of art be objectively bad? If so, what are the criteria used to evaluate it?

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7 Answers

  1. “Bad” is a poor assessment of art.

    It is better to evaluate – “in demand” – “low demand” – “unclaimed”.

    You can also grade works in detail according to the Pushkin principle:

    • “good feelings awaken” or “devilry”, constructive or destructive, “morality” or”debauchery”. “Entertains” or”makes you think”.

    If the specified masterpass does not evoke any emotions in anyone other than the author, then this is a low – demand masterpass. If it does not arouse interest even after the author's death, then it is already an unclaimed masterpiece.

  2. It is very difficult to answer in this formulation.

    The fact is that “a work of art” is not only a common phrase that everyone has heard and used, including as irony or sarcasm.

    These are also words, each of which has a meaning. A work is an object that has certain physical parameters. Art-characterizes the sphere or person who created this work.

    So if, for example, I draw a picture and call it a work of art, it will be frankly bad, there will be no art in it, just because I called it that, because I am not a skilled artist. And no one, not even my mother, would agree that this is art .

    Therefore, if we are still looking at a work of art, it can't be bad. It may not be clear, relevant, or appropriate. But not bad.

  3. Of course it can. And there are plenty of them. It is evaluated simply: the newspaper Vecherny Leningradfor November 29, 1963 is taken and there it is clearly proved that Brodsky (yesterday he WOULD HAVE TURNED 80) is a literary drone and it is time to deal with him BEFORE awarding him the Nobel Prize.

    With Vysotsky it is even easier – the newspaper of Saratov is taken and everyone's eyes are opened there-Vysotsky's songs are sweet poison, but rust on the building of Soviet culture:

    Evaluation of His Highness Lyubimov Yu. P. brilliantly made in the article of the Literary newspaper “In defense of the Queen of Spades” the author categorically insists that Lyubimov was forbidden to stage this opera in Paris.

  4. “There is one THING, BUT your measuring device (soul) should be” – in the 8th grade I showed my neighbor a photo from the Hermitage album, a masterpiece-Flora Falcone. “Fie, that's disgusting!” – �said the neighbor. (She didn't know about the Hermitage).

    A couple of years ago on “radio FM” read “Snail on the slope”. “This is really crazy,” my retired mother said. I showed her �a book with the text of the 1966 �year and �said �I �know this nonsense almost by heart, �as read �ten times.

  5. It can, if the task doesn't meet the goal or/and the execution doesn't meet the task. It is very difficult to evaluate objectively, because the “bad” and “good” themselves are subjective in this case. You can set different requirements for art, approach it with different criteria – from here, “bad” and” good ” will be different. If we still try to distinguish a certain general (strongly spherical in a vacuum) criterion for the quality of hud.works, then I would focus on expressiveness. That is, it's like this: “the idea is your business, artist, I will (not)accept any, but please express it with your blood and nerves, and not with your left heel.” For me, such a factor would be decisive, but someone will put the topic, technical solution, amount of work, content of the message, and development of the direction first… their personal feelings, which the work supposedly owes him to amuse, and so on. First, decide on your request, and then it will become obvious “what is good and what is bad” in the field of supply.

  6. It's hard, but I'll give it a try. Everything, of course, largely depends on the style and intent of the author. Rather, the question should not be ” Can a work of art objectively be bad?”, but “What are the objective criteria for evaluating a work of art”? But I will try to answer your question exactly as it was asked, but I will talk mainly about literature, because I can not judge other types of art. So, with this caveat in mind, let's start:

    1. Vocabulary. Amateur works are often characterized by scant and poor language. For an experienced reader, it is easy to discern whether the author's meager and poor language is a stylistic device, or whether the author simply has nothing to say. For example, both Ernest Hemingway and S. King were distinguished by simplified language, but they used it as a means of expression. The amateur's vocabulary is reduced.

    2. Избыточ Redundancy of stylistic techniques (tropes). A huge amount of unnecessary and redundant tropes( visual means), literally every sentence is a metaphor, hyperbole, personification, comparison, and so on. In a dense stream of side meanings, as in a viscous swamp, the thread of the narrative is lost. Of course, a writer or poet can use this deliberately, but then very often it will indicate unprofessionalism and incompetence.

    3. Inconsistencies (mismatch of parts of the text to each other or to the general context). For example, in a literary work of art on a historical theme, which positions itself as generally “authentic”, the heroes of the ancient world live the aspirations and experiences of a twentieth-century European. If we are not looking at a humorous essay, then references to “and I just see it like that” do not pass – we are looking at a discrepancy between the artistic text and the context. It should be noted that in the framework of science fiction or fantasy, this restriction is partially removed (since then the context itself is also subject to the author), but even there it does not disappear. This is-we have considered external incoherence (text-general context), and sometimes internal (one part of the text – another part of the text), when the actions and motivations of the same characters contradict each other.�

    4. Logical validity. It seems that you will say that this is the same as internal coherence. No. Internal coherence is about the correspondence of different parts of the text to each other, logical validity is about explaining the actions of characters. And here it is important for the author to adhere to the golden mean. Excessive validity delays the narrative, makes it boring (the exception is epic, gigantic works, where this validity in the form of philosophical or theological reflections reveals the plot, for example in “War and Peace”, but even there it somewhat reduces the quality of the text), insufficient validity makes the text meaningless and absurd.

    5. Cliche and self-repeatability of images and characters. Using standard, repeatedly used literary cliches without revealing or justifying them, or repeating your own literary techniques. Cliche as a negative aspect of a literary text is closely related to the lack of validity. One of these cliches, for example, is “the princess is in danger – but everything ended well at the last moment-saved”, which is actively used in television series (“soap operas”). Self-repetition is acceptable if it is based on the archetypal nature of the image. For example, F. M. In Dostoevsky's “great Pentateuch” of 5 novels, there are the same types of characters that are revealed in a new way in each subsequent work. In general, self-repetition does not significantly reduce the quality of the text, unless it occurs within the same work, but cliched content also significantly reduces it.

    6. Secondary nature of the general context. Well, it's clear to everyone. Any secondary work written based on someone else's motives and borrowing the plot, characters, etc. from him, firstly, borders on plagiarism, and secondly, the requirements for such a text immediately increase. In the history of literature, you can count on your fingers people who wrote frankly secondary works and at the same time managed to avoid the disadvantages of this technique. Actually, now we are seeing the flourishing of ” secondary literature “(fan fiction), not all of its works are necessarily bad.

    7. Secondary style. The secondary nature of the style already borders on plagiarism and is much worse than the secondary nature of the context. An experienced writer of an average hand will not find it difficult to copy or parody the style of, say, F. M. Dostoevsky. The only question is what will happen in the end, why this style was copied. If this is not a deliberate device, justified in the course of the narrative, but simply an attempt to “gain fame”, then most likely we are looking at a bad work.

    8. Blatant plagiarism. In this case, everything is secondary-style, characters, general context, and so on. Changes between the “original” and “secondary work” are minimal. In our country, this technique was mainly used by writers of artistic parodies of various kinds (for example, on the same Harry Potter, here you will find “Tanya Grotter” and “Porrie Gutter” and so on.) Outright plagiarism, however, usually doesn't add weight to even a parody.

    9. Super-strong hero (Mary Sue, Marty Sue). If we are not looking at a religious-mystical narrative or a heroic epic, a super-strong hero who gets out of all the troubles of the plot due to his innate strength and whom absolutely no one can resist – this is most likely a sign of mediocrity or a novice author. If we take such art forms related to literature as cinema, then even in “superhero” cinema, a strong hero with superpowers is opposed by equally strong antagonists. Why, even in an epic type of anime (like Naruto: Hurricane Chronicles), we see that the stronger the hero is, the stronger his opponents are in ascending order. There are, however, exceptions, for example, a super-strong hero can be placed in a dying (morally or physically) world (in which any actions of the hero pose a threat and suffering to the living).

    10. “God from the machine “(Deux ex machina). The use of this technique is similar to the “super-strong hero”, only here the hero is ordinary, but he is constantly saved by some externally or internally unmotivated accident, and not just one, but a whole series of such accidents. In principle, in literature – this is a sign of “lowering the bar”, because it indicates some mental laziness of the author, although here the point is precisely in the differences between life and literature, because in life there are a lot of unmotivated accidents, there were examples that no author dreamed of with this technique. But in a literary text, this is not allowed to be used often, because this makes the author an absolute lifesaver for your favorite character.�

    11. Meta-literary techniques (“Author's double” and “Author's voice”). In principle, in poetry, this technique (s) is acceptable and very often used, but in prose they usually destroy the “magic of including the reader in the text”, prevent the reader from concentrating (with rare exceptions). The point of meta-literary techniques is to break down the barrier between the author of the text and the text itself. This is achieved in two ways. I called the first one “The author's Double”. The essence of the technique is that at some stage the author appears as a minor or main character within the framework of the work itself (like Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy, but remember, this is poetry, this is permissible there). If this appearance is not sufficiently justified, it appears suddenly – then it turns out that the author runs the risk of using “God-of-the-Machine” or “Super-strong Hero”, and the plot becomes much more predictable (after all, the author cannot die as a character in the work, for example). This technique should not be confused with “fake authorship”, when the narration is conducted in the first person, but the hero is entirely fictional (then we are talking about the fact that the real author pretends to be a secondary one – for example, D. Defoe, who simply pretended to be the designer of the text on behalf of Robinson Crusoe). Another dangerous technique is the “author's voice”, that is, the inclusion of comments “on behalf of the author” in the text of the work. To be honest, this usually happens where the artistic text itself is secondary for the writer, but the idea of the work itself is important – that's why N. G. Chernyshevsky in ” What to Do?”I abused this technique (which, by the way, reduced its artistic value, but this is not why it was included in the classics – this is the first Russian developed narodnik-revolutionary utopia).

    12. Style eclecticism. The author of such a work does not understand at all what he is writing – either a humorous work, or fantasy, or cyberpunk, or realism-all together and at once and without transitions. When the reader tries to follow the narrative, it is as if he is observing a geographical map of the area, parts of which suddenly break off by themselves, mix, form a new map, break again, etc.

    13. Unmotivated obscene or criminal language. The characters constantly swear and speak obscenities, the mat is used not as a means of revealing the character and not as a means of expressing expression (as for example – “That's b…b! – Anatoly swore with feeling, dropping the steel block on his foot”), but just like that, in passing. Or criminal vocabulary is used in a literary text that does not include characters from the criminal world,�

    14. Pornographic or rastabuirovanie (immorality) the text. Pornographic content – that is, a detailed and detailed description of sexual intercourse together with a description of the genitals – is almost never allowed in high – quality prose, because pornographic text can be replaced with eroticism (that is, we have the same stylistic redundancy-see above). Pornographic content can also manifest itself in a detailed and detailed description of the essence of attraction of a person suffering from sexual perversion (for example, pedophilia, etc.). Such texts are of interest more to the researcher of sexual culture than to the reader, although they sometimes become scandalously popular or even enter the school curriculum (I'm talking about “Lolita”). Immorality can be understood in the sense of rastabuirovaniya (removal of physiological and psychological taboos set in the process of socialization within any culture) In other words, we have deliberate immorality, introduced as a series of techniques, such as detailed depiction of coprophagy, non-sexual sadism and masochism, cannibalism, necrophilia, necromantic transformations (turning a person into a corpse or a corpse into a person, a dead double of a person), blood sacrifices, gang rape, and so on. If all this (or at least half of it) is piled up within the framework of one work – we are looking at either waste paper or a cynical experiment on the reader's psyche – will the author be able to make the reader feel disgust, excitement, and so on? What is immoral here is not even a description, but what effect it will have on the psyche of a healthy person (and the most normal effect is anger and rage, increased blood pressure, tachycardia, etc.). By the way, if all this is also described in a children's work, then for me personally it is a deeply immoral, crippling act.�

    15. Misanthropy and dehumanization (breaking the last taboo). Misanthropy is a clearly expressed and masterfully described hatred of the human race in a work. For example, through the description of a global catastrophe with a painful loss of life, and the author at the same time rejoices in this death. Or aliens land on Earth and commit genocide, and again the author actively sympathizes with the invaders when they kill women, torture men, destroy children, rejoices and gloats. That is, the speech is in the author's relation, the plots with genocide or catastrophe are not bad in themselves, it is bad if it is presented as “getting rid of parasites and clearing the Earth” (and such things are written, I am sure of this). Misanthropy actively promotes dehumanization – the transformation of a person into a thing, an object for manipulation.

    16. Manipulation of images and meanings, grotesqueness and hyperbolization. Most often, when we see such a thing in the text, we are not looking at literature, but a propaganda work disguised as it, which has a political or historical-revealing orientation. Unfortunately, it is possible to determine this only by understanding whether the picture to which the author systematically “brings” us corresponds to reality. A propaganda work differs from a social drama in that its strong point is not in the plot, but in the accumulation of negative images in order to promote a certain idea. It has no other meaning. If most of the images are even possible and exist in themselves, then in this context they are absurd. I'll give you an example. The author of the work writes about the late Middle Ages and he has bloody counts and barons who kill serfs in passing, the fires of the inquisition in every city, dirt and sewage that pour literally on the heads of citizens, depraved and greedy bishops, dark and ignorant peasants, and so on. The author's goal is clear, to convince us that the Middle Ages were hell. By themselves (separately), each of the images could be reliable, but in such quantity and quality they are absurd. In the same way, imagine an author who describes life in the early USSR as a complete hypocrisy of party officials, oppression and downtrodden peasants, camps, famine, mass repression, war, detachments shooting in the back, penal units going through minefields, and so on. Before us is the same grotesque- “only ghouls around”, “bloody scoop”. A good work, even if it is opposed to the USSR, does not suffer from hyperbolization, but takes and describes a specific situation. The situation of a political prisoner in the camp (“Monastery” by Z. Prilepin), for example.

    19. “Cryptographic nature” of the text or lack of communication between the author and the reader. This is the fault of some “elite” works. Cryptography itself (encrypted) the text does not interfere only if, in parallel with the encrypted one, there is a good external, ordinary plot and if the reader, with some effort, can “open the cipher”. Here I can not immediately give positive examples of such works from literature, I will give from the cinema. We have examples of such works of cinema art, in which there is a “second plan” and at the same time it is quite strongly encrypted (but nevertheless it can be read). Take K's films. Shakhnazarov's “City of Zero” and “White Tiger”. If you look closely, then in the first film there is a brief and concise description of perestroika as a program for destroying the country, in the second-a description of Nazism and its battle with humanity. But this is the second plan. In the foreground – the usual plot, and in the first and second cases these are absurd plots (which hints at the presence of a second plan). However, there may also be such “encryptions” that are impossible to decrypt in principle and therefore they are inaccessible to many people.

  7. First, people do not have objective knowledge, and therefore, neither independently, nor with the help of additional information. They are not able to gain objective knowledge about anything in this world, not even about works of art.�

    Secondly, this category may not even include works of art at all, but they are there only because someone (on whom it depends) suddenly so решил decided.�

    Third, depending on the time, as has been correctly pointed out here, today � is a work of art, and tomorrow it is no longer. Or vice versa. Such deviations in time frames also do not speak in favor of objectivity.

    And finally, bad art and good are also subjective tastes, just like the concept of good/bad itself – without clear boundaries and criteria. For example, if religious postulates prohibit portraying a person or animals, then whether you are a three-time genius in the visual arts, your flowers or still lifes will be recognized as beautiful, and, conditionally, “portrait of an unknown rider on a horse” will be censured by everyone, undoubtedly recognized as bad, and probably banned from demonstration.And here it is not quite clear how to evaluate objectivity, who are the judges? The fact that society is not ready for this makes the portrait a bad work of art. This is an objective reality related to the public and its beliefs, and is not always related to the artist's ability to create. Centuries later, or in another region, the same portrait may have the highest rating and best reviews.

    Therefore, we are as far from objectivity as we are from the Sun! And everyone looks from their own bell tower, with their own units of measurement, and all this spontaneously and dynamically changes over time. And the term art itself can be applied to anything, or nothing at all. Because it is subjective, and depends on the traditions, views, customs, faith, previous experience ,etc. of the respectable public.

    The only thing that can be measured is the technical performance. Just like figure skating. Separate rating for technique, separate – � for artistry.

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