So many consider ‘good art’ to be creative works that please them personally, thus they regard some artistic creations as art and reject all else. On another level, some use their own criteria on what is beautiful to define art and use what does not meet such criteria to define non-art. So what is it that constitutes value in a work of art that would cause some to be mystified by it, while others would not consider it worthwhile enough to warrant a second glance?
English musician and visual artist Brian Eno suggests that the value placed on art depends on whether one considers it art or not. Therefore someone may attribute sufficient value to a work of art making it worthy enough to justify large sums, while another would not accept it even if offered as a gift.
Eno states this in his treatise on art: “Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. (Roy Ascott’s phrase.) That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andrew Serranos’s piss or Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ … [W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you — so the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art”.
It seems incumbent upon all of us to rethink our own perspectives on art and the value we place on it. Such reflection may broaden our dimensions to include an experience and a beauty that might presently be excluded from our inner world.
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