Can a piece of art be judged to be “better” than another? Some would say one’s opinion is as valid as another, but is it? Would someone who had never seen a car before have as valid opinion of how good a car it is, as someone who is a qualified mechanic? Would a 10 year old have as valid opinion on an opera as Mozart did when he was alive? Can someone who says “The Spice Girls are better than Beethoven” be taken seriously? Or is the whole purpose of art to be subjective? Is judging it objectively missing the point?
Art is judged objectively all the time. Insurance evaluations are highly objective, and have no interest in expression, emotion, technique, skill, presentation, or any other subjective criteria. They judge by market value. It might be plebeian, but it is probably the most often made and referred to evaluation of art in general. (Even performing arts are valued, by ticket price, etc.)
And the evaluation is a valid measure of art. Art must communicate, and must provide some value to the observer. The ubiquitous measuring stick for value is money. The fact that other measures also exist does not invalidate the one. However, those who have great fortunes feel their own criteria have greater worth, and that money is not the sole consideration. That is easy to say when you have tens of millions of dollars to spend on art. For most of mankind, art is what holds images of our hearts safe and secure. That has value, but often its price exceeds our means. The talent to create art is not so highly valued as the ability to please those with the most money. The wealthy of long ago chose the artists of their age. The wealthy of today do the same.
But much art exists which is never sold, or even offered to the market. That art is the art of the people. Since the days of cave painting, and the first clothes, the individual decides what art is, for himself.
Tris
So the Spice Girls tickets cost more than tickets to go see a Mozart opera. Does that mean the Spice Girls are better than Mozart? Surely, all it means is the Spice Girls are more popular than Mozart. Popularity can be argued to be the lowest common denominator, as the lower level it operates on means it communicates successfully with more people. Therefore, the monetary value of something doesn’t really hold much weight in deciding the artistic merit of a piece of work.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Biffer. I’d say that art’s beauty is subjective, though an artwork’s significance can be somewhat measured objectively by it’s impact on society.
For instance, Claude Monet’s works are considered to exemplify the impressionist movement and it’s cultural groundswell, whether or not you like Monet. (Perhaps in fifty years we’ll look back at the Backstreet Boys as cultural icons, but I have my doubts.)
Though I’d never presume to tell someone else what to appreciate or not to appreciate, I think it is interesting to note that quality of endurance. J.S. Bach’s works are still considered masterpieces (by most folks) by our modern standards more than 200 years after they were written. Like it or not, it’s still around.
I’m also interested to see what people think about the self-fulfilling-prophecy slant on the importance of art.
Thank you, and Goodnight.
While time can be argued as possibly the best way to judge art objectively, there are obvious links between that and arguing the importance of it by it’s popularity (Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls obviously would do well by this comparison, and could be seen as “better” than Radiohead, due to the fact they’ve sold more albums.) Cliff Richard has sold more records than Bach (and Cliff will probably not only be remembered in 200 years, but will probably still be releasing records, God help us).
No.
All measures of the “importance” of art are based upon the subjective value placed upon it by individuals. There is not even a universally accepted objective definition of art.
What I’m asking is whether a piece of work can be judged to be “artistically” better. eg can “There once was a young man from Leeds…” etc be said to be as “good” as Shakespeare’s Limericks? Can a Mills and Boon book be compared to Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”? I guess that they can only be judged on certain pre-defined criteria ,i.e. on structure, or technical ability, etc. As different people (even people of the same level of experience) look for different things out of art, this is why they judge differently. Is one person’s judgement criteria more valid than another? Maybe not at first sight, but if someone says “A is a better painting than B because it’s on nicer paper” and someone else takes the technique, overall effect, etc into account, and has studied the artform intensely, you would have to give more credence to their opinion.
An interesting article about this is David Hume’s Of The Standard Of Taste
Shakespeare wrote limericks?
Sure.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art a warm and lovely lay
If thou wouldst show me
The way though wouldst blow me
I surely would say “hurray!”
That aside, though there is a subjective element to “art,” I’d say that there is also an unquantifiable objective element. Certainly nobody in his or her right mind would compare Robert Waller to Hemingway, the Backstreet Boys to the Vienna Boys’ Choir, or the guy who painted “Dogs Playing Poker (A Friend in Need)” to Picasso. There are some minimum standards; beyond those, it becomes debatable and herein is where I earn my daily bread 
Only if artistically better is defined as more closely matching a particular set of criteria. Now, once those criteria are determined, they can be applied objectivey (to the extent that they allow for objective measurement, that is). But, the selection of those criteria which represent “artistically better” is always subjective.
Therefore, the answer to your OP remains:
No.
Of course art can be judged objectively. I’m not saying you can assign every piece of art a score and thats that, but there are differences between “good art” and “bad art”
I know this because I edited my high school literary magazine. We got hundreds and hundreds of BAD, TERRIBLE, and HORRIBLE poems.
Bad art is trite. One can only read a poem about how sad you were when your girfriend left you (probably for writeing bad poetry) so many times before one says "Never! Unless you can show me something new, dont write about something that has been written about a million times before. Good art is complex in meaning. Hence a John Grisham novel is not as artisticly valid as James Joyce. Every singe word in a James Joyce work has many meanings, and those meanings interact. John Grisham is plot-only, which makes for good reading but bad art. Good art shows an understanding of its medium. A painter should know how to handle paint. A writer should know how to harnass the sounds of words. Finally, great art treads new ground. if you painted a nice impressionist painig today, it just wouldnt be the same as a Monet, because you are not finding a new form of aritistic expression.
I agree with seven.
A lot of it has an indefinable quality and power which is influenced by the backgroung and experiences of the audience, but some of it justs sucks.
The vast majority of it just sucks and nobody will remember it in 10 years, let alone 100 or 1000.
Defining and evaluating art can be the trickiest thing in the world, because, yes, there are objective criteria, but they exist in a particular context - no work of art exists in a vacuum. A particular work of art has parameters that define the boundaries within which the artist works. And much of it has to do with the artist’s intent. For example, a Mozart sonata follows certain rules that are based within a broader historical context. If Mozart had broken one of the rules through sloppiness or incompetence, it would be called a mistake, and therefore, bad art. But Mozart knew how to stretch the rules, deliberately, thereby growing as an artist and furthering the evolution of musical expression.
Imagine, say, if Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy” had both eyes on the same side of his face. It would obviously be “wrong,” but it’s perfectly acceptible in a work by Picasso.
When I was a kid, I remember pondering the fact that Mozart’s music is still extremely popular, 200 years after his death. I wondered why today’s composers don’t simply write music in the style of Mozart, since it would be an instant success. What I didn’t understand then (among other things), was that such a composer would be working with 200-year-old parameters, out of context, which have been expanded immensely since Mozart’s day. I think we’d be justified in calling that music “bad.”
Really “good” art challenges the status quo, but still works within an historical context.
All forms of art (fine, or performing) are always judged by a panel of “experts”, and not by individuals (like a math test).
Part of what makes art important is the role it plays and the contributions it makes towards elevating the quality of culture. Popularity (and quantity) does not necessarily translate into quality.
But art, in it’s purist sense, is a subjective thing. It is through deeper understanding of the meaning and drive behind the artist and what s/he was trying to accomplish that the art should be judged (IMHO).
I believe it was Picasso, who painted in a great many different styles but known primarily for his contributions to cubism, who said, “All vigorous art is irritating. When it ceases to be irritating and becomes pleasing, it is no longer useful.” Or was that Van Gogh?
Absolutely, there exist techniques of art criticism and appreciation that can be spelled out and applied in an
objective manner.On the subject of visual arts I wholeheartedly recommend the book “Art, Experience and
Criticism” by William T. Squires, it is a lucid and succinct exploration of works of art as manifestations of
human belief, thought, and experience it provides a framework for informed judgment on the issues of
meaning and expression in contemporary society.
Everybody judges art every time they run into it.
We all know what’s real and what’s lame and what’s tame and what’s sham and what’s going to inspire people forever.
We just all have different answers.
What troubles me is the people who convert art into investments or ventures. I have no respect for someone who buys a painting and puts it into storage.
:o :o :o, I meant sonnets, but I guess you knew that.
LOL 
Great answers people. My own conclusion is that you can compare works once a set of criteria has been decided. The subjective bit is defining the set of criteria. Opinions from people who are more knowledgable in certain areas of art should carry more weight than those from people who know less about the area, but only insofar as judging it’s weight in that particular area, not in it’s importance overall. That is subjective. Someone could be a true expert in building pyramids with marbles, know far more than me, and I wouldn’t take their opinion that the best pyramid-builder was a better artist than Van Gogh. However, I would take his word for it that pyramid-builder A is better than pyramid-builder B.
Judging “Art” on a linear scale of “Good” to “Bad” makes about as much sense to me as rating “Intelligence” on an “IQ” scale. That is to say, not much sense. Art is judged by a wide range of criteria, along different axes. And it’s undeniably judged differently by different groups. And the judgement changes with time (Impressionism 100 years ago vs. today, for example).
There ARE a few cases that are pretty widely agreed on (My daughter’s fingerpaintings hang in my office. I love them, of course, but someone not related might not see the attraction). For a discussion of the whole issue, look up Martin Gardner’s book “The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener”. Read Tom Wolfe’s “The Painted Word”, too.