I’ve often wondered if there is a way to judge ancient art as being “well” or “poorly” executed, the same way we make value judgments about recent art. Sometimes the things I’ve seen in museums strike me as clumsy, yet some historians interpret the clumsiness as a “style”. How do they tell the difference? How do we know an artifact was created by a “master” and isn’t some apprentice’s hack job? Has anyone ever described an example of “bad” ancient art?
Yep! Sorry I cant give you any site or names but FWIW: I was taking an art history class at Santa Monica City College some years back and our professor stressed that just because it was old didn’t mean it was good. He then showed us several slides of busts and other works. First would be something beautiful, lets say, from ancient Greece, well known, fine attention to detail, smooth lines, eyes and nose proportionate to the rest of the head, head proportionate to the body etc. then he showed us slides of works from the same period that were, well…BAD. Many looked as if I had done them, or perhaps they were the work of students. The Prof. Pointed out the differences in quality, form and so on. Then went on to show us how to spot fakes, and why it was believed these were not fakes, just bad. As he said all through the class “It was ugly then and its ugly now!” 
What kind of works are you referring to? Drawings? Paintings? Ceramic pottery? Sculptures? Carvings? Metalwork? Stonework? Also, do you mean “ancient,” as in prehistoric? Or say… historically before the 1500s?
When it comes to prehistoric artifacts, I wouldn’t exactly call the craftsmanship works of amazing art, but priceless and very precious. The mere fact that their work survived so long, and that they can create pottery, or metalwork, or even an arrowhead is an amazing thing in itself. I think the round “mother” figure found in northern/western Europe to be kind of ugly. It looks like a 3rd grader could make it. But the fact is that it is usually carved out of a specific stone, using a special tool that had to be fashioned by hand and harvested from somewhere, suggests that it was not made by a lacky, but by someone who knows what he/she is doing. Same thing goes, when a kiln is fashioned in ancient times and ceramics is fired, usually by a specialist in a sedentary setting. I’ve seen ancient kilns that were far away from the rest of the villagers’ dwellings because of the heat it emanated. If an entire village produced ceramics (or any other work), there are sure to have apprentices making bad wares, so there are sure to have masters making something to compare them to. But if the people are not sedentary and, let’s say, they make artwork on leather or glass beads, and it survived to modern times, it pretty much means that someone took care of it, or stored it carefully, and its value can be considered using these assumptions.
When it comes to historical artwork, I am no expert, but I think there are enough surviving to do comparisons.
I wasn’t really talking about “prehistoric” things… except for maybe cave paintings. (I wonder if there are any poorly executed cave paintings). I’m mostly talking about historic but pre-renaissance.
I also wonder sometimes if the medieval art I see looks “wrong” perspective wise because of cultural factors: trades were passed on from father to son, you did what your father did, and you’re an artist whether you were any good at it or not. This is sheer conjecture on my part of course, and not what I learned in school. Art historians say that European medieval art looks out of whack to us because people saw the world differently than the Romans did (Romans did works with realism and perspective). So that’s why you have so many ugly Madonna and child paintings and the child is way out of proportion (what’s with the long bulging torso anyway?). I don’t know how well established this rationale is. However, I’ve seen some medieval art that is absolutely wonderful - there’s an anglo-saxon manuscript with lively little illuminated pictures of people doing the work of each month. They are almost like little cartoons and everything is proportionately rendered. I wish I remembered the name of it.
You have to view it based on the time period. Just like watching an old movie. Take cave paintings, its hard for us to imagine just how much of a conceptual leap it was for caveman to transcribe their imagininigs onto a wall to remember them. Its hard to imagine, but fun to ponder what it must have been like (I mean theyre just as human as us).
It’s a matter of critical filters. Time and space filter out bad art.
When putting together a book on pre-renaissance art, you’re going to include the best art of that period. You might have one or two examples of poor art (and probably not), but most of it will be the stuff that’s really well done. A reader might get the impression that all art of the period was of high quality.
It works the same with most art. Foreign films are considered to be better than American films, but that’s because the bad foreign films never make it to America. Similarly, American films are more highly rated elsewhere. I love the movies of the 1930s – and there are some great ones – but I realize that no one is showing the stinkeroos.
It’s not an Anglo-Saxon work, but your description sounds like Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Perspective in Medieval paintings looks “wrong” because the technique of optical perspective was not invented until the Renaissance (by Brunelleschi, IIRC). Also, at the time, visual realism was not as important as the symbolic meaning of the images. God was always the largest figure because He was the most important. Saints were next in scale, and regular humans were the smallest. Everything was designed according to this kind of heirarchy, not whether it looked like real life.
People may also praise the work because it shows an “advance” in the artform. You may not like what it looks like, but if it represents some change in the way that type of art was being done, you can appreciate it for that aspect.
You should take a walk around one of the great national museums.
In the British museum very many artifacts are simply the best of this or any age.
The Sutton Hoo treasure is incredible in detail and skill, but add in the lack of precision machinery, power tools etc and it is breathtaking.
The collection of Egyptian sculptures is equally imressive, they have a physical presence that is awesome, in the old sense of the word.
There are objects from China such as furniture which although they might be 700 years old or so, are so well executed they look very contemporary, and virtually new.
That lot might be part of your answer, that good art transcends its own era, and has its own inherant authority without any referance to anything other than itself.
The junk seems to dissappear as time passes.
There is also some selection bias. “Good” artwork has preferentially survived the centuries. A lot of “bad” artwork was thrown in the trash, or melted down for the metals, or tossed into the fireplace during a particularly cold winter night.
In paleontology and archeology there is also the concept of taphonomy. Meaning that archeological sites are formed in particular ways, and that what you dig up isn’t a random sample of the goods people used at the time. Grave goods or buried treasure might be exceptional quality, but other things you find are literally trash.
Following up RealityChuck’s ideas: bad art (by the standards of the time) doesn’t get taken care of as well as good art over the centuries. So a lot of it disappears. But if you look at a situation like Pompei, where all art was more or less preserved regardless of quality, you do find a lot of crude stuff. A whole lot of cartoonish graffiti and such. Even many of the mosaics look pretty cheesy to me.
Note also that most ancient art was commissioned by wealthy patrons. King Tut didn’t want crap in his tomb.
Also, lesser pieces are studied as much for their historical importance as for their aesthetic value. Art historians look at as much of the output of a certain period as they can, in order to put the whole thing in a context. It helps to know what else was going on in the art world that would have influenced Boticelli, for instance, in order to understand Boticelli himself.
This was also the fate of fine art, like The Colossus of Rhodes.
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I can tell you that perspective drawing was not always known, can’t find a source, I’ll look it up later.
. . . Same reason we consider Bob Hope a “Great Comedian,” I guess . . .
As mentioned, part of the value for really old art is its value as a sample of the evolving styles and techniques. Get old/rare enough and the archaeological value or its value as a clue on how these people’s minds worked trumps the aesthetic value. The non-perspective in medieval art IS a combination of style, technique, and a reflection of the values of the society (God = important). That perspective exists is obvious to the naked eye but how to reproduce perspective on a canvas realistically is not obvious.
Others have mentioned sampling bias – the “best of” had a better chance of being curated (at the palace or cathedral) or deliberately secured from the elements (in a royal tomb). Ocassionally we DO find junk, and someone who knows the period and the trends will be able to know it’s poor in quality and execution relative to the standards of the time and style. But even that is still useful for reference. And then sometimes you wonder what to make of something – say you unearth a hoard of anatomically explicit figurines in, erm, original and creative couplings. What to say? That it “must” relate to some sort of fertility ritual? That this was a 100% hangup-free society of free love? That we’ve happened upon an ancient porno shop?