Speaker A
I've done a few videos in the past criticizing certain persuasions within art and music, especially as it relates to sacred art and sacred music, but I have to admit it's not hard to debunk something. It doesn't take a particularly courageous or brilliant person to focus on criticizing and debunking. It is, however, quite difficult to assert something that is true in its place, something that could then be subject to that same potential for debunking. And so, to be fair to those ideas and movements and persuasions that I've criticized in the past, I thought I should stick my neck out there and take the harder road and propose a criteria that produces good art. I want to do this not only to be fair to some of those other persuasions and ideas that I've criticized in the past, but also because this is a conversation that we as a society desperately, desperately need to be having, because art and design are extremely influential on our psychology and our sense of well-being. For example, if every library in the world drew inspiration from the ideas in art and design that produced public places like this, I expect that occasions first Eddy would be a lot more attractive for most of us than they currently are. Instead, we have to slouch our way into buildings that look like this, which they just erected in the city that I live in. Nothing says love of learning like a garden shed. Cause playing as an Imperial Star Destroyer. Art and design have the power to reassure us in a sense of hope and peace and comfort and beauty, or they can produce in us a sense of chaos, anxiety, nihilism, and frankly just ugliness. So it matters a lot that we have some kind of well-understood criteria that we can measure our art against and say this is good art and this isn't. But unfortunately, the current state of affairs is one that insists that no such criteria exists. Slogans like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "it's art because I say it's art" dominate contemporary conversations about art. No surprise, this state of affairs heavily favors the interests of the art establishment and art dealers. Imagine if there was a product out there, like say an electronics product, like a TV, a stereo, or a computer, or maybe something more significant like a car or a house, for which there was no criteria to evaluate its value or its merit. Imagine if the vendors of such products convinced the general public that their wares were good simply because they said they were good, and then if you object, they would denounce you as old-fashioned, closed-minded, and unsophisticated, and so you just have to bow to those societal pressures and buy their products without knowing whether it will improve your quality of life or potentially have the opposite effect. We would look at that and say no, that's manipulative, coercive, and unjust. But when it comes to art and design, that is the approach that is imposed on us and which is reinforced by our education system no less. And so now the art dealers, if they want to collect on their big payday, all they have to say is, "Wow, they've done it again. It's so brave, so courageous, so forward-thinking. We'll start the bidding at $100,000, please." And then hapless city councils and other politicians and administrators who want to reassure themselves of their cosmopolitan credentials will happily spend that kind of money on art that is bewildering and oppressive to the public. And again, this happens because there is no criteria that we all recognize that we can all then appeal to to judge the merit of a particular piece of art by other than our emotional response to it, which is of course no more valid than anybody else's emotional response to it. And as just a side note anecdote, in preparation for this video, I asked my Facebook followers to share with me what they thought were examples of some of the best art ever produced. And notice I didn't say, "What's your favorite piece of art?" I said, "What do you think is the best art ever produced?" And predictably, I was on the receiving end of a range of examples and styles. But of the styles that are begotten of movements that would say the art and design is relative and it can't be quantified in terms of its merit or its quality, not a single person made that statement. Instead, they enthusiastically submitted their favorite modernist or postmodernist pieces, because at bottom we all admit that that's a valid question. Well, if it's a valid question, then there must be a valid response, an invalid answer to that question. And this is my best attempt at it, which I will admit from the outset is probably incomplete and quite crude, so I think it would benefit from ongoing feedback and conversation, which I look forward to in the comments. Number one, it should be revelatory. It should communicate a vision that the artist has captured or perceived that the rest of us could benefit from. So this could be perhaps a rare experience of beauty. It could be a form that is rarely seen, or maybe a movement that inspires us to our highest calling. Number two, it should be skillfully produced. If there were two artists with similar instincts and raw talent, but one of them makes great sacrifices and takes great pains to hone their skill and their craft and that discipline, whereas the other does not, then the one who makes the great sacrifices should be recognized as having more merit in the art that they produce. Number three, I think it should be unique. Thank you. Someone who has mastered the paintbrush and can skillfully reproduce some of the greatest masterpieces that are out there, well, I don't think it's really art unless it's unique, unless they've produced something original. It's not enough just to be a photocopier reproducing stuff that's already been done. Unless you can access and penetrate insights and visions that have not yet been seen, then I don't think it's really good art. Number four, it should inspire us. It should produce feelings of humility in its viewers as well as aspirations to do and be better ourselves. It should ignite within us an understanding that human beings, including ourselves, are capable of great things if we only tap into the virtues that are accessible to any of us. Number five, it should be beautiful. Now, by beautiful, I don't mean it should be delicate or flowery. By beauty, I mean that it should be an attribute of being that transcends all of our other categories. And I wish I could spend a lot more time on this, and maybe I will do another video on this, but I'm conscientious of the length of these videos, so I will try to leave you just with a few breadcrumbs that you can use for further study. Beauty is a transcendental. Like I alluded to earlier, some theologians are in the habit of saying that God is beauty, just like he is goodness and he is truth, which means that beauty, while it is hard to define because it exceeds our limitations, it is far more real than our subjective preferences would allow. When we encounter something that is difficult to understand because it requires us to look up and outside of ourselves, there seem to be two responses to that that I am familiar with. One is to humble ourselves before it and to recognize that it is something that is greater than us. The other is to refuse that humility and to try to rationalize it in narrow and simplistic terms. And that's what "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" does. It's a way of saying that beauty is of our own creation and it is subject to our own whims and designs. And the only supporting argument I've ever heard for this notion is that people have different preferences, so obviously beauty couldn't be objective. Well, look at what happens when someone posts one of those pretty simplistic middle school order of operations math questions on Facebook. You get an array of responses that are far more diverse than you would to a work of art, but yet we don't look at that and say, "Well, therefore all of those answers, those diverse answers, they're all equally valid." It could just as well be evidenced that w
