Around the world, people endlessly question what makes art good. What does good art look like? I found some interesting insights into this query on www.artbusiness.com/how-to-recognize-the-best-art.html.
DeWitt Cheng, freelance art writer and critic, Bay Area, CA: Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces molded by time, certain twilights and certain paces-- all these are trying to tell us something, or have told us something we should not have missed, or are about to tell us something; that imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the aesthetic reality." While art has become, in the experimental 20th and 21st centuries, impossible to define-- critics learned long ago to stop being prescriptive, perhaps a little too well-- Borges's tentative manifesto makes a good starting point-- as long as we don't succumb to mystical mush. Good visual art looks stunningly right and, in retrospect, obvious, or inevitable-- yet it's also continually surprising. It is a powerful paradox. How can someone have possibly made this? How in the world could it not have been made?
I picked out my three favorite responses to share with you:
Robert Shimshak, Collector, Berkeley, CA: Good art is timeless. It will assume a new relevance to each generation, and to yourself as you grow. It will connect to the past and feed the future. It has a simple and rigorous beauty that commands your gaze and thoughts whenever you look at it. The best work will break your heart. As a collector, you will know it when you see it. It's personal. You will not have to be convinced by anyone to acquire it; it will be something you simply must have. It is like a good marriage that completes a feeling inside you, something that lasts forever and grows with time.
Marsea Goldberg, New Image Art, Los Angeles: Originality, representational of the time when it was created, passion, a frame of reference, freshness, intellectual content, and is uniquely identifiable as the work of that particular artist. The art should effortlessly have as many of these characteristics as possible-- or none at all. It also has to have magic; if you try too hard, the magic could fly away. The artist needs to have a vision and it's important that the work doesn't go into a dead end. It's helpful if the artist has the capacity to reinvent their creativity through various skills and mediums.
