The Art Pyramid
There is an ongoing debate in the art world on whether art can be subjected to hierarchies: who or what is better, how to establish what is good art and what is bad art and even whether art contests have a place in the industry.
These are all fair questions, as we all know that the very premise of art is that it is subjective: what appeals to one may not appeal to another person. However, the issue of hierarchies is not one that is unmotivated to the rational mind. Surely, movements such as postmodernism, which is very much based on nihilism where nothing matters, have tried to throw out any concept of hierarchies; everything in the postmodern world is just as good and thus, just as valuable. And, even so, in the postmodern world as well as in any other world, there are preferred authors, painters and cinematographers.
Following a coherent line of thought, in order for something to be “the best” or “very good”, there have to be things that are not as good, there has to be a “worst”. As Marcus Aurelius explained in “Meditations”, the best is the best only in comparison to something else. For someone to be a top musician, a top painter or a top photographer, there have to be others who are not. However, at the same time, some people might enjoy the work of an average artist more than that of a top artist.
This may seem as a complex issue, but looking at it from another angle will clarify it.
It can be said that there are two types of hierarchies in art: a qualitative hierarchy and a personal hierarchy.
The Qualitative Hierarchy
The qualitative hierarchy is described by a pyramidal layout of artists, where one is better than the other at their art. Postmodern nihilism has made it impossible to discern what is good art and what is bad art. This is why, every discussion about art needs to start out with setting the criteria and conditions for something to be art as opposed to just a cultural product for example. Then, the elements that define good art from bad need to be established. While there is not one answer to each of these questions, it can be said that a work of art is a creative endeavor through which the consumer discovers something about the author, about the inner, ineffable workings of the world and about himself. Blatantly expressing hard, emotional facts is not art, it is kitsch. In terms of criteria to establish whether something is good art or bad, subtlety can come into discussion, the use of minimal means to express a maximum of meaning and an encoding of the message that can be decoded by the consumer by experiencing the work of art itself. These are quite hard things to achieve, but who decided that art should be easy?
The notion that art is something superficial and fun comes in many ways from the way we see it in school: art class is the time when everyone can just lay back and relax, as the subject is not of extreme importance such as complex mathematics and grammar are.
The Personal Hierarchy
The personal hierarchy can be seen as a scale of preferred artists, movements and works of art, strictly as established by each individual. Once you masterfully fulfill the criteria of being an artist, what comes into play is the personal preference. Surely, someone can like Beethoven over Mozart, but a discussion over who is better is pretty useless. An aesthetic discussion, where people share their word views and experiences to explain why they like a composer over the other is a different thing. Sometimes even, we tend to be drawn to low-brow art for no other particular reason than because it speaks to us. And there is nothing wrong with that.
The only thing that matters is to be aware of the fact that in order for something to be “top”, other things need to be lower than the top, but that, at the same time, we may prefer one over the other.
Surely, marketing and public relations campaigns play a huge role in today’s art world. In fact, they play a role that is too big. Artists of various values are pushed to the forefront of the art world, are considered to be “excellent” and “top tear” just to sell tickets, albums or other materials.
This is why there need to be criteria for quality – to be clear, not just technical quality, but aesthetic and philosophical quality.
It is only so that art can thrive in the future and help people better themselves, be happier and make the overall world a better place.