10-15-2016, 10:03 AM
Culture:
1. Did you learn something from it that you might want to discuss, like something about the human condition?
2. Does it have some high-brow appeal?
3. Does it have lasting merit?
4. If folk art, is it competent in execution even if one finds it simple in conception?
Mindless entertainment:
1. Does it appeal only to debased drives (examples, sentimentality or pure pornography)?
2. Does it offend people of average of higher intelligence and education while being acceptable to people of low-normal or lesser intellect and limited education?
3. Is it strictly utilitarian as a time-killer?
4. Do critics pan it mercilessly?
Standards can change. Once the artist dies one might find his work going from banal to unique -- thus John Wayne's movies (he had more film credits than anyone else) and Norman Rockwell's paintings. Impressionism and Art Deco both had yet to get mass appreciation -- but they get it now. Velvet Elvis paintings are likely to remain ludicrous except as possible satire.
1. Did you learn something from it that you might want to discuss, like something about the human condition?
2. Does it have some high-brow appeal?
3. Does it have lasting merit?
4. If folk art, is it competent in execution even if one finds it simple in conception?
Mindless entertainment:
1. Does it appeal only to debased drives (examples, sentimentality or pure pornography)?
2. Does it offend people of average of higher intelligence and education while being acceptable to people of low-normal or lesser intellect and limited education?
3. Is it strictly utilitarian as a time-killer?
4. Do critics pan it mercilessly?
Standards can change. Once the artist dies one might find his work going from banal to unique -- thus John Wayne's movies (he had more film credits than anyone else) and Norman Rockwell's paintings. Impressionism and Art Deco both had yet to get mass appreciation -- but they get it now. Velvet Elvis paintings are likely to remain ludicrous except as possible satire.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.