It's Accessible

Who's to say which art is good or bad?

Tina Modotti, Roses, Mexico, 1924.

It must have been the late 1980s. I’d been to a Tina Modotti photography exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and I thought a print of her Roses, Mexico photograph would be just the thing for my apartment. I headed to the gift shop but couldn’t find the print anywhere, so I asked the salesperson for help.

The hip, edgy woman sneered in my general direction, “Oh, we sold out of that one. It’s very accessible.”

I knew what she was really saying: I wasn’t sophisticated enough to appreciate more unconventional, avant-garde art. In going for something that was simply beautiful, I had shown that I was less worthy of respect. Even a target of sneering. I had also given her a gift: the opportunity to show that she was above an appreciation of something so common, so easily grasped.

Am I a snob?

To be perfectly honest, I’ve been guilty of similar thoughts myself, if not similar behavior (I hope!). I’m not the most mainstream person. I wasn’t into the top 40 hits in the 1970s — though to be fair, for an era that brought us so much amazing music, a lot of the top 40 were truly atrocious. I’ll never understand the general love of Forrest Gump, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I was so appalled by the lack of any redeeming features in The Bridges of Madison County that I sold it back to the Green Apple bookstore where I’d bought it.

Don’t even get me started on the “big-eyed” Keane paintings or the “Love Is …” cartoons.

If you were around in the early 1970s, you might remember these cartoons. They were very bad. Very, very bad.

To me, all of these seem objectively bad. But is that really possible when we’re talking about art — whether it’s visual art, literature, dance, music, movies, or TV? Our assessments of it are all at least partly subjective. (I say partly because there are times when it’s clear that something is badly executed. Take the old Dark Shadows TV series; you can often see a stray mic appearing in the frame, and the actors regularly mess up their lines. Or a book with rampant bad grammar. Or music that’s off-key. Or a painting that’s meant to be a realistic portrait but looks more like a stick figure.)

There’s often a general consensus about art, but even society’s assessments are subjective — and subject to change. In the 1800s, the Impressionists were mocked and insulted, because until then, realistic depictions were the standard. Now, Impressionism is one of the most popular styles of art. That trend has been repeated just about anytime artists have introduced something new.

Still, we tend to cling to our own assessments. Sure, there are times when I know whether I like something but can’t really say whether it should be considered good or bad. But there are many more times when I’m sure.

Those include times when my verdict is mixed. I love Rita Mae Brown’s books, especially Six of One, but her writing makes me cringe. What makes the books so enjoyable for me is their well-depicted, lovable characters and uplifting tone; it’s in the language, the actual crafting of sentences, that I believe the author fails. I have extensive experience as an English major, editor, and writer to inform my assessment. Does that mean I’m right? Well, I think so. But others may not agree. They’re wrong, of course!

Are you a snob?

Everyone has a bar for good art. There’s almost certainly some art, music, books, and movies you don’t like — and maybe even consider objectively bad.

Your bar may be very different from mine. It may be very different from that of the general public. But you likely have one.

Wherever the bar is for us, we have a tendency to look down on whatever lies beneath it. You might be polite about it, unlike the MOMA saleswoman. But isn’t it hard to escape negative thoughts about art you consider inferior?

Maybe you love everything and think you don’t have a bar. What about boring books, or books written by someone with poor language skills? What about B movies? What about these works displayed in the Museum of Bad Art? Yes, it’s a thing, which I only discovered just now.

What about something like “Monkey Christ,” the famous botched restoration of a fresco of Jesus Christ on a church wall in Spain:

Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) in its original state, needing restoration, and “restored.”

Restoration may not count as art, but there was a general consensus that it was bad. However, if the restoration had been created as an original painting, perhaps in the “naïve art” style, it might have been considered museum-worthy. Who’s to say?

I could so do that

Years ago, my friend Mimi attended an exclusive private showing of a Calder exhibit that featured some of the artist’s drawings along with his better-known mobiles. Just about everyone there was dressed in black.

Alexander Calder, On the High Wire, 1932.

Mimi happened to be looking at one of the drawings when a group of black-clad young people approached it, and she had the extreme good luck of hearing one of them say to another, “I could so do that — I just don’t.”

We’ve been quoting that ever since, in all kinds of situations.

I don’t know which piece the group was viewing. But I remember thoroughly enjoying the Calder drawings at that same exhibit, especially because they were unexpected and new to me. The idea that because they look simple, any of us could create them just as easily — well, it shows the audacity with which we can sometimes view art.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think you have to be able to do something well in order to critique it. But I also doubt that just anyone could create what Calder did. Sometimes what looks the most simple takes the most work, as I’ve found is true in writing.

Given that people these days can’t even agree on facts, we’ll never agree on what’s good or bad art. But I’ll cling till my dying day to my appreciation for Tina Modotti’s Roses photograph, although I’ll probably remember that saleswoman’s sneery words till then, too. At least she gave me a good laugh.

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Here’s another good art-related laugh in a scene from North by Northwest, a movie that masterfully blends suspense and humor:

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Do you have unpopular opinions about any art, music, books, movies? I’d love to hear them in the comments!