People can tell that what they call “modern art” is bad, but when asked why, their critiques often fail miserably. In fact, people seem to not know what art even is, let alone what makes it good. So, let’s explore what art is by seeing what it is and isn’t. Therefore, also what is bad art and what is good art.

The art remains with the artist 🔗

This is something we once knew, but we’ve become confused about in modernity. You can see traces of it in our language when we say the art of bookbinding, the art of poetry or art of dance.

The word art means the “good putting together of things”, of the Latin word ars, which means skill, craft, workmanship, which is again of Proto-Indo-European origin, something like *h₂er-¹, meaning to put together. This was essentially synonymous with *tetḱ-, meaning to create, from which we get the Ancient Greek word τέχνη, tékhnē. This is the source for our word technique. Our Germanic word for art, kunst, derives from Proto-Germanic *kunnaną, meaning know, be able to, which is the source for our modern word can. All these, as you can tell, refer to the process, never the product. It’s the making of the thing, it is not the resultant thing. A song is not art. The art of music is your ability to create, express and perform the song, not the song itself. Art is used to make, not made nor held. Great works work on the artist as much as the artist works on it. Difficult and great art forges you into a sharper, more aligned, more Good person. What matters is not the resulting mp3 file, what matters is after making it, how did you change? Did you get better?

Thus if it involves no skill, method and technique, it involves no art, and the work is not a work of art. It is merely an object. As we’ve drifted further and further from the idea of art as technique, art as method, as skill, our art has drifted with it, and thus our modern works have drifted too. Suddenly, art and skill are disconnected, and anything created “is art”. No need to be good, you can just do something and call the product “art”, pretending like calling it “art” is still a compliment, like that gives it value. Moderns desperately want their works to be considered as that which requires great skill and technique, as works of art, entirely without any art. They steal valor from the true artists long past, and in the process dirty the name of art.

Note, before we move on, that this trivially answers the trite question of “Can AI make art?”. No. AI “artwork” is not artwork, because there is no art involved. Nobody worked, nobody improved, nobody was honed. Simple as.

Good, bad and evil 🔗

The good chair becomes a worse chair the less it resembles the concept of chair. Take a chair, and remove its back, it is now a slightly worse chair. Remove one of the four legs and it is now a significantly worse chair. Replace the seat pillow with tuna, and it is now a stinky and broken table, which makes for an awful chair. A “chair” devoid of its chairness is a bad chair, because it is barely a chair at all. There are infinite ways to make a bad chair. Most objects are not chairs, and most possible changes to a chair make it a worse chair. Conversely, there are very few ways to make a good chair. It requires focused attention, ordering and skill to shape something into the good chair. It requires art.

Thusly, supposed artwork devoid of any art and work is bad artwork, because it ceases to be of art. Thus, the artless works of slobbered random colors your toddler could surpass by accident, are bad artwork because they’re barely artwork at all.

Calling this sort of thing artwork is a lie, for it involved no art. It is a subversive lie, too, because it undermines the value, goodness and virtue we ought to expect from artists. The very point is that it renounces all need for skill, technique, and thus art. To call the artless “art” is a contradiction in terms. They want you to say 2+2=5. They push entropy and chaos into your life, while demanding you call it order. This is confusion, decay, and destruction. They openly state this as well, when they talk of “challenging the concept of what art is”. Remember that art is “the good putting together of things”. When you work to challenge and destroy that, you are not doing the good putting together of things. You’re doing the bad pulling apart of things. This may seem obvious, and it should, but the thing made to destroy the very concept of art is not art.

Common critiques 🔗

Let’s look across what people often say when critiquing modern works. As always, it is easy to know when something is bad, and much harder to know why, and harder yet how to fix it. Luckily, us honest men have an aesthetic sense we can rely on. We know and can say what is and is not great art when we see it. Once we exhaust the list of things that we know don’t make art bad, maybe we’ll be left with what does.

“My toddler could do something better than that!” “It’s meaningless noise!”

This simple critique is true, valid, and largely overlaps with what I covered previously. When no skillful shaping and putting together is involved, then no art is involved. I suspect your toddler could do better, and the resulting work would be better than whatever the thing displayed above is. Do not let long-scarfed snobs with expensive shoes trick you into thinking otherwise. The emperor has no clothes. This criticism is valid.

“The meaning is so shallow and on-the-nose!”

Artwork is not made bad by the fact that the meaning is immediately apparent. If you look at any of the examples of good art these people will cite, there will be plenty of meaning immediately apparent there, and many of the greatest pieces aren’t really that deep. The great Greek sculptures for instance, are some of the greatest works ever made by human hands, but they aren’t exactly deep. Here’s a victorious athlete! We like victory, fitness, health and beauty! That’s about it. It’s very simply venerating the good and beautiful.

“You always have to go digging to find any meaning!”

Artwork is also not made bad by the fact that the meaning isn’t immediately apparent. If you look at any of the great works these people will cite, there will be plenty of meaning deeply hidden inside, only to be found if you dare dive. The image of Christ on the cross certainly doesn’t seem all that meaningful on the surface. Some malnourished guy got crucified? Ok?

“There’s nothing new about this! Michaél du Binglebobbeux did that in the 1700s!”

Modern artwork is not bad because it isn’t innovative enough. If you judge by “Is it new? Has it been done before?” you’re already lost. Novelty is the opposite of good art. The modern focus on newness is perhaps its chief sin. In shame, it hides from critique behind shock, novelty and mere abuse of contrast. The desperately contemporary, current and temporal is loudly here today, but gone tomorrow. This, all honest men recognize is not the case for great things. Good art is good because it is aligned with and aiming towards the ancient and timeless, the infinite and the eternal, the beyond, the ideal. This is the opposite of the novel, it is the eternally out-of-reach idea of the good, true, and beautiful. Κᾰλοκᾰγᾰθῐ́ᾱ does not go out of date.

“It’s self-indulgent! Just about me, me, me! Aren’t I so interesting and depressed!”

Your eye is supposed to see the world, not itself. If you see your eye, rather than the world it aims at, something must be wrong with the lens, it is failing to be an eye. If you taste your tongue, there is something wrong with your tongue. If your mind is occupied with itself, that’s depression. Just like the eye is best when seeing unseen, the tongue is best when tasting untasted, and the mind when thinking unthought, the artist is best when expressing unexpressed. The Lord of the Rings films are great because every single person on set was passionately trying to do the source material justice. They were channeling Tolkien and his stories. They were faithful to expressing Lord of the Rings. They did not try to express their own modern political and social opinions, like is the case with the later productions by Amazon. When the artist tries to express himself, he fails at his role, which is to shape himself and his art in service to what he is to express.

All artists can tell you about this experientially, as well. We’ve all felt that moment of no longer needing to try, and instead directly connect to something above that just “flows through you”, as it is often described. This is not merely the flow state. You can get into flow doing your taxes or homework, but it never feels like you’re channeling a truth from far beyond yourself in the same way. This is why artists used to not sign works. They recognized that the work was not solely their own doing, and it would be wrong to take something eternal and stick their own name on it.

“It’s blasphemous! It’s ugly!”

Importantly, this critique is not the same as saying it’s meaningless noise. This is an accusation of malevolence, rather than meaninglessness. Modern art is often practiced to intentionally tear down ideals, goodness and beauty. Not by insidiously making you call the artless “art”, but by employing great artistic skill for evil means. To invert the moral order, make heroes out of villains, conjure sympathy for evil, and fear of the kind. These are the dark arts.

The dark arts, and power 🔗

Line dance and folk dance is an artform which exists through you, which you and the entire community participate in and are shaped by. In this way it is powerful.

Many modern arts are made powerless. We’ve segregated it to galleries and concert halls, where we passively observe it as separate from us. They’re boxed in, framed, hung dead on a wall, away in a museum. Many practitioners of the dark arts want to break out of this. They want more power, they want to impose themselves on you.

In all these violations of the public, they invoke the power of architecture. Your participation in architecture is not voluntary, like with dance. It defines the space around you. It defines what you call home and away, what you call inside and outside. It’s all around you at all times, and defines the very ground you walk on. However, these invocations of architectural power are never as permanent or powerful as what a true dark-arts architect can achieve.

The Royal Ontario Museum is a classical old stone building, decorated with subtle ornaments and quiet details. Now, much of it is obscured by an ugly polygonal outgrowth of glass and metal. This polygonal outgrowth is not simply boring from being functional and utilitarian, like the gray glass boxes a merely artless architect creates. No, this is intentionally both ugly and dysfunctional. It’s loud, novel, drowns out the subtle finesse of the original building, proudly and permanently abusing contrast to display how it rapes the Royal Ontario Museum. This is the work of a dark-arts architect.

The man who imposed this on the public of Ontario did so to impose his pain on others. He was clearly not trying to express the soul of the Royal Ontario Museum. He was not trying to faithfully channel royalty, nor Ontario, nor the original architecture of the museum. It’s unintegrated, intentionally out of place. He was not trying to fit the proper thing in its proper place. He rebelled against this idea, instead choosing to express himself, and the ugliness of his own soul. Openly, he will describe how it is meant to make you uncomfortable, and invoke trauma. He is skilled at this, a master of the dark arts.

It seems we’re getting to a key aspect of good art here, by opposition to the dark arts. There is an art of putting things in their proper place. To have them participate in the good dance and pattern we already have going, rather than bomb the hall. Participation, of both the artist and the artifact in the good and beautiful patterns makes the art, artist, and artefact good.

Your toddler’s drawing of your face is an attempt to express you. It falls short from lack of skill, but it is an honest and faithful attempt. When stuck to the fridge with a cute magnet, it integrates into its rightful place, and makes your home more beautiful, good and true.

Thus, know that good art is not a category of object, unreachable by the common man, like the lords of lies would have you believe, but rather is method, technique and skill combined with honest faithfulness to what you are to express. If your work involves the creation of anything at all, strive for skill in making it good, beautiful, and true to its proper place. This is the fight against the dark arts.