On Prettiness, Crudeness, and Art

It’s been a few days and I still catch myself from time to time responding to artworks with “prettyyyyy!” or “meh.” I know that some of them take on so much more meaning when you learn about the artist and their intentions with a particular piece, but sometimes I come across some of them that are just kind of hard to appreciate.


Art Asia Pacific did an article on Makoto Aida featuring some of his works, including the picture above scanned from the magazine. The article says that this work, entitled “Shit by Jomon-type Monster” was “intentionally crude” and an “embrace of failure.” “Jomon” is a pre-historic civilization from Japan. The article also talks about how the artist is capable of producing incredibly refined paintings, but is equally capable of producing sloppy drawings meant to parody Japan’s education system.

Lately, I’ve been trying to reflect on how I’ve defined art for the past years. There were works that I found simply beautiful, works that had interesting details or stories behind them to make up for the lack of “prettiness”, works that I found boring, and works that I disliked. Those in the last category, I chalked up as simply being too “avant-garde” for my understanding and left it at that.

the beautiful (Starry Night Over The Rhone), the interesting (The Scream), the boring (Mona Lisa), and the disliked (The Persistence of Memory)

Spending time here, though, and being overwhelmed by such a huge variety of art, has led me to try to search for a better idea of what makes a work of art “good.” Sometimes I feel like people do outrageous and shocking things and then call it art for protection, because you can’t criticize “art”, or you look ignorant if you do, because art is whatever gets a reaction out of people. But is art really so subjective that anyone can call anything a good work of art?

While thinking about this, I remembered something that stuck with me from an Entrepreneurship class I took in university. (Yes, I am bringing up a business course in my blog about art, bear with me.)

My professor started by asking each of us our reasons for taking a class, and of course most people answered, because we wanted to start our own business in the future. He then corrected us by saying that pretty much anyone can start their own business, but not everyone can be an entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur adds value to the world and revolutionizes products or processes. He related the point using a scene from The Emperor’s Club, when the professor tells them about Shutruk-Nakhunte, the emperor who conquered a bunch of places but is unknown today because despite his accomplishments, he contributed nothing to humanity.

"Great ambition and conquest without contribution is without significance." - The Emperor's Club

What I came away with is that good art, like a good business, should be innovative, it should explore an idea, a point of view, or a technique that’s never been done before. It should also add value; the world should seem a little bit better because of it, and a lot wanting without it.

That said, I take back what I said about the Mona Lisa being boring. ;)