Art : Lil Pump vs Mozart

Oxford definition of art: “The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”

Some people say that art can be judged objectively, that some creations are just better than others. That even if they don't like a piece they can respect it and recognize it as “good” or vice versa. They believe that we can objectively rank art; for example that Van Gogh is better than Da Vinci or that the Starry Night is better than the Mona Lisa.

I strongly disagree with this: I believe that there is no good or bad art; there is just art. The pieces can only be interpreted subjectively thus there is no standard of art: we can only say that we like or dislike it. If we were to rank all art objectively (meaning without liking or disliking it, having no opinion on it, which is humanly impossible) we would have to put them all in the same place; objectively and from an art standpoint, everything is the same (this means that we can only have our own opinion about a piece). I think that it is impossible to say that the Starry Night is objectively better than the Mona Lisa the same way that we cannot say that carrots taste objectively better than peas; it all comes down to personal taste. 

If we were to compare two creations we would need specific criteria. How about the primary criteria for art: beauty. How beautiful is it? This seems like such an easy question but it is a personal question; one person may find it stunning whereas another may find it horrendous. The same goes for the second criteria for art: emotional power. Different people will have different reactions towards the same creation, it may make you feel terrible or it may make you feel the happiest you've ever been and all of this to infinite degrees. It is impossible to find criteria to judge art for everyone because it is too much of a subjective concept to decide what is objectively good or bad. 

An argument is that that if a critic says something is good or bad then it is true. I believe that critics are only expressing their own opinion and I find it unreasonable that their opinion is more important than others. 

Another point that can be brought up is popularity; that something widely recognized as “good art” has to be good because so many people say so. That is false: a lot of people liking a piece doesn't mean that it is objectively good; it only means that there is a higher chance that you will like it because it is something that appeals to a wide range of tastes or that this taste is common among most people. Even with it being a popular taste, it is inevitable that someone will have an opposite opinion. Something being popular can also just be a result of it being exposed to many people; certain pieces of art are not as popular as they could be, not because they aren’t “good”, but because they simply haven’t been seen by enough people. 

An easy example here is music. Mozart is acclaimed to be a musical genius and his work is pretty much respected worldwide. He composed many symphonies and to some people the emotions and the beauty are there; his work is considered as fine art even though his music is not loved or listened to by everyone. Now take Lil Pump, a contemporary rapper that is known for party songs with very bland, uninteresting and repetitive lyrics. His music is widely listened to all over the world and frankly I believe that he is more popular than Mozart. This doesn't mean anything about the quality of their music: if we were to say that the popular opinion if significant of the quality of the music than that would be saying that Lil Pump is better than Mozart and most people would strongly disagree with that statement; but then again we cannot say that Mozart is better than Lil Pump (in an artistic sense and this assuming that both artists are responsible for their artistry) because Lil Pump is succeeding in what he is trying to do (make party music and get rich).

All in all, objectivity in art is probably impossible to define and I believe that art can only stay subjective. The only way to “compare art objectively” is to say that it is all the same or to just not compare them at all. I have had this argument with many people before and I've either gotten people who completely agree with me or people who strongly believe that there is good and bad art. To some people what I say may seem obvious to you and to others it may seem completely stupid. I'm curious to know who agrees with me or who doesn't. Is art objectively the same or can we say that some art is objectively better than others?

Thanks for reading!

Eoan