alt Hacker NewsThat's a popular and socially safe point of view, but it's completely wrong. Artistic merit, like truth and beauty, is an objective quality completely orthogonal to cultural differences or personal opinion. To illustrate this orthogonality, I invite you to realize there exists art which has great merit and yet which you personally do not like. You should be able to do this, if you can't manage I can provide my own examples for you. The existence of such art proves that personal preferences don't weigh on the recognition of artistic merit.
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scld • last Monday at 3:52 PM
You're acting as if your personally held philosophical beliefs aren't contradicted by some of the most famous minds in history.
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Except... art and beauty (idk about truth) are subjective. You can attribute grades and points to art or TV shows, but whether any one person likes it is entirely subjective.
But of course, you mention "merit", which if my English is correct is "the amount of work / effort / skill involved". But I personally do not like the duct taped banana, and the work / effort / skill involved is minimal - and yet it's considered art, and people go out of their way to view it.
The Mona Lisa is "fine" (in my opinion), took skill to make, but it wasn't considered particularly exceptional in the works of Da Vinci - until it got stolen. It has objective "artistic merit", its beauty is subjective, but its financial and cultural value exploded through the roof due to its story.