Well There is truth in human perception and I teach that. For example the average human can only see well enough to read 3mm tall text at 1M distance or 30 mm at 10 meters…similarly we know that sound as a wave generates harmonics that amplify waves in predictable ways, well , colour harmonics do as well and proportions in physical compositions create interest and predicable agreement on beauty. And then after the laws of visual fundamentals are studied over a year. You have to spend time studying why consider art at all. What role documenting observed reality played until photography became prevalent for example. Because once we had painters as the only means of recording the appearances of people places and things, but after one has achieved skills at observing and seeing the world as it is better than most will ever bother to see and describe it through drawing, painting and sculpting the human mind needs more and here is the truth for each and every single soul alive. Answer this question for yourself after you read the question, and before you read what I believe is a set of English words arranged to describe a decent language. ( I put it like this because I believe great visual art is deeply needed to describe things that words cannot. )
What is common about all of the best experiences in life?
Is it not true that regardless of choosing sports or building, food, sex, chess, etc…. Best experiences in life are always when we arrive at doing or feeling something that we previously didn’t know we were capable of prior?
If you run, you somehow run faster, if you read, you comprehend something you never considered so well etc?
The most satisfying experiences in life are when we gain awareness of more potential and more personal liberty, no?
So if that is true of an individual then perhaps individuals who bought that to an entire era of other humans are to be celebrated for their achievements? Their greatest works may have changed the course of history by opening up avenues of potential for every human afterwards? So, those works may have absolute observable quality but like people who want a signed Gretzky jersey or stick the market begins to be willing to pay large sums for even that great artist’s less than great art. Sotheby’s has some value, but like the stock market, you need to be aware that corporations daily buy or sell their own stocks creating measurable wealth even though not a single extra thing of value has been created for the world. One thing is for sure, the more we listen to great music the more we are not easily satisfied with anything less and visual art, food, athletics, building, driving, dancing everything is compared to the best work we have ever seen in that realm.
I trust talk that simply and humbly asks three questions
1.) what is it?
2.) what is it essentially about?
3.) how could it be about that in any better way?
Those three questions empower any human to critically assess any thing or any experience in its own terms and not on term that they think they want of experiences, but in terms that the experience is actually doing in to their perceptions.
Maybe that releases all of us from accepting that the DJ is playing good music? Or that the curator chooses great art over famous artist’s lesser works?