ART?!?!?!

So, looks like I'm into art these days guys, but as usual I approach this field with a lot of scepticism and critic. The other day had a nice discussion with a student of mine regarding contemporary art and what it really means now to simple people like you and me. You see the thing is that when we try to assess art, what is the basis on which we do that? Is it what we find in art galleries? Or perhaps it is anything renowned critics assume it to be? Or even more it is anything that is original and out of this world? This are the kind of questions we were discussing in class and to tell the truth we still can't find an answer to this. Sad, but true. I mean is it that there is really no way we can actually say that one piece of art is better than the other? The more I think about it, I think about the way I approach a painting, sculpture or piece of music. What is it that I base myself on when deciding that this is good and this other one is not all that good?

So, looking at the situation in detail you surely get the feeling that there is something fishy about this painters and stuff. They are all so creative and crazy and paint so many things that are out of this world that there must be something valuable in it, right? Well, I'm slowly getting to the understanding that this value we give or attribute to art is based on a very subjective and "herd-like" understanding of things. Let me try to layout my theory as concisely as possible. Let's say we have an artist called Eyong David, not that bad of an artist involved in contemporary art. And he creates a painting such as this one:

Looks great, right? Well, sure does look great to me. But then there is another artist called Picasso, surprisingly he is also involved in modern art and produces a painting that looks like this one:

Looks great, right? Well, sure does look great to me. Now how the hell and even more why the hell do we put a price tag of £1.000.000 on the Picasso and completely leave out David? How does it work? Whether you like it or not guys the answer is that there are people out there who called art critics who just assume they know everything and say, "can't you see the way the Picasso is so much better?" and then there is another group of people i.e. guys like you and me who say, "of course it is better, that's obvious". Short comment, why?! Why is it that our society deems it normal to subject itself to such biased judgement? I just don't get it.

The worst thing is that people seem to not care about this and whenever there is an auction involving the sales of this or that painting, people just assume it's alright that some paint on a canvas can be worth a million or more. Like I said before in my post about Crazy People, the world is going down hell - road and they've got no safety helmet on.