"What is art? What makes it good or bad?"

The question is from the 2003 movie Mona Lisa Smile.  I happened to be changing channels the other day when I saw it for the first time.  The reason I paused when I got to this channel was because I caught a glimpse of the cave paintings at Altamira (thanks to my extraordiary  art history teacher, I was able to identify them).  After about 10 minutes and a few scene changes I heard the question "What is art? What makes it good or bad?"...and this got me thinking.

The question of what art really is and what exactally makes it good or bad is not something that just popped up in a movie. We are constantly being forced to ask this question and even answer it.  Take, for instance, our intern meeting last week when we stood infront of the piece by Katja Strunz with Chris Potter debating on whether it was conceptual, striking enough to envoke emotion, or was it just down right boring?  But it didn't stop Thursday night after I went home.  The next day in art class we seemed to get into another heated debate about some of the pieces in Life on Mars.  Many people agreed that they disliked the Peter Fischi and David Weiss piece with all of the old stuff like the lighter and coffee cup.  They said it had been done before (and although this was true, I could not help but ask myself, hasn't all art been done before?)  Another work that was not exactally welcomed with open arms was Man on a Bridge - (A study of David Gange).  The major complaint with this piece was that the man was apparently walking on the bridge too long, and who really needed to see all of that?  However, just because this piece may have been slow moving, doesn't mean it isn't art.  It doesn't mean it isn't good. What I realized while this whole discussion was going on is that although everyone is perfectly entitled to their own opinion, nobody is at liberty to declare what is art and what is not because art cannot be defined.

-krJ