[MD] The difference between a Monet and a finger painting

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ant]
In there you will see how the (static) "accepted rules for high 
quality work" have changed over the ages up to the present day.  Of 
course, the (Dynamic) trick is guessing (or even inventing) 
tomorrow's "accepted rules for high quality work".

[Arlo]
Greetings, Ant. Its been too long. :-) My quick agreement with you, 
Mary and John here.

One way to think about it is this. Imagine you are an astronaut and 
you land on an inhabited alien world, a world that no human has ever 
had any contact with before. As soon as you step out of your vehicle, 
an alien appears and shows you two images. Would you have the ability 
to say "this one is a great work of art" and "this other one is 
finger-painting"? Simply, no, you would not. You could, of course, 
make an aesthetic discrimination based on your own embedded cultural 
experiences, but there is no way this could map onto predicting how 
these two images are seen within the alien culture, as the 
structure/code/symbolism/historical perspective/etc of the alien 
culture would be impossible for you to decipher.

Consider taking your Monet and a finger painting to the deep wilds of 
South America, to a village where there has been little to no contact 
with the "outside" world. Do you think they would be able to say 
"this is a work of art, and that is a finger-painting"? Mayhap they 
would judge both to be pleasant but unimportant images, about equal 
in Quality.

"Art", to risk oversimplification, depends on the use of meaningful 
symbolism to point beyond the symbols. It is a sign that reads "look 
over there". It is a map to a fabled land where it becomes apparent 
to the traveler that the "X" is not the treasure, the journey is.

Add to this that "art" is itself a contextual, cultural dialogue. 
Nothing is ever said in isolation, but said in response to, and in 
anticipation of, other voices in the dialogue. "This" is a response 
to "that" movement, etc.

Like Dusenberry, artists are not "outside" the world they mirror. 
They are not objective, ahistorical personages but embedded agents in 
a social and cultural milieu.

My two cents.