On Quality Criteria for Modern Art, Part 2

Anyone who does nevertheless believe that quality does exist in the art of the 20th and 21st centuries too, and would like to know how to distinguish it from its opposite, soon realises that he is neither the first nor the only one to be preoccupied by this question.

It also preoccupied the Berlin art collector and dealer Wolfram Völker so much that he asked numerous people who really ought to know for enlightenment – and collected their answers in a book. Title: “Was ist gute Kunst?”*

Let us hear and look at what people in the field have to say about it. First there is Dr Christoph Heinrich, who studied art history, theatre studies and German studies in Vienna and is today director of the Denver Art Museum. He says: “One can assume that quality – and likewise its antagonist, kitsch – is a more or less broadly supported consensus between producers/artists and end consumers/the public.” He then goes on to present some of his favourite works and uses them to explain why, for him, they are examples of quality (including Pink Bow by Jeff Koons and Dog Planet by Daniel Richter). The crux of it: the criteria that apply to individual, very specific works cannot be generalised, cannot be turned into a formula for judging other works.

And in his conclusion he says: “It is not easy to draw a conclusion; it is difficult to name the radiant, adorable >quality<, just as difficult as its nocturnal counterpart, the garishly dressed-up, mendacious brother >kitsch<.

My spontaneous remark on this: I am not at all sure whether kitsch is the true and only opposite of good art. In contemporary art in particular, there would be a few other candidates for me: works that lack ideas, are amateurishly conceived and/or poorly executed.

*Published by Hatje Cantz-Verlag

The second prominent voice in the field of painting (the book is organised by different artistic media) comes from the German art historian and museum curator Gudrun Inboden. She is of the opinion: “What quality in art is cannot be defined. How could it be, when art itself cannot be defined.

But there is, after all, a certain approximation to something concrete. For Gudrun Inboden says: “ But however nebulous the word ‘quality’ may be for us and however unregulated its use, perhaps that is precisely where its >quality< lies. For it is not at all suited to ascribing or prescribing a particular way of being to art. So let us take >quality< as vague as it is, and let us think of it not as a reliable, unchanging, static constant but as a ‘vague’, incalculable, dynamic variable that is truly at work in art. We can then imagine quality as a >substantial< force at work >in< art, not as an energy that produces something – for then we could and would have to >define< again – but rather as a force that gives impulses, that prompts, triggers, sets in motion.”

Unfortunately, this approximation is not enough to enable me to separate the good from the bad in modern art. And so, even at the end of the 2nd instalment, I am still standing there like Faust, the fool who is as wise ..well, you know the rest.. But let us not give up hope, and let us drop in next weekend for instalment 3 to see whether our eyes are finally opened.