Art!

To draw on what I've been learning in my Creative Arts Therapy schooling, I would offer that the creative process is important in and of itself as a way for the creator to express himself, especially the parts of one's "stuff" not expressible with language.

Of course it's not practical for every casual art fan to witness every single work of every single amateur artist in the world, or even in his own home city. Luckily, there's a distinction to be drawn: Some art (in accordance with your question, we'll call this "good art") is accessible to a wider audience, allowing the viewer or listener to work out his unresolved tensions by way of the tension and release implicit in the artwork. Most art ("bad art," to put it bluntly), however, is not accessible to a wider audience and it remains connected only to the creator, and maybe his pals as well.

(By 'accessible,' I'm talking about a quality of the art itself, and not its placement in a gallery.)

This is not the end of the discussion, though (unless the continued absence of EVERYBODY proves me wrong). "Bad art" by the definition above is often just fine for what it is supposed to be and what it is meant to do. A handmade Valentine's Day card could look like hell, but hit the spot perfectly. So is it really "bad?" Art is often so deeply connected to its creator that calling it "bad" feels intuitively wrong, because it's sort of like calling that person "bad," or denying he put the work in. Then again, many great artists HAVE been pretty rotten people in a lot of ways.

Anyway, I think the real split I'm talking about is between great art and the rest of art. Not good and bad, so much. Still, this is an attempt to define the art that you should look at, or at least try out. Obviously, everyone in the world will never agree on the greatness of anything.

Mike