In his Dilbert blog, Scott Adams sets out an interesting formula for judging whether art is good or not.  I read his comments to say that he believes that art should be judged on whether the artists objectives are achieved, not on whether people, expert or otherwise, subjectively think it is "good art".

Often as not, I reckon Scott simply likes to promote discussion, but sometimes he lets his own biases get the better of him.  In a slip that he would ridicule others for, he states that the film Titanic isn't good art, because although it was financially successful, that wasn't the "artistic objective" of the movie.  Interesting how when it comes to art he doesn't like, he talks about "artistic objectives" but when he talks about the Garfield comic strip, the "financial objective" was enough!

Having had that little rant, I can say that his method has its merits but also some major pitfalls.

What do we do when the objectives are not known?  In this case, do we get experts to tell us their opinion of what the objectives were, or do we simply say that, for example, Beethoven's final work cannot be good art as we don't know what he was trying to achieve?

Furthermore, what about the artists that only became "successful" after they died... I'm pretty sure they probably set out to actually earn a living in their lifetime.

What do you think?  Maybe art should never actually be "judged" as good or bad.  Maybe it should simply "be".