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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bodhi" data-source="post: 3130087" data-attributes="member: 19770">Just a thought or twoArt (like just about any activity performed by more than a single person) has rules. Following the rules doesn't guarantee the product will be great. Breaking the rules doesn't guarantee the product will be poor. If you break the rules, people will call you on it, whether negative (He can't color in the lines!) or positive (He breaks the shackles of confinement!). The rules are separate-but-related to subjective enjoyment or appreciation.As to value, well, define "value". If you're discussing how well a particular piece follows the applicable rules, then there's objective value (which can be zero, or perhaps even negative). There may be debate on how a piece "scores", but a consensus generally forms. If you're discussing how a particular piece affected you, and how you feel about it, that's completely subjective, even if it's influenced by the objective rules. And if that piece has zero (or negative) value for you, that in no way precludes it from having a positive value for someone else. The reverse is also true. Not everyone has to appreciate something you absolutely love."Crap" has low objective value and low subjective value."Guilty pleasures" have low objective value and high subjective value."Highbrow" or "intellectual" or "artsy-fartsy" works have high objective value and low subjective value."Classics" have high objective value and high subjective value.Now, the rules are subjective in that they are the creation of humanity, rather than something independently verifiable under lab conditions. But they're objective in that they are definitions. There are rules for spelling and grammar. They do change over time, but a misspelled word is still misspelled.The rules also vary by form, and are determined by the practitioners and audience of that form. A painting that succeeds by the standards of abstract impressionism will fail by those of Renaissance realism. A book that succeeds as a novel may fail as a history.If you produce a work, you're under no obligation to know or care about the rules, let alone follow them. But once you share that work, you're implicitly allowing it to be judged by those rules, regardless of your intentions in the creation.</blockquote>

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