Notes on this Issue:

Just because a poem is printed on a sheet of paper doesn’t mean it’s good. 

Just because a painting made it into a high-profile gallery doesn’t make it beautiful.

Just because a statue has been placed in an honorable spot doesn’t make it distinguished or skillfully executed.

Good work is scarce, bad work is plentiful. If we care about artistic work, it is important that we develop a discerning eye beyond the qualifier of a publication, museum, or art council. Good work is as relevant as bad work, so we must be comparably intimate with the minutiae that characterizes them. All artistic decisions are made with two goals in mind: aspiration and avoidance. Consequently, all artistic work is formed from the interplay of countless aspirations and avoidances—so many, they’re hard to completely recognize. The result is usually a combination of good and bad decisions, rarely resulting in a final work distinguished as completely one or the other. Maintaining that ‘all art is good’ is as ignorant as maintaining that ‘all art is bad.’ All art is almost always both and the limits of one’s ability to classify good and bad are the limits of one’s potential artistic achievement.

- W.B.