Why Art Is Subjective and Can Anyone Say Their Art Is Better
I have just finished reading a friend of mines book " Harnissing the Power of the Creative Spiral" by Lyne Marshall which promped me to think about my art practise and my creative path.
Hope you enjoy the read of what I have found .....
Two people can stand in front of the same painting and have opposite reactions. One feels moved. The other feels nothing. Neither is lying, and neither has to be ignorant.
That tension is what makes art so strange and compelling. Art asks for skill, judgement, history, emotion, memory, and taste all at once. Some of those things can be discussed with care. Some resist measurement. That is why the question “is your art better than mine?” rarely has a simple answer.
Still, “art is subjective” does not mean every opinion is equally informed, every artwork is equally strong, or that criticism is pointless. It means art lives in the space between the object and the person experiencing it. The work matters. The viewer matters too.
Art feels personal because people bring themselves to it
A painting is not only pigment on canvas. A song is not only sound waves. A poem is not only words arranged on a page. Art becomes meaningful when someone encounters it.
That encounter is personal.
A person who grew up near the ocean may respond strongly to a simple blue-grey landscape. Someone else may see the same work and find it dull. A viewer who has lived through grief may feel the force of a quiet portrait that another viewer walks past in seconds. A song played at a wedding, a funeral, or during a lonely train ride can carry a private meaning that no critic can fully access.
Taste also changes with time. Many people dismiss a style when they first meet it, then come to admire it years later. Abstract art, experimental music, conceptual sculpture, and free verse poetry can feel closed at first. Once someone learns the language of the form, the work may open up.
This is why art is subjective in a real sense. The viewer’s history, culture, mood, knowledge, and expectations shape the experience.
That does not make the artwork powerless. A badly mixed recording can fight against the emotion of a song. A clumsy line in a drawing can distract from the subject. A film can lose tension through poor pacing. The work still has qualities we can notice and discuss.
The subjective part is that those qualities do not land the same way for everyone.
Subjective does not mean random
People sometimes use “subjective” as if it means “anything goes”. That weakens the idea.
Art is not random. There are reasons a portrait feels alive, a photograph feels flat, a novel feels tense, or a sculpture feels balanced. Artists make choices, and those choices have effects.
Some features can be judged with shared language:
Composition
How the parts of the work sit together.
Technique
The control of materials, tools, timing, voice, or form.
Originality
Whether the work feels fresh, derivative, or knowingly connected to earlier work.
Emotional force
Whether the work creates a feeling with clarity and depth.
Coherence
Whether the choices seem to belong to the same artistic purpose.
Risk
Whether the artist attempts something difficult, unstable, or unexpected.
These are not perfect measurements. They are closer to lenses. They help us see what is happening.
Imagine two ceramic bowls. One is made by a beginner. It wobbles because the maker lost control of the clay. The glaze runs unevenly because the firing was misunderstood. The other is made by an experienced potter. It also wobbles, but the irregularity feels deliberate. The lip, weight, surface, and colour all support a rough, handmade presence.
Both bowls may be moving in different ways. A parent may treasure the beginner’s bowl more than any museum piece. Yet if we are judging craft, the experienced potter has more control. That judgement does not cancel the parent’s love.
This is the key distinction: personal value and artistic strength are related, but they are not the same thing.
“Better” only makes sense when we say better at what
The word “better” causes trouble because it pretends there is one scoreboard.
There is not.
A delicate watercolour may be better at capturing light than a heavy expressionist painting. The expressionist painting may be better at conveying anger. A pop song may be better for dancing. A string quartet may be better for close listening. A street mural may be better at claiming public space. A small pencil sketch may be better at showing vulnerability.
When someone says “my art is better than yours”, the useful reply is not anger. It is a question.
Better at what?
Better technique? Better use of colour? Better concept? Better emotional impact? Better fit for a brief? Better historical importance? Better sales? Better for the person who made it?
Those are different claims.
A technically brilliant painting can feel empty. A rough song recorded on a phone can be unforgettable. A perfectly polished poem can have nothing urgent to say. A messy drawing can carry a line so alive that it stays in the mind for years.
This does not mean skill is irrelevant. Skill gives artists more options. A painter who understands form can distort it with purpose. A musician who understands timing can break rhythm in a way that creates tension. A writer who understands grammar can bend a sentence without losing the reader.
Skill matters because it gives intention a stronger path into the work. But skill alone does not guarantee art that matters.
Critics, teachers, and audiences still have a role
If art is subjective, why listen to critics? Why study art history? Why seek feedback?
Because subjectivity is richer when it is informed.
A person who has never listened to jazz may hear only chaos in a complex improvisation. A musician may hear structure, quotation, risk, and wit. A person unfamiliar with a visual tradition may miss symbols, materials, or references that change the meaning of a work. Knowledge does not force someone to like the art, but it can give them more to respond to.
Good criticism does not simply declare winners. It explains.
A useful critic might say:
The painting’s large empty areas create stillness.
The bright red shape pulls too much attention away from the face.
The ending of the film feels unearned because the main conflict has not changed.
The sculpture uses fragile material to strengthen its theme of loss.
These comments can be challenged. That is part of their value. They give people something specific to discuss.
Bad criticism often hides behind status. It says, “This is great because important people say so,” or “This is bad because I do not like it.” Both are thin. The first avoids experience. The second avoids thought.
Good criticism holds personal response and shared evidence together. It might begin with feeling, then ask what in the work created that feeling.
That is why an art teacher can say one student’s drawing is stronger than another’s without claiming universal truth. The teacher may be judging proportion, observation, control of tone, or clarity of intention. Within that frame, the judgement can be fair.
Outside that frame, the answer may change.
The art world does not always reward the “best” art
The question of better art becomes even messier when money, institutions, and fame enter the room.
Museums, galleries, collectors, prizes, grants, publishers, streaming platforms, and algorithms all shape what people see. Their choices can bring attention to remarkable work. They can also overlook artists because of class, race, gender, geography, disability, language, or fashion.
Price is not proof of quality. A work can sell for a large sum because of scarcity, reputation, timing, investment value, or the story around the artist. Another work can be profound and barely known.
Popularity is not proof either. Mass appeal may show that a work connects with many people. That is meaningful. It does not automatically make it deeper, braver, or more skilful than a quiet work with a smaller audience.
The reverse is also true. Obscurity does not make art superior. Some art is ignored because it is ahead of its time. Some is ignored because it does not connect, develop, or hold attention.
The art world can signal value, but it cannot settle value once and for all.
This matters because “better” often gets confused with “recognised”. Recognition can be deserved. It can also be delayed, uneven, or shaped by forces outside the work itself.
Some art can be better within a purpose
There are times when saying one artwork is better than another is completely reasonable.
If the task is to design a clear public safety poster, one design can be better because people understand it faster. If the task is to paint a realistic portrait, one painter can be better at likeness. If the task is to write a children’s picture book, one story can be better suited to the age, rhythm, and visual pacing of that form.
Purpose gives judgement a frame.
Without a frame, judgement becomes vague. With a frame, people can ask sharper questions.
For example, a theatre set can be judged by whether it:
supports the story
allows actors to move safely
creates the right atmosphere
works under stage lighting
changes quickly when needed
A set could be beautiful in a photograph and poor in performance. Another could look plain up close but work brilliantly on stage. Better depends on the job the art is doing.
Fine art often resists a single job, but it still has intentions. A conceptual artwork may not aim for beauty. It may aim to provoke discomfort, expose a system, or make the viewer question what counts as art. Judging it only by prettiness misses the point.
That does not mean every intention succeeds. An artwork can aim to be profound and come across as shallow. It can aim to shock and feel lazy. It can aim for simplicity and end up empty. Intention matters, but the work still has to carry it.
Your favourite art does not need to be the “best”
One of the healthiest ways to think about art is to separate favourite from best.
A favourite artwork may be tied to memory, comfort, identity, or timing. It may not impress a panel of experts. That does not reduce its importance. Private attachment is one of art’s great powers.
At the same time, a person can admire a work without loving it. Many people can recognise the skill of an opera singer while preferring folk music. They can respect a difficult novel while returning to a simple crime story. They can see the influence of a famous painting and still not want it on their wall.
This split makes conversations about art more honest.
Instead of saying, “That is bad,” it may be more accurate to say, “That does not move me,” or “I can see the skill, but I do not connect with it.” Instead of saying, “This is the best,” it may be clearer to say, “This is the work I return to most.”
Those statements leave room for both judgement and humility.
They also help artists. If every negative response means failure, making art becomes terrifying. If every positive response means greatness, growth stops. Better feedback sits between those extremes. It notices what works, what falters, and what the artist seems to be reaching for.
Can anyone say their art is better?
Yes, but the claim needs a frame, and it needs humility.
Someone can fairly say their drawing shows stronger anatomy, their recording has cleaner sound, their poem has tighter imagery, or their sculpture handles material with more confidence. These are claims about craft and effect. They can be discussed.
A person can also say, “I prefer my work.” That is a claim about taste and attachment. It needs no proof.
The shaky claim is broader: “My art is better than yours.” Said without context, it often means one of three things:
I have more training.
I get more approval.
I personally value my work more.
Those may be true, but they are not the same as being better in every sense.
Art resists final ranking because it does many things at once. It can console, disturb, decorate, challenge, record, protest, honour, confuse, seduce, and heal. It can fail for one viewer and succeed for another. It can look simple and carry years of thought. It can look complex and say very little.
So the strongest answer is this: art is subjective because meaning happens between the artwork and the viewer, but art is not beyond judgement. We can compare skill, clarity, originality, and force. We can argue for why one work succeeds more than another. We can learn to see more.
What we cannot do is create one perfect ladder with all art placed neatly from worst to best.
The better question is not always “whose art is superior?” Often, it is “what is this work trying to do, and how fully does it do it?”
That question keeps the conversation open. It respects taste without surrendering judgement. It lets artists grow without turning art into a contest. And it leaves room for the strange truth that makes art worth returning to: a work can be imperfect, unfashionable, or technically modest, and still matter deeply to someone.
Amen and thanks for reading !
Ron
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