It's not that I don't understand that, but it's easy to go too far into obscurism, and it's even easier to claim obscurism when all you've created is meaninglessness. Added to this is a bunch of social psychology that says observers can create meaning out of nonsense if they're prompted in the right way. As one artist put it:
Calvin: People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist's statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance.
Hobbes: You misspelled Weltanschauung.
Calvin: A good artist's statement says more than his art ever does.
You see this all the time with professors. So many of them sit in their offices and for years at a time create essentially nothing of value for months or years at a time. They go down paths that seem doomed to fail in an attempt to learn something or create something. But most of what they make is minutia, interesting only to their colleagues and even then, it's not very interesting at all.
Most of them would be thrilled if they did just one groundbreaking thing in their entire careers.
Clearly their work is totally useless. Clearly they should be ignored. Clearly the process has no value.
And worst of all, many of them will, when this is pointed out to them, tell you that their work is incredibly important even if it has only made a minor iterative change to some obscure corner of the world, recognizable only by fellow experts in their field.
I've got plenty of criticism for the academic world, but you seem to vastly undervalue the accomplishment of advancing the state of human knowledge, even by just a little bit.
It's those little iterative advances that are the foundation of all major discoveries and all substantive technologies.
In case you didn't notice (which you apparently didn't), my post was satire. Of course incremental progress has value, and even failure has value. (particularly if the failure occurs publicly.)
I'd never look down on an academic because he'd documented 100 ways not to do something, nor because he operated in an obscure corner of an obscure field with no obvious and immediate utility to society.
The world changes too often and too unpredictably for me to guess what will end up being important for society in the long haul.
I can't determine with perfect certainty, no. But there are truly very few rare things in this world we can determine with perfect certainty.
The alternate position--which you seem to espouse--is that it's fundamentally impossible to judge art, hence we have to accept all purported attempts at art as "good art". I'm arguing that we can make imperfect judgments; you're arguing we can make no judgments. The very notion of "good art" loses its meaning if the term "good" can no longer distinguish some art from other art, hence your position is completely nihilistic and far more denigrating of art than mine is, because you condemn all art to an indistinguishable morass.
My original point, long ago, was that criticizing art is separate from criticizing the artist personally, and that it's absurd to "look down on" the artist simply because you don't like some or all of their art. Even if you hate their art, you're not necessarily better than the artist.
As for the critiquing of art, I don't say that nobody should say their thoughts on it. But your thoughts are not the final word on anything. If you say 'that is horrible' and I say 'it moves me', then it has value to me and none to you. For one of us it is bad art, for the other it is important.
From a society standpoint, we tend to value works of art that have some sort of influence. This is exceptionally hard to measure real-time, and is the reason so many great artists made little money during their lifetime.
As such, I don't say that all art is "good art", even though you dishonestly put those words into my mouth. I simply say that criticism is personal, and that real-time, societal criticism has large error (particularly when done by people who aren't familiar with what else has been tried before), because you're predicting the results of the art rather than waiting and observing the effects.
But mostly, my point has always been that it's absurd to "look down on" the artist because you don't like a particular piece of work.
"My original point, long ago, was that ... it's absurd to "look down on" the artist"
Fine, granted. In the general case, judging personalities is boring. That's not the point I've been arguing.
"As for the critiquing of art, I don't say that nobody should say their thoughts on it. But your thoughts are not the final word on anything. If you say 'that is horrible' and I say 'it moves me', then it has value to me and none to you. For one of us it is bad art, for the other it is important."
So you think it's impossible to make objective judgments of art. I disagree.
"As such, I don't say that all art is "good art", even though you dishonestly put those words into my mouth."
Like art, your comments are difficult to correctly interpret. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Calvin: People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist's statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance.
Hobbes: You misspelled Weltanschauung.
Calvin: A good artist's statement says more than his art ever does.