The Criteria Used to Judge Art: Marketplace and Academic Comparisons

Abstract

The standards by which art is evaluated may be universal (agreed to by judges with different or no backgrounds in art) or relative (dependent on who is doing the judging). The issue of universalism/relativism was reviewed, along with the related issue of what criteria are used to judge art. Both scholarly and scientific resources were summarized. To test for the influence of different occupational roles on judgments about art, a survey was conducted among fourteen academics and seventeen business people in the arts. They rated, on mailed questionnaires, the importance of twenty criteria for judging art. Similarities between the two groups' ratings and among the criteria were the rule. Interviews supported these results. The criteria, though, differed in the magnitude of their importance. The consistency with which aesthetic criteria were judged favored the universal position.

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