Originality and Technical Skill as Components of Artistic Quality

Abstract

Artistic quality is often thought of in terms of two components: originality and technical skill. To examine the relations between these three constructs, 35 judges rated 72 drawings on 25 survey items related to quality, technical skill, and originality. Rasch statistical analysis revealed an underlying dimension of quality. Items related to both technical skill and originality loaded highly onto this dimension, indicating that both are components of quality. All three measures were strongly inter-correlated. Technical skill and originality jointly accounted for over 90% of the variance in quality. Despite a high correlation (r = .65), technical skill and originality can be distinguished in three ways: originality items fit the underlying quality dimension better than did technical skill items, originality was more difficult to achieve than technical, and the two kinds of items loaded with opposite valences on the first factor of a factor analysis.

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