Let’s look at it this way: Van Gogh only sold one painting while he was alive. But does that make him a bad artist? I’m sure most of you will cry out, hell no! So, one thing we can already say is that good art is not about how much you are selling (during your lifetime).
“Bad Art is unchallenging, safe, and stale. Art that has nothing new to offer, nothing interesting to bring to the table. Background noise if you will, elevator music. I think that the worst art is art that has the least capacity to be disliked by the viewer.”
This is how curator Anna Choutova defined bad art in her 2016 show with the exact same theme, “Bad Art.”
In fact, this is a common way to evaluate art nowadays. Art is only good when it is provocative, when it catches your attention and really gets up your nose. However, this is not necessarily the main reason why art is created in the first place. (Nevertheless, I would agree that is always good when art makes you feel something—be it something positive or negative.)
When looking back in history, and in cultures around the world, you will find that art has many purposes. Its original—and probably still most important—purpose is to tell stories. This is how the early cave drawings came into being. And even today, artists make art for the sake of storytelling.
Other objectives of making art may be to educate, to depict divine messages (think Michelangelo’s ceiling paintings in the Sistine Chapel), to criticize political and societal shortcomings (think lowbrow artists), or simply to provide comfort and pleasure.