by Shannon Hilson

Created on: October 02, 2009   Last Updated: October 03, 2009

The decision as to which works of art to hang on the walls of your home or office is an important one. What you choose to display in your own personal space makes a powerful statement, and naturally art buyers are anxious to know that this statement is saying all the right things. You of course want your art collection to tell people a little bit about who you are, but you also want it to consist of well-executed and striking works. You want it to show that you have excellent taste, but as an art lover, you also want it to be something you honestly enjoy looking at every day.

For many people, especially those of us who are very new to the idea of buying or collecting art, a comfortable understanding of the world of art and the art market can be a bit enigmatic, and finding a happy medium between what one likes and what will ultimately be the smartest financial investment presents quite the challenge. It's often difficult to know where to start, and today's potential art buyers have many questions when it comes to how to determine the value of a given piece of art. By what criteria is good art distinguished from bad? What should a potential buyer be looking at when determining which artists should be included in his collection and which shouldn't? And possibly most of all, what makes any one artist's work collectible in the first place?

What Constitutes Good Art and What Makes a Talented Artist?

This is probably one of the most commonly asked questions in the art world today, not only among art collectors, but also among the artists themselves! However, what many people don't realize is that it's also an age-old question along the lines of what is the meaning of life, meaning that the answer is more or less an objective one.

What makes a piece of art good or an artist worth paying attention to is not the subject matter or the style they work in. No matter what some people will tell you, modern art is not better than art that is more classically executed, nor is a painter who produces photorealistic landscapes or portraits necessarily more talented than one who chooses to work in a looser, freer, more abstract style. For every collector out there who swears by modern art, there's another one who thinks it's nothing but a bunch of meaningless paint splatters. Likewise, for every collector who has classical, realistic tastes in art, there's a counterpart that thinks such art is simply boring and uninspired.

Whether or not an artist is truly talented really has

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