by Salahuddin Khan

Created on: October 26, 2009   Last Updated: November 13, 2009

It's a commonly heard question. How can I tell good art from bad? Actually, a purist might suggest that since art emerges from the soul, there's really no such thing as bad art. Leaving aside such a perspective (to which I too subscribe), I'd like to pursue the alternative track which recognizes that artistic talent is, of course, a meaningful concept.

From this perspective, we should perhaps feel troubled by the often pretentious way in which some art is publicized, claiming to spring from talent using esoteric critique. Incidentally, at least one Internet site offers art created by a dog wielding a paint brush attached to a rubber bone gripped in its mouth. We probably don't need to dwell on the fact that it is selling.

Now, before you conclude that I'm approaching the subject from perhaps an elitist viewpoint, I should reiterate pretty much all art has the capacity to stir the soul, even if it involves not much more than hurling the contents of cans of paint against a wall but deciding for example which colors should follow which. But talent can be exhibited in art and we can meaningfully discuss ways of understanding what drives its recognition. The key question is whether or not talent can be objectively seen in a piece of art, and what governs the way we perceive the art to get us to a point of acknowledging the inherent talent that created it. We need to do this while recognizing that such an objective approach should not rule out the inherently subjective reaction that any art, talented or otherwise, will elicit from us.

To get into the subject, we need to acknowledge an obvious truth. When we look upon a scene, we generally draw meaning through observing the form, color and texture of the objects in that scene together with the way spaces between objects appear to interact. All visual artists dealing with painted pictures, have really only these three elements to work with, again, form (here meaning both shape and size), color and texture.

So far so good. Now, it's at this point that we make the next fundamental observation of another important truth. Our reaction to the way forms, colors and textures are arranged, is a consequence of not only what the artist has laid out on the canvas, but also of what each of these patterns means to each of us in the context of the each of our personal histories, however shared or unique they might be.

Unless we're dealing with brain damage, virtually all reaction to external visual stimuli are derived from both

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