Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Why is the Mona Lisa considered one of the best paintings in the world? You’ve seen it: unattractive portrait with no expression in muted colors. It didn’t used to be considered exceptional, what happened? Turns out, at the beginning of the 20th Century, when newspapers were just getting color, it and some other undisplayed paintings were stolen. It was the only one that had features large enough for the low-resolution and limited palette, so it was printed over-and-over on the front pages of newspapers for multiple years, including when it was recovered. The Mono Lisa isn’t good, it’s famous, and fame is almost always confused for accomplished. Similarly for a melody you’ve heard a thousand times; it’s familiar, and it or another melody that subconsciously reminds you of it, seems good to you. In the art world, it’s better to be famous than good. The so-called Art critics know this better than anyone, and they decide what’s “good” art. Sometimes, they play with their power, promoting objectively bad art into stardom. In a manipulative world, success has little or no reflection of the artist’s true talent & skill. Art is the very definition of subjective, making the concept personal: for example, I dislike 99% of all books, music & movies, so reversing that, I would expect only 1 in 100 people to like what I create but it’s still good to me.