Enjoying And Analyzing Art

It is objectively true that liking or disliking art is subjective; whether or not art accomplishes its goals or has a high, mediocre, or low quality is objective.  Both of these are true simultaneously because it could not be any other way.  The idea that subjective enjoyment always corresponds to quality is a myth just as much as the idea that there is nothing objectively excellent or pathetic about various works of art.  This does not mean that it is bad for people to enjoy genuinely bad films or books, among other mediums, but it does mean that how one person or a larger group of people feel about a work of art does not reveal its quality or make it have or lack quality.

Whether I or anyone else enjoys or does not enjoy a particular type of art is entirely irrelevant to whether it succeeds at conveying non-vague ideas it was intended to, has any philosophical substance, has a coherent structure and execution, and so on.  If it is a book, is the writing style repetitive?  If it is a movie, are the acting and visual effects strong?  If it is a video game, are the mechanics deep or clever and does the story bring up philosophical concepts or have no conceptual depth?  These and other criteria for each medium determine if art is truly excellent, mediocre, or of poor quality.

It might offend some people that their appreciation or dislike for a given work of art, whatever the medium, has no actual relevance to either the nature of the art or to the critical evaluation of it, but this is the truth of the matter.  I or anyone else could like a book, video game, movie, sculpture, and so on, and this subjective enjoyment remains a separate matter from whether the work in question is actually excellent art.  Personal appreciation does not change forced acting into natural acting, visually random paintings into realistic paintings, or lackluster gameplay mechanics into nuanced mechanics.

Sometimes the quality of art does at least in part depend on the intentions of the creator(s): a movie meant to satirize bad acting could intentionally use bad acting, for instance.  An ironic comedy could use cheap comedy to make a point about just how stupid that style of attempted humor is when other films or games (or other mediums) unironically lean into it.  There is a major difference between a work that uses otherwise terrible quality in a clever or ironic way and a work that was actually intended to be of high quality.  With the latter, fans will just tend to believe its quality is neutral or high despite whatever deserved criticism it receives.

Of course, one could have one's preferences shift towards wanting art of quality as one reflects more on the nature of art itself and encounters examples of superb art.  No one needs to fallaciously think that their preferences are automatic signs that the real nature of a work of art is the opposite of whatever their feelings would imply.  Liking something is also not an indicator that it is poor art, just as disliking something does not mean it is good.  Personal enjoyment is not proof of quality and vice versa.  This is the fact that so many critics and casual consumers of art only seem to enjoy when rebuking someone else for erroneously criticizing a work that the former subjectively appreciates.