Psst... in case no one has told you as of yet art has always been "elitist". Artists struggle for superiority... to create better and better works... to garner attention and an audience. Arguments that all art is subjective on the basis of the fact that "good art"... or even art itself cannot be qualitatively defined have been bandied about for generations... if not longer. It is simply weak argument. Art cannot be defined because artists are continually redefining what art is. That does not mean that there is no good nor bad in art or that one cannot discern such. Of course each work must be judged upon its own merits... by the standards and goals that are central to that work. It would be unfair to judge a medieval work of art by the standards of naturalistic, anatomically-correct drawing as established during the Renaissance. It would be equally unfair to fault an artist such as Rembrandt for his conservative use of color in contrast to Matisse for the simple fact that the intentions were different... as were the standards... the established means. To present "Strawberry Fields Forever" for consideration as a lyrical poem is to present it as something it was never intended to be. As a song it's quite nice. As a poem... it's rather lame. The same would hold true of "Yesterday". As a popular song it's quite good... but we don't really want to place the string quartet up against a quartet by Beethoven or Brahms, do we? The comparison would be laughable.
Eastern culture is not full of labels? That's why you like Eastern culture? My first thought is to point out that we live in Western culture and must deal with the culture we live in. But then again... there's long been a Western fascination with all things Eastern. It's just an extension of Romanticism and the illusory quest for the "natural" man in his or her primal state. It led to some great art as Western artists confronted the "exoticism" or "newness" of the East... but it also led to some weak misinterpretations and idealization of the "other". Eastern culture avoids labels and standards and measures of good and bad? Perhaps such is true of a few individual philosophers... but c'mon... Eastern thought and art is just as based in values and standards as anything in the West.
Recently, I have been studying Islamic and Japanese painting. It is fascinating to recognize stylistic elements that would have been completely incomprehensible to Western culture of the same time-frame... but this is not due to the fact that there were no standards/values, etc... In many ways their training of artists were as rigorous... and less open to individualism... than anything to be found in the West.
quality is a totally subjective concept. It depends of the time (in history) and space (in geographical postition). That's why Picasso could not be seen as a great painter if he was born in Ancient Greece, for example. The taste, the quality, was totally different from the XX century.
What you fail to recognize is that Picasso would not have painted as he did had he been born in another era/culture. His influences would have been different. His artistic precedents would not have been the same. His training would have been far different. His expectations and his own knowledge of what was acceptable and what he might attempt as an artist would have been vastly different. Artists always speak in the vocabulary of their own time because that is the time and place they live in... that does not mean that the strongest art of a given time or place will not maintain relevance outside of this context, nor that one cannot compare works of art of quite different intentions.
Maybe, there are people here that think hip hop is a poor art. But not for the ghetto people. For them, hip hop is most important than Mozart. Who am I (and who are you) to say the opposite?
Come on! That's just pure hippy-dippy intellectual mush. All art is subjective... and as such there is no way to judge or compare art? If I simply smear some crap on an old broken piece of masonite and proclaim it to be art... well who is anyone to claim otherwise? And who is anyone to suggest that my art is not on the same level as the works of Rembrandt, Michelangelo, or Hokusai? Of course as there is no good nor bad... what is the use of even attempting to improve? What is the use of these discussions? Its all relevant, after all. There's no need to develop one's eye... or one's ear... or one's literary understanding... taste (?) because there are no standards... every opinion is of the same value. Indeed, I cannot fathom for the life of me why any artist (and we're all artists, right?) would even take the time to master language or color or harmony or any such thing... because its all subjective... relevant... and as such, irrelevant. No matter where one is... no matter what one does... someone is bound to like it... if only the artist him/herself... and that is all that matters... that is all that is needed to prove the equal merit of all art.
I'm sorry... art is NOT DEMOCRATIC and NOT EGALITARIAN... it is "elitist". It is based upon standards and value judgments by its very nature. The very finite nature of our lives makes such judgments necessary. I have long admired Walter Pater's Conclusion to his marvelous book, The Renaissance. This brief bit of musing on art and life has long seemed to me to perfectly sum up why I spend my time with the arts... and why judgments regarding art are necessary:
"Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or
intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us,--for
that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is
the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated,
dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by
the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point,
and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital
forces unite in their purest energy?
To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy,
is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is
to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world,
and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two
persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet,
we may well catch at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to
knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a
moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and
curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's
friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in
those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing
of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep
before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of
its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see
and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we
see and touch...
One of the most beautiful passages in the writings of Rousseau is that in
the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in
him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had always clung
about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal
disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the
interval that remained; and he was not biased by anything in his
previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement,
which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well!
we are all condamnes, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve--les hommes sont tous
condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness,
some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children of this
world," in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that
interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time.
Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and
sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested
or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is
passion--that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied
consciousness. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty,
the love of art for art's sake, has most; for art comes to you professing
frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they
pass, and simply for those moments' sake."
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Originally Posted by Brasil
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Surely great progress could be made if we just got Olmert and Abbas to loosen up and boogie down to "A Fifth of Beethoven." 
