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Comment by borepop | Hacker News Reader

>literature (or art) is not "something that makes people feel good".

The notion that art can't be "good" if it makes people feel good is really misguided, in my opinion. People turn to art for all kinds of reasons, but most of all because of the satisfaction involved in consuming it. Even if a story is tragic or explores sorrowful experiences, we derive aesthetic pleasure from the recounting if it is well done. Art is not cheerleading, but neither does it need to be just some predictable narrative about how life is terrible and hopeless.

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> The notion that art can't be "good" if it makes people feel good is really misguided, in my opinion.

Speaking of literature, I don't think that reading of the parent comment is correct. The comment was saying that "making people feel good does not make it art/literature," where you're discussing something else, which is "making people feel good makes it not art/literature".

The original comment was something like, "Perhaps Eat Pray Love made people's lives better, but making peoples lives better does not make it art/literature."

My opinion is that art is not concerned at all with how it's received, only with how it's produced. If you are doing something because you think it will be popular then you are in business, not art.

Of course, people do have reactions to art. But that doesn't change the artistic value of the original piece. If they did, then the artistic value of something would change over time, which seems counter-intuitiive to me.

The interplay between the artist and the consumer of their art is a separate piece of art in itself, which may or may not have been "designed" by the artist.

Was the Sistene Chapel ceiling art or business? I'm reasonably certain Michaelangelo was concerned with both how it would be received and whether or not it would be popular.

We all as human beings seek the approval of our peers, so to some extent, few things are ever "pure art" by my definition - including the Sistine Chapel.

But art is the product of a vision, the result of some internal feeling. Sometimes their vision is likeable, and that's a happy coincidence. Other times it's not, but maybe the artist gives up a little bit of their vision in order to make it more likeable. At some point, they've sold so much of it that you can't really call the product art any more.

Romeo and Juliet was produced for a mass open air theater with penny tickets for the working classes. Does that make Shakespeare not art, since it was intended for mass consumption?

Romeo and Juliet is almost more satire than "art". Might as well ask if the Colbert Report was art.

I mean, Duchamp and Fountain are widely considered art. If we can count a literal urinal as art then I'm sure Romeo and Juliet count as well.

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