Artistic merit
Artistic merit is the perceived artistic quality or value of any given work of art. Criticism of virtually any art form – be it music, film, literature, or painting – most often centers on the concept of artistic merit, which different critics can have varying definitions of.
Many critics fail to distinguish between the problem of distinguishing art from non-art and the problem of distinguishing good art from bad art: in many cases, when critics pan a certain work of art, making the claim that it is "not art" or "not real art", they mean to say that they do not personally consider the work to be good.
In Western Europe and its daughter societies from around 1500 to 1870, artistic merit was closely related to faithfulness to nature (not always as literal, precise transcription but certainly as an interest in some aspect of the physical world) and sometimes narrative coherence (in many cases history painting was considered the highest form of art) and obedience to classical precepts. This criterion, however, has waned with a change in the personal tastes of critics, which tends to vary across time and place. In general, rigid criteria for artistic merit tends to fall apart fairly rapidly when put under scrutiny.Furthermore, under close examination, critical standards for artistic merit often do not reflect what is popular with the public.