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APPRECIATING BAD ART John Dyck and Matt Johnson Forthcoming, Journal of Value Inquiry. Penultimate draft; please do not cite. ABSTRACT. There are some artworks which we appreciate for their bad artistic qualities; these artworks are said to be “good because bad”. This is puzzling. How can art be goo...

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APPRECIATING BAD ART John Dyck and Matt Johnson Forthcoming, Journal of Value Inquiry. Penultimate draft; please do not cite.

ABSTRACT. There are some artworks which we appreciate for their bad artistic qualities; these artworks are said to be “good because bad”. This is puzzling. How can art be good just because it is bad? In this essay, we attempt to demystify this phenomenon. We offer a two-part analysis: the artistic flaws in these works make them bizarre, and this bizarreness is aesthetically valuable. Our analysis has the consequence that some artistic flaws make for aesthetic virtues. Such works therefore present a counterexample to aestheticism, the view that all artistically relevant features of artworks are aesthetic features.

1. Introducing the phenomenon Ordinarily, when we enjoy artworks, we enjoy them for their good artistic features. Of course, we like many artworks that have bad features. But we tend to enjoy these works in spite of their bad features. You might like a film on the whole, even if you think its special effects are bad. However, there are some artworks which we enjoy just for their bad artistic features. The film The Room (Wiseau, 2003) has been hailed as the Citizen Kane of bad movies. The Room is a confusing mix of a bizarre storyline, terrible acting, very little plot cohesion, and a script that consists almost exclusively of clichés. But this mix makes for an enjoyable film; it is very popular, and is frequently shown both in theaters and in private parties. Other popular examples are Ed Wood’s film Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) and the television show Dark Shadows (1966-1971). We often call such artworks “so bad it’s good”, or “good because bad”. The humorist Stephen Leacock referred to such works as “Super-Comic”. 1 We will call them cases of good-bad art. The phenomenon of good-bad art is not restricted to film and television, nor is it restricted to the present era. The poet Julia A. Moore (1847-1920) was known ironically as “The Sweet Singer of Michigan” for her horrible verse; Ogden Nash called her a “‘great bad poet’ rather than a ‘bad good poet’”. 2 The novelist Harry Stephen Keeler (1890-1967) was the author of detective stories with titles like X. Jones of Scotland Yard. Neil Gaiman describes Keeler as “the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or

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Stephen Leacock, Humor and Humanity: An Introduction to the Study of Humor (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1938), p. 180. 2 Quoted in Thomas J. Riedlinger, Introduction to Mortal Refrains: The Complete Collected Poetry, Prose, and Songs of Julia A. Moore, The Sweet Singer of Michigan (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998), p. 1.

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perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. … But I love him.” 3 The Museum of Bad Art (MoBA), which shows bad works of visual art, was founded in Boston in 1993. Discussion of good-bad art arises from time to time in philosophical literature as regards intentions in art. 4 Taken on its own, however, good bad art has received relatively little philosophical attention. But it presents a puzzle. How can any artwork be good because it is artistically bad? Good-bad artworks seem to be good just because of their bad-making features. How can this be? It might seem incoherent for anything to be good just because of its bad-making features. 5 Strictly speaking, however, it is not impossible for something to be good in some respect just because it is bad in some other respect. This is crucial for our account, and it has precedent in other accounts. According to immoralist position of Eaton, Kieran and Jacobson, for example, some works are artistically good just because they are ethically flawed. 6 However, the case of immoral art does not seem relevantly like the case of good-bad art, so we are still left with the puzzle: How do artistically bad features make artworks good, in the case of good-bad art? Is our enjoyment of these works coherent? There is a further challenge to good-bad-art, a natural argument that good-bad artworks cannot be properly appreciated. Consider the following minimal constraint upon proper appreciation, influenced by James Grant’s recent account of appreciation: Appreciation is a favorable response to an object’s (or person’s, or event’s) good qualities, to the extent that the object (or person, or event) warrants a favorable response. 7 Call this the 3

Interview with Neil Gaiman in the New York Times Sunday Book Review (p. BR8). May 6, 2012. For some examples, see Carroll, “Art, Intention, and Conversation,” in Intention and Interpretation, ed. Gary Iseminger (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1992), pp. 97-131; Denis Dutton, “Why Intentionalism Won’t Go Away,” pp. 194-209 in A.J. Cascardi (ed.), Literature and the Question of Philosophy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Kendall Walton, “Postscript”, in Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts (Oxford UP, 2008), pp. 21-22. The phenomenon, as pertains to movies, is known in film studies as ‘paracinema’, where discussion of those works pertains to their socio-political aspects. The treatment of paracinema began with Jeffrey Sconce’s influential article, “‘Trashing’ the Academy: taste, politics, and an emerging politics of cinematic style,” Screen 36 (1995): 371-393. See also Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics, ed. Jeffrey Sconce (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). 5 This thought may suggest a meta-response analysis of good-bad art, for example Feagin’s account of tragedy. See Susan Feagin, “The Pleasures of Tragedy,” American Philosophical Quarterly 20 (1983): 95104. While there are interesting and important similarities to be gleaned here, we believe that Feagin’s account has to do with a psychological structure of our response, rather than about the structure of its value. We are here concerned with the latter question rather than the former. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this. 6 See Daniel Jacobson, “In Praise of Immoral Art,” Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 155-99; Matthew Kieran, “Forbidden Knowledge: The Challenge of Immoralism,” pp. 56-73 in Bermudez and Gardner (eds), Art and Morality (London: Routledge, 2003); Anne Eaton, “Robust Immoralism,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (2012): 281-292. 7 James Grant, for example, implicitly takes appreciation to require warrant. On Grant’s view, “Grant says that in many cases, “appreciation does not simply involve responding appropriately. It involves responding appropriately for appropriate reasons.” James Grant, The Critical Imagination (Oxford UP: New York, 2013), p. 35. The appropriate means constraint is equivalent, for our purposes, to warrant. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this account to our attention. 4

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warranted appreciation constraint. If the warranted appreciation constraint is correct, bad-making features can’t be grounds for positive appreciation. But in good-bad art, badmaking features just are the grounds for appreciation. So we are left with a challenge that our appreciation of good-bad art is never warranted. In this paper, we provide an account of good-bad art which provides a solution to the puzzle, and answers the challenge. We aim to show that our enjoyment of good-bad art is indeed coherent, and that good-bad artworks warrant appreciation. In §2, we characterize in detail both the artistic failure in these works, and the positive value that results from that failure. We make a distinction between aesthetic appreciation and artistic appreciation. The artistic failure in these works is an artistic vice, but an aesthetic merit; these works are aesthetically good because they’re artistically bad. On our account, artistic failure can produce an aesthetically positive effect of bizarreness. In §3, we show that our account can solve both the challenge and the puzzle. Here we show that the phenomenon presents a counterexample to Dominic Lopes’ aestheticist thesis; according to this thesis, artistic value of artworks just is the aesthetic value of those artworks. On our account, good-bad artworks have aesthetic value that is divorced from artistic value. 8 In §4, we show that our account is superior to a competing (though intuitive) account of good-bad art. In §5, we consider and reply to an objection to our account. Before continuing, we set aside the worry that these works do not count as art. One might hold that art essentially involves a certain degree of skill; works of good-bad art contain a significant lack of skill such that they do not count as art. Since these works are not art, the puzzle and the challenge above need not be taken seriously. We have two responses. The first is to grant the conclusion, but to claim that nothing follows from it; such works may be failed artworks, and as such are not art. 9 Our problem concerns the legitimacy of appreciating these works, and stands whether or not they are artworks. 10 The second response is to deny that art essentially involves a certain degree of skill. Duchamp’s Fountain, for example, arguably does not require skill. 11 Of course, not everyone enjoys good-bad art. Some people don’t enjoy these works because they are just too artistically awful. But this doesn’t mean that our project is futile. Compare: Some people do not enjoy horror films because they are too scary. It doesn’t follow that work on the paradoxes of horror is futile. Paradoxes need not appeal to the responses of everyone to be serious.

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A reviewer for this paper has insightfully asked whether there may be instances of things which are the opposite: bad because good. The reviewer notes that, following Williams and Gibbard, it may seem that some actions are ethically bad because they are too morally “good”, or too prudish. Likewise, some art may be bad because it is too perfect. We are hesitant to say whether this phenomenon exists; there seem to be plausible ways of redescribing the cases so that they are cases of ordinary badness. 9 See Christy Mag Uidhir, “Failed-Art and Failed Art-Theory,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88(2010): 381-400 10 See also David Davies, “On the Very Idea of ‘Outsider Art’,” British Journal of Aesthetics 49 (2009): 2541, p. 39. 11 Thanks to John Hacker-Wright, the editor of this journal, for suggesting this alternate response.

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2. The Structural Profile of Good-Bad Art In this section, we analyze the value of good-bad art. We aim to explain how artistic badness of these works can make for goodness. We assume that we enjoy such works because of their poor artistry; the badness of goodbad art is artistic in nature. We are relatively agnostic about what makes for artistic badness. We rely only upon the minimal constraint that, in the case of good-bad art, ‘artistically bad’ refers to the product of failed artistic intentions, execution, or poor artistic vision. 12 Good-bad art is bad because of artistic failure. Call this claim the failed intentions claim. 13 We take the failed intentions claim to be a relatively obvious fact about the phenomenon, but here are two arguments for it. Nöel Carroll can be taken to offer a defense for the failed intentions claim as part of his famous conversation argument for (actual) intentionalism. Intentionalism is the view that a meaning of an artwork is at least partly constituted by its author’s intentions. Carroll considers the anti-intentionalist claim that artistic intentions should not enter into our artistic evaluations. On such a view, it is permissible to interpret a good-bad work like Plan 9 as a sophisticated send-up of the Bmovie genre, even though this interpretation is at odds with Woods’ intentions. Carroll argues against Hoberman that the kinds of properties we attribute to a film like Plan 9 depend on the kinds of intentions we attribute to its author. 14 According to Carroll, we simply could not attribute sophisticated intentions to Ed Wood; it is an integral part of the way we perceive Plan 9 that the work is an outcome of failed intentions. At least with respect to works of good-bad art, we agree with Carroll. The failed intentions claim is also supported by the fact that it accurately describes actual practice regarding appreciative and curatorial practice surrounding good-bad art. Consider the standards for inclusion at the Museum of Bad Art: The principal principle for a work of art to be accepted by MOBA is that it must have been created by someone who has seriously attempting to make an artistic statement—one that has gone horribly awry in either its concept or execution. 15

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Note that, on this definition, it needn’t be that intentions are just poorly executed. They may be executed perfectly, but poorly conceived to begin with. Thanks to a referee for another journal for this point. 13 Of course there are other ways of producing bad art; failed intentions are the particularly salient cause of artistic failure in good-bad art. We are not committed to the stronger claim that failed intentions are always sufficient for artistic badness, or that failed intentions are necessary for artistic badness. 14 Carroll, “Art, Intention, and Conversation,” p. 119ff. See also Carroll, On Criticism (Routledge, 2008), p. 61. 15 Michael Frank and Louise Reilly Sacco, The Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2008), p. x. Consider Tommy Wiseau’s attempts to disavow his sincerity (casting the film as ‘dark comedy’), after the movie became popular as good bad art. Wiseau’s lying about his intentions (and

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The failed intentions claim raises a challenge: Where could the positive value of goodbad art lie, if it must be predicated upon artistic failure? There are many values of good-bad art—values derived from artistic badness—that aren’t aesthetically “deep”. For instance, one could value works of good-bad art for an educational purpose: they force us to reflect upon why we don’t like the work. 16 As Carroll notes in another context, it is obvious that educational virtues are not genuinely aesthetic virtues; and it seems patently false that people enjoy works of good-bad art for their educational value. 17 Another natural suggestion here is that the pleasure we take in works of good-bad art is a pleasure in the utter failures of the creators of those works, given the failed intentions claim. We will return to consider this view later. Our own proposal is this: The artistic failure in works of good-bad art makes those works bizarre. Artistic failure produces a particular kind of bizarreness. Given failed intentions in good-bad art, works that are intended to produce one effect often produce a different, opposite effect. There is a clash between an artwork’s intended effect and its actual effect. And this clash makes those works particularly bizarre. Consider, for example, the fact that The Room has three very cheesy sex scenes in the first twenty minutes. Part of the intention behind this was presumably to establish that a main character, Lisa, feels sexually attracted to two different men; but this is established in such an over-the-top way that the viewer finds the situation quite silly. The preponderance of sexual scenes strikes viewers as unintentionally ironic: in attempting to be sexy, the first third of the movie has provoked a response which is decidedly nonsexy, because of both the repetition and the commonly-used tropes (roses, soft music, etc). Given the artistic failure, the work strikes us as bizarre. In addition to being bizarre, this scene is certainly funny. But we wish to highlight the bizarreness. One is left not just laughing, but rather genuinely curious and bewildered, wondering: How could someone think this is a good idea? The bizarreness commands our attention as viewers. This connection between good-bad art and bizarreness has not gone unnoticed. In a recent article, Aaron Meskin et al investigated the effects of bad art upon participants. 18 In a subsequent comment on the article, the authors noted that they could not use works of good-bad art, since they seemed strangely exceptional: the authors seemed to like those works more upon repeated exposure. The authors write that the works seemed “variously smart, funny, quirky, or just plain bizarre”. 19 This claim is further supported by Kendall Walton. In a recent postscript to an article, Walton comments upon good-bad art. He argues that in these artworks we enjoy “something like awe or amazement at how awful audiences’ curiosity about the authenticity of these intentions) shows that intentions actually matter to our appreciation of the work. 16 Carroll, “Recent Approaches to Aesthetic Experience,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (2012): 165-177, p. 167. 17 Additionally, this doesn’t seem to capture why most people appreciate these works. 18 Aaron Meskin, Mark Phelan, Margaret Moore, and Matthew Kieran, “Mere Exposure to Bad Art,” British Journal of Aesthetics (2013): 139-164. 19 See , accessed 17 July 2013.

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the thing turned out to be despite the efforts of its creators”. 20 This is similar to the bizarreness we have in mind. It helps to consider bizarreness generally, independent of artistic failure. There’s little written on bizarreness. Charles Timmer assays an account in a discussion of Chekhov from 1960. Timmer writes that the word ‘bizarre’ “defies precise definition. However, it is possible to mention one inherent quality:—its irrelevancy, and one typical effect:—its capability of producing bewilderment.” 21 Timmer’s notion of bewilderment is useful here. It’s also helpful to think of the bizarre as weird, strange, and fantastic. The bizarre is bewildering—but not because it expresses per se the absurd nature of life, as with absurdism, 22 and not because it expresses per se a sort of dream-logic, as with surrealism. 23 Unlike these latter two categories, the effect of bizarreness does not have such a systematized rationale behind it. Our suggestion is that the artistic failure in goodbad artworks makes those works bizarre. This quality of bizarreness in these instances is a positive value, a good-making feature. Bizarreness is intentional in many artworks: the TV show Boston Legal (2004-2008), the later seasons of Ally McBeal (1997-2002), 24 and the films of David Lynch. These works are good in large part just because they intentionally bizarre. 25 However, the bizarreness in these works is intentional; the bizarreness in good-bad art is not intentional. Good-bad art is bizarre in a way that sets it apart from purposefully placed bizarreness. For it arises from artistic failure, and is thus necessarily unintentional. 26 When bizarreness is intentional, as in the works of David Lynch, there is at least the order of the underlying intention for bizarreness; audiences know that there is some intentional force creating the bizarreness at bottom. But when bizarreness occurs unintentionally, there is a unique effect. The lack of a bottom-level intention exacerbates our sense of bewilderment—it

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Kendall Walton, Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts (Oxford UP, 2008), p. 21. Charles Timmer, “The Bizarre Element in Cechov’s Art,” in Anton Cechov 1860-1960: Some Essays, ed. T. Eekman (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 277-292, at p. 277. 22 See George Sefler, “The Existential vs. the Absurd: The Aesthetics of Nietzsche and Camus,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 32 (1974): 415-421. Timmer makes a similar argument; see Timmer, “Bizzare Element in Cechov’s Art,” p. 278. 23 Arch-surrealist Breton: “Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinter...