Martin Scorsese says Marvel movies are "not cinema"

[Alan V]

These days, I am more inclined to define efforts as "art" in accordance with their methods rather than their content.  Art is about applying attention to attract attention from others.  That is done through a variety of methods, including the display of talent, spectacle, action, emotion, color, contrast, texture, story-telling, empathy, and so on.  Whether something succeeds as art is measured by the attention it attracts, including long-term attention.  That's why it's so hard to judge art in the present, but much easier from the past.  Better quality art gets sorted out over time by what people continue to find interesting.

Well, I don't think we can judge a piece of art's quality by how popular it gets.

But that, I think, is exactly how we do judge what is good art. It's a matter of what is popular with the people we most respect, by the criteria they teach us.

Of course we also try to understand why they consider some works to be better art, and many times we agree even while we may disagree about other works.

Personally, I've been studying the fine arts and especially painting for going on fifty years, and I agree with perhaps half of what the experts say is good art. Much of what is called good art I think is nonsense, but still that 50% is a good percentage of agreement considering how diverse the arts are.