There is traditional art, which is a very vague term after Duchamp and Warhol. The problem is not in the things, are they real art or some trick to make us accept forgery as something authentic? The problem is in us. Let me explain…
If you really admire some renaissance piece of painting, would your admiration change if you find out the painter is unknown? It could be anybody, a maid, a mass murderer or another Leonardo. Are you admire the piece for itself or the knowledge that the piece is part of something bigger? Can we abstract the artefact from the artist? I try to judge only by my personal impression of the art object, but I have only one life and in order to navigate the enormous landscape of art I use some directions (some may say prejudices).
A similar situation is in the new text-to-image AI generators – DALL-E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. I’m a big fan of the last one (see my experiments with it HERE ). The real problem is that we don’t trust our taste. We like the phrase “the art is in the eye of the beholder” which gives us carte blanche. Although how can I compare myself to all these educated in “the arts” people with degrees and salaries to match? If I buy something, am I satisfying my own taste or investing in the future of my kids?