Take a trip to the modern art museum in New York and you might hear a few skeptics proclaiming “my son could make that!” Well, could he have? Not exactly, and that’s partially the point of modern art — even if a kid could do it, they didn’t.

Here are a few more reasons why that just won’t do as art criticism.

#5: Modern Artists Can Do Traditional Stuff, Too.

We hear this very frequently — that modern art is a refuge for those who simply couldn’t paint as well as the old classic painters, that they chose other forms of expression that would “question” the meaning of art because they weren’t good enough to actually make it in the classic, demanding, difficult way.

But it’s not true — the great majority of all the modernists could really paint extremely well. It was just too difficult to keep going on in that fashion and say anything new or original, hence modernism’s noisy introduction.

#4: These People Are Consistently Able to Produce.

If you use the typical kid-could-paint-that argument, you’re not really focusing on the fact that your kid might be able to produce a convincing Rothko imitation if he got really lucky, but then he’d move on to drawing a cat that was bigger than a house.

An artist like Barnett Newman didn’t just paint a few stripes over and over again and call it a day — he grew and developed and held the public’s attention with an artist’s mind. It’s not all just straight draftsmanship.

#3: Sometimes We Forget That Art is Experience.

Look, if your kid can whip out a reasonable imitation of a Jasper Johns, I’d celebrate too. But is he then going to introduce it into a world that’s trying to figure out the validity of the artist/art relationship? Is he going to say anything (through art or through his declarations) about modernism itself?

If you’re not interested in all of that, that’s OK — there are plenty of galleries full of renaissance painting that can make you happy for the rest of your life. But some people are concerned with evolving the standards, established in the 1400s and before, about what real art actually is. Your kid probably isn’t one of these, but many others were.

#2: The Market Makes The Prices.

Usually these arguments get really intense when some public money goes towards something that has a bit of controversy about it (let’s say anything after 1900 that could be considered modern).

If the price is particularly high, cultural critics tend to start complaining, and old arguments about the ‘value of art’ get dragged out and beaten about for a few weeks of controversy. But it’s important to remember — artists don’t decide their price. Just because people decided to pay a lot of money for something doesn’t mean the creator thinks it’s worth anything near that amount.

#1: Why Compete With Michaelangelo?

Why should anyone bother competing with the Sistine Chapel? When you can throw paint splotches at a canvas until it finally starts making sense, shouldn’t you be doing that, instead of trying to reach a level of renaissance craftsmanship that is best left to its era?

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