Shea’s Rule of Thumb for Evaluating Art

Talented artists move you. Talentless hacks just try to shock you.

To be sure, good artists will make use of shock in their palette of tricks. Shakespeare had not problem with it (see “Titus Andronicus”). But a hack pretty much only knows how to shock. So bores like Lady Gaga just keep trying to figure out new ways to make people gasp or feel offended. It’s what a culture addicted to mere thrills winds up with: increasing the dose in order to compensate for the growing numbness.