Art is good when it masters the artistic elements and principles. A Formalist artist focuses on an artwork's form—the way it's made and what it looks like. In a successful piece of art, the visual features are most important: line quality, color, composition, and other artistic elements and principles.

Technical Skill The first approach is perhaps the most common: how well-executed is the piece in terms of technique? How realistic is it? A lot of early or experimental works fall apart quickly because the technique is bad.

Even if critics do talk about colour or composition or tone, what makes 'good', and even great art stand out, is the clarity with which the artworks central idea or concept shines through and is embodied in the artwork. This is a function of the execution as well as the idea itself.