Art has no objective quality standard, so artists must build their own

Thornton's foundational observation is that, unlike fields with measurable performance, contemporary art offers no agreed criteria for "good" — anything can, in principle, be art, which means ambitious artists cannot simply produce excellent work and wait to be recognized. Instead they must actively construct and defend the standards by which their own work should be judged, essentially making the case for their own criteria alongside the work itself.

This is a demanding, almost paradoxical task: an artist needs enormous self-belief to assert a personal standard of excellence in a vacuum, while also convincing skeptical gatekeepers — critics, curators, collectors — that this self-generated standard deserves broader adoption. Confidence and persuasion become as central to success as technical skill or originality.

Thornton treats this not as cynicism about art's value but as a structural feature of a field without external verification, which explains why persona and narrative matter so much more here than in fields with clearer benchmarks.

Takeaway: in a field without objective standards, articulating your own criteria persuasively becomes part of the work itself.