Mark Sloan, director and senior curator of the College of Charleston’s Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, says he does not think there is a universal standard by which visual art may be judged.

“I am interested in work that makes me think, feel or perceive something in a novel way, and I do not care how this work was executed or what materials were used,” he says, noting that Leonardo da Vinci (1425-1519) and other early artists used a primitive “camera obscura,” an upside-down and backward projection (upon a wall) of an image to be traced.

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/may/15/15ataar/