In order for any work of art—for example, a film, a novel, a poem, or a song—to have merit, it must be understandable to most people.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reason

Any work done by any person is accoladed to the degree to which the majority of its audience feels impacted. And the rudimentary need for a person to judge any work is to understand what the value of this work is. This same goes even for art, an artist might have created a masterpiece in his opinion but if his art fails to deliver his message to the intended audience, how would anyone appreciate it ? . Although it can argued that some form of art is only understandable to a select few but does select few represent audience at large ?

LeoNardo Da vinci is most acclaimed for the famous Mona Lisa painting. Although LeoNardo Da vainci has done many other impressive works, but most of the world knows him for this painting. Reason being that most people are able to easily notice the iconic smiling and sad face on first glance.

Another famous artist in writing industry is J K Rowling, for her immensely popular Harry Potter series of books. She has been able to attract a large and diverse readers because of her creative and addictive story line which majority of people could fallow. Even though there are other authors with great esoteric writing skills but are only able to influence a select group of people, Such authors are highly acclaimed by critics but most people might not have understood what the author's trying to convey and hence are not bestsellers too, this same phenomena occurs with films too, a critically acclaimed movie would not necessarily impress audience in movie theaters.

Another point that detractors make is that some opulent sections of society spends billions in auctions to purchase art, which rarely a common man understands, but merit for such an art piece increases with increase in auction bid but is that work of art truly worth it if majoriy of population doesn't thinks so ?

Finally its the beauty in the eyes of beholder that matters, but if there arent many people to understand this beauty how would it be valued among the people at large ?, although some people might go to a great extend to purchase an art piece and some may like eccentric movies and novels. All these are individual preferences, and do not represent most peoples opinion.