Shouldn’t we care about the skill and beauty and talent of a piece of work rather than the artist behind it? Or,do we become less discerning, less critical when the artist has a famed, world renowned reputation?

I seem to be increasingly struck by how particular and particularly odd the art world sometimes may be. We idolize the paintings of Dali, Monet, Cezanne, or Seurat—appreciating the entire corpus of works by these painters and those of similar high caliber. But, can a famed painter or artist ever create an art work that is simply bad? Are there any Caravaggios that are just awful or are any da Vinci pieces less than desirable?

The story of the “Le Blute-fin Mill”by Van Gogh highlights these issues. In fact, it wasn’t until last week that the painting was finally determined to be a Van Gogh and has taken on new worth, both financially and otherwise, to the art world.

The painting depicts a windmill and spent decades in the basement of a Dutch provincial museum before someone had an inclination that it could be worth something. Ralph Keuning thought that there certainly must be some higher value to the work if it could be proved to be a Van Gogh.

Indeed, he was spot on. Experts just authenticated the painting and injected into it a new-found life. The “painting is a little a-typical for Van Gogh because of the many people appearing on it but also very typical because of the prominent role for the mill," said Keuning,who now serves as a director of the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle and who discovered the painting in 2007.

The painting dates back to 1886 and was bought by Dirk Hannema almost 35 years ago. Hannema was the founder of the museum and was known as quite the experienced art collector but was scorned after he wrongly said the painting was a Vermeer dating back to the 1930s. Hennema hung the painting in his own house until 1984 when he died. After that, it became lost in the basement of the museum only to reemerge in 2007.

The question then remains: wasn’t the painting of any artistic value before the name Van Gogh was attributed to it? Could it be or should it be that the painting may be just aweful and it doesn’t matter who painted it?