Even though works of art (including fiction) created in different eras and in different cultural conditions generally correspond to the category of beauty (as a certain value), they are based on different criteria of artistry. According to the concept proposed in the article, these criteria evolve, and the nature of their evolution is determined by the structure of the sign, in which Charles Morris (1938) identified three dimensions: semantics, syntactics and pragmatics. In accordance with this, the author distinguishes three criteria of artistry: semantic, syntactic and pragmatic, dominating in the paradigms of art (realistic, modernist and postmodernist). The article describes the most characteristic features of each of these paradigms.