art appreciation

the connoisseur, norman rockwell, 1962

i was recently at an event in the HFAC on campus with a friend and some of her acquaintances. we were walking around the art galleries and looking at the various works, and i heard several of the comments i often hear in regard to modern art. i'm referring to statements like, "i could've made that," and "i don't think this is really art." someone asked me my opinion, as an art history student, on modern art. i gave them a quick response with my thoughts but i've been thinking more about this recently. i used to have a hard time appreciating modern art as well, but as i studied it in my art history 202 course last semester, i really gained a much broader perspective on the subject, and i've grown to really appreciate modern works of art. here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

i think with all art, but especially modern, a lack of appreciation is usually due to a lack of understanding. i think especially with modern art, people just look at the final product and don't really consider what the artist was trying to say or what thoughts they were trying to provoke. if you look at modern art in this way, no wonder you wouldn't like it. it's rarely a pretty little picture, but that's not the point. modern art is all about redefinition. it's all about the thought. the statement. what is art? what is an artist? what is an audience? modern artists didn't set out to paint the most masterful picture or sculpt the most intricate statue. they set out to challenge our very definition of art, and they have. i always laugh to myself when i hear someone say, "this isn't art," because that's the very thinking that modern artists want to question. what exactly defines art? i also chuckle to myself when i hear people say, "i could've done that." that's the point. you could have. anyone could have. but no one else did. no one else had ever done that before, and that's what makes it remarkable.

in addition, modern art is often about the process, not just the product. people don't look at a jackson pollock, say, "well that's all very fine and well," and move along. they think about how he poured and dripped his paint, walked all over his paintings, and used egg beaters and turkey basters and his entire body. when you look at a helen frankenthaler or a morris louis painting, or any other modern work, you should do the same and consider the process. modern art has challenged the definition of art, but also of art technique. new mediums, new methods, new applications, have all been developed and these have completely shaped the creation of art today.

think about it. nobody today would look at an impressionist painting and say, "i don't think this is really art." but that's exactly what people said when it was contemporary. people didn't understand it and so they wrote it off. but impressionism challenged the definition of art in the same way that modern art now strives to do. before the impressionist movement, no one considered those loose, painterly, and abstract "impressions" to be real art. but now those same impressionist works are among the most famous and adored artworks of all time.

i'm not saying that modern art is the greatest and that i completely understand and love it, but i do think it's highly underrated and even less understood. mostly what i'm trying to say is just that, as in all aspects of life, we should seek understanding before making judgements, and in doing so we may grow to appreciate much more than we already do.