Appreciating Modern Art

Appreciating modern art...

It is certainly true that modern art is an acquired taste. In fact to many people, it is not art at all.

That's because for most there seems to be some intrinsic connection between talent being displayed and art work. When people can just take a collection of objects and shove them together, or sign something that exists and call it art, for many this devalues what art is.

The basic point they make is that if the only thing something needs to be art is that someone considers it art, then doesn't this make anything open to be art, and therefore dilute the meaning of what art is too much?

Well, there is much debate about what really should count as art and if we are too loose with that term these days, but all of that debate need not stop you from enjoying modern art.

If you go to a modern art gallery, just bear in mind that you should keep an open mind as you may not see too many traditional canvasses of paintings and so forth appearing on walls with exquisitely detailed pictures and gifted work, you may see a lot of rubble and other things beside!

The key to modern art is to try and interpret what you see from it. You can either work out what it means to you or what you think it displays, or you could try and see what the artist thinks instead.

Say you see a video of fruit decaying at speed on the wall - which is an actual 'art' work, then you can either pour scorn on it and say its nothing to do with art, or you can try and interpret the work and what it means. It could be that it is a reflection on nature, or the transience of life and how quickly things change their appearance and what you see today is radically different tomorrow, for instance.

So the art work could be making an important point of one sort or another, in other words.

But through interpretation and analysis you can enjoy and understand modern art better.

And some art works are just very impressive - large sculptures and rooms of rubble can even be fun as you can wonder what the inspiration was for the art work, or why the objects are placed just as they are in the room - cynics here of course would say there is no rhyme nor reason and it was created as the artist knew there was some mug who would take it seriously as work and pay them for their 'installation'.

Whatever your views on modern art, try and judge each piece of art on its merits as you cannot brandish all modern art as rubbish just like you cannot say that all men are from Mars or all women are from Venus for instance. There is so much to and within modern art and it harnesses such a variety that perhaps the only vacuous term is just this - Modern Art!

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Last Updated: Nov 8th 2006

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