My posts have mostly been about firearms or my kids, so I thought I'd better move on to other subjects, lest someone think that all I do is sit around the house cleaning my guns and making babies. (What a life that would be!)
It struck me why so many people don't like contemporary art. I used to think it was because "naturalistic" and "representational" are dirty words in the visual arts, which means that art that looks like something in the natural world, or that could possibly exist in the natural world, is frowned on by our cultural "betters." Given the choice between looking at sailors trying to stop a shark from eating a man, and gazing at a painting of three colored bars, just about everyone is going to pick the shark. We know what sharks are, and we can look at the painting and understand it on some level without knowing who the artist was, what his intention might have been, etc. You can't say that about most contemporary art -- you have to know what was going on in the artist's fetid mind if you want to know what those three bars are about.
That's part of it, but even more than that, I believe that people seek an encounter with Beauty when they visit an art museum. The main purpose of contemporary art is to spark an emotional reaction in the observer. The experience is confined to the observer and the art object, with the final end located inside the observer. How different that is from the great masters of the past, who used art to direct the observer's attention to things outside the observer and the object. Chances are, when you look at Michelangelo's David, you're not just thinking about the sculpted marble in front of you. You're probably thinking of the biblical text that inspired the story, the peculiar proportions of the head and what that might mean, the magnificence of the human body...the focus isn't just on your personal reaction. Your emotions heighten your intellectual and spiritual reaction, but they are not center stage.
You can't tell someone that their emotional reaction is right or wrong, any more than you can say that the color red is right or wrong. That's one key to the appeal of contemporary art (besides the Gnostic pleasures of esoteric knowledge): the value- and fact-free zone it occupies. If you have an opinion on a representational art object, it can be located in the gamut of possible interpretations. If you say that Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel is an expression of his increasingly pessimistic view of man at that point in his life, that's defensible. If you say that the painting means the artist liked poached eggs, you're wrong. But if you said the same thing about a Jackson Pollack canvas, who could tell you you're wrong? Maybe Pollack's id liked poached eggs that day, who knows?
I don't think your average person wants to walk out of a museum thinking that he's had a great encounter with himself. I know who I am -- if I want to have an encounter with myself, I can do that anytime without leaving the house. People want to walk out thinking that they've become better as human beings, even if it's just a teeny bit better. Beauty, not private, subjective emotions, is the only thing that can satisfy that need.
