Contemporary art, to me, can be divided into a few broad
categories: the type that focuses on looking good, the type that focuses on
looking horrible but new, and the type that tries to convey a message about
society. Or, in other words, the good, the bad, and the ugly (truth). I happen
to fall into the camp that values form, lighting, anatomy, and so on, and as
such, I really don’t like the attempts at art some artists have made, and I
don’t value their contributions in the slightest, no matter how many people try
to explain how something has been deconstructed or pushed the boundaries of
art. It’s a personal type of selfishness, sure, but I’ll go through why I think
this way. To begin with, I think the idea of being avant-garde is an excuse to
not develop one’s concept into something that stands alone in skill. Rothko
pushed the boundaries of art by deconstructing painting into primary colors and
rectangles, but he only took the outrage over it as evidence he was doing
something right, apparently, because he continued to do the same thing until
more people gave up and accepted it. And, just to mention the common point
against it, being successful in this camp relies a little too much on publicity
and luck. The argument of “if it’s so easy to make avant-garde art, why don’t
you do it first”, which always finds a place into the arguments of
free-thinkers, is too dismissive, and doesn’t justify the fact that the most artists
don’t try to further encrypt their work into being unreplaceable. For example,
in pieces that use wild brushstrokes like anything from Jackson Pollock, the
only barriers are the trends of organization unique to them as they try to do
something randomly, and this isn’t intentional enough. Although I suppose
Jackson Pollock’s splatter paint technique became unique over time as he
probably developed muscle memory from doing it so many times, people can still
mimic that well enough to fool the average person, who is all that really
matters when it comes to art. My complaint is that development for the
avant-garde artist stops at the revelation of a new abstraction or
deconstruction, basically. Speaking of the average person, this ties into why I
don’t like art that tries to convey a sociopolitical message, but it earns a
little less distaste from me than avant-garde work. It simply won’t be
understood by every person unless the piece abandons subtlety and becomes more
of an exaggeration than a public experience. I find that politics being mixed
in with everything is also just exhausting, to the point where I’ll dismiss something
for being an overdone topic. But, at least political art still tries to inspire
something in the viewer, and occasionally goes for depictions of form and
scenery. Nonrepresentational art tries to invoke emotion too, but I think its
fundamental error is its defining feature: that it excludes people or makes
them unrecognizable as such by ruining their features. Ultimately, art is for
people, and if it is to invoke emotion, it must be something that can be
empathized with and understood without an attached essay explaining the
scrambled mess. For countless years, humans have been depicted in art
realistically, and certainly not with total accuracy. Just consider the
exaggerated musculature of Michelangelo’s portrayals of humans, and how they
still captured the hearts of viewers. The development of photography may have
stolen realism’s main selling point but giving up on all degree of accuracy to
convey a message is not the solution.
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