I don't mind Modern Art at all. That's too general a term - I like some of what would fall beneath that banner. Pop Art and Dadaism particularly, I like that, the strong design principles in the latter and the two fingered salute to the pretentiousness of the art world by the former. There's a lot to appreciate in a juicy high contrast black and white photo too.
I don't mind Abstract Art, ain't my bag really but at least that's got something behind it one can see upon viewing and appreciate, whether it's aesthetically pleasing or not.
It's the Conceptual Art that gets me sneering so hard my face could fall off. One such artist once replied to a question about why it's art with "because I did it, and I'm an artist", one could suspect them planning that phrase out for days in advance, like Yoda practising sophistry.
Upon viewing, the concept is not evident - rather, it's part of the process that leads to the artist doing it.
Where most other genres of art with a piece called "horse" would in some way have some visually obvious connection to a horse, a conceptual piece could be any old toot with the only connection to anything horselike at all existing only in the artists head, informing the creation rather than evident in the end result.
What makes it worse, one of the friends I've kept in contact with from art college went the conceptual route. I've gone to many a private viewing and stumbled to find something complimentary to say, as there's no story to the art one can readily pick up on, and there's no guarantee of design principles at work in making them aesthetically pleasing.
Surrounded by random blobs, textures and colours that don't neccesarily suggest anything, what's a bloke to do? Given that I tend to lean towards an appreciation of design myself I pick on the one that grabs me the most and try to find something positive to say about it from that perspective.
"I like that one with the geese," I once ventured. "Geese? I got nothing with geese." I pointed out one I'd picked for the token praise, turned out it was a board with melted plastic soldiers painted bronze, for no reason that was any clearer after they'd told me.
I used to get easily irked at art college. The lecturers, their lessons, and what they picked up on was all so pretentious. That whole "it's art because its done by artists" could have come from them. Quite honestly it seemed more about the talking about it rather than the execution, one could generate more praise with a verbose plaque attached to a shoddy piece of art than a gloriously executed piece with but an obvious name attached.
I've found Installation Art more likely to embrace some design principles, and evoke something arty through an understanding of how colours and shades work on us. But even so, seem quite random.
Gawd, and Performance Art. Mimes and Clowns were bad enough, but least you could tell what they were about, but some mook warbling or flapping about, painted or dressed peculiarly, purporting to symbolise some esoteric hooha, they can so go on "the list". :loser:
