So like…idk I’m not sure how to explain this.
I can enjoy art, and I can appreciate and respect art. But like…I don’t know how to enjoy things “abstractly” per se?
What i mean is that I like reading and movies and paintings and such. But I can’t enjoy “classics” per se. Nor can I enjoy Avant-garde art. But I can respect both. I want to enjoy both too. I’ve tried reading both Le Miserables and dream of the red chamber but both times ive put them down fairly quickly (although the dream of the red chamber book I was reading was a fairly old translation, so maybe that was it). Ive also tried reading some poems out of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s “the backbone flute” but they havent ellicted and reaction from me. And I really, really respect avant-garde work. I would rather someone like Yoko Ono be successful over Blake Shelton, because Blake Shelton makes the most generic crap, while Yoko Ono actually tries to make things different and interesting.
But I kinda would rather listen to Blake Shelton (obviously if I have broader choice I’m picking someone like Woody Gunthrie or Phil Ochs, but if it was between Shelton and Ono, it’d be a tough choice).
So I guess my main question is how do people enjoy art in the “abstract” way (again, I know that’s not a good term but idk what else to call it)? Because I see critics and such wax lyrically about this stuff and they seem to really enjoy it so I wanna enjoy art like that too, beyond “oh it’s pretty” or “oh its fun.”
I guess that the first step is to start seeing art as something normal and not as a mystical expression of the human soul that is manifested through ART™ or whatever they’re saying now to define true or false ART™. At least for me art is just a consequence of technique—that’s the etymology from ancient greek, and in my language there are non-artistic™ words that contain art in them—, and this technique can be studied, analyzed, criticized, and of course enjoyed. But is this technique just Fine Technique? Is there an Amateur and a Professional Technique? Art itself, whether it’s a masterpiece or pure garbage, is just the consequence of techniques.
Then here comes two things that I disagree with in your post: the classics™ and proper names. Regarding the classics there’s an obvious eurocentrism in defining not only the correct techniques for making art but also what is beautiful or ugly. How convenient for the west, they decided that western art is the most elevated form of it! This becomes evident when you live in the periphery, where our culture is labeled popular, ancient, and other euphemisms for exotic.
Regarding proper names there’s a mistake in considering a creation as the consequence of an atomized individual and their isolated mind: not only are the creation and distribution affected by the environment, but the conceptualization itself is too, because the person cannot be separated from their context.
It’s interesting how if an artist sucks—meaning: their techniques and the result suck—people recommend they acquire more knowledge and practice. But if an artist creates a masterpiece, this “genius” is crystallized and detached not only from their environment but even from history, like some mythical being who transcends humanity.
Soooo, I guess the first step is to start seeing art as something normal—without the european academia or the yankee marketing. Start doing, even if your technique sucks, can help you to see things differently: suddenly a painting isn’t just colors but lights and shadows because you understand how they work, or the paint feels different depending on whether it’s on paper, wood, or whatever.
But with my perspective of art as a consequence of technique then the local gastronomy and the national gallery exist on the same level. And by studying those techniques I can engage with and understand those creations.
Mm, I think this is fair
One small thing I want to respond to, it wasn’t just european classics. Dream of the Red Chamber is a Chinese classic (one of the classic novels). And now thinking about it I’ve also read Natsume Soseki’s kokoro. Although I think that too I had issues with the more subliminal/metaphorical messaging in that book, even though I enjoyed it quite a lot. What I’m saying is that I wasnt just trying to read the western classics. But western classics should have some merit to them, as for example Xi Jinping has credited Faust as one of the many books he has read and enjoyed in his life. But of course I’ll diversify as much as I can (that I can find in languages I can actually read).
You’re very correct in what you say about artistic geniuses and what not. This isn’t even just the case in art. For example, Nobel prize winner Richard Feynmann (probably misspelling that) was genuinely a good physicist and science communicator. But he had this myth built up around him and his personality, where he made being a physicist look easy and like you should always be the smartest and most confident person in the world, and that you shouldn’t care what the world thinks of you. But after he died, they pulled out boxes upon boxes of research and papers and such that he used and studied because being a physicist is genuinely very hard work, which you aren’t gifted with overnight.