by Rocket

Created on: April 15, 2008

I am a former art student, and all those closest to me, I think, harbor a secret dislike of modern art. To the untrained eye, all those simplified drawings and paint strewn on the canvas is unappealing and suspiciously smacking of pretension.

Those in the know, know that it is totally uncouth to feign misunderstanding of modern art, and so at a museum they will come up with meaningless adjectives to describe such works so they won't be accused of being ignorant and uneducated.

Artists themselves are responsible for this lack of understanding. Developing panache, crazy life styles, or at the least, making themselves so unapproachable, the average layman is even afraid to ask questions, and appreciation of abstract painting remains the domain of a precious few.

I once explained the following about modern art to my husband, when he looked at a painting of Picasso's and said, "I could do that" :

1) For many years artists painted pictures that were like photographs. Using the tools of perspective and color, they copied slices of reality. At the time they did this, there were no such things as cameras, and many of those paintings served the same purpose as our photographs today. The extent of an artist's creativity in those times were in the choice of subjects, or the types of colors they used, or in Rembrandt's case, the use of dark and light.

Goya had been a court painter, and sometimes the only freedom he could find, would be in painting his court subjects with human expressions belying their real natures, not always flattering. As he became madder and madder, his inhibitions wore away, and although he still was faithful to line and recognizable reality, his subjects were of demons and monsters.

2) Later, when there were cameras, and the Impressionists came on the scene, painting became freer. No longer necessary as a means to duplicate images, creative avenues were not only opened up, the market seemed to demand something new. Picasso, yes, who really could do skilled realistic portraits with no effort at all, began to play with the surface of the canvas, by playing with colors and effects. His cubism period is a testament to breaking the surface of the canvas into thousands of components. Almost mathematical, he goes beyond the physical reality to play with the surface; and his sculptures are testaments to humor by taking everyday objects and turning them into something else, for instance, taking a bicycle seat and handlebars and turning it into a bull's head.

Renoir

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