Abstract Art

I sometimes wonder what is my position on abstract art as opposed to classical art.

While I hate the abstract art, when it seems like created by a 5 year old, I also find myself defending abstract/modern art when people are trashing it as being meaningless. So I started wondering what is my real position. Am I a liberal or conservative in terms of art ?

After some thinking I came to a conclusion.

I normally accept and am inquisitive about all abstract art that does not contain human/natural forms. However, when it comes to abstart art with human forms, my liking is dependant on several factors. As I am myself interested in figure drawing & portraits and can manage to draw them with respectable quality, I become irritated when I see human forms in abstract art that seem to be drawn like a 12 year old.*

There is a minute but important aspect here. It only irritates me when I get a ‘clue’ from the artwork that the artist does not know or does not have skills to draw a realistic looking human form. So as far as Picasso or Dali is concerned, I have no problem as I can clearly see from their art that they have made serious attempts to make it look non-realistic. Or sometimes their art does contain abstract concepts pulled out of real forms. So when I visited the Dali Museum or the Pompidou Center in Paris, I loved it. There were no clues that the artists were incapable of drawing, as either they had represented human forms very well or they were so out of touch with reality that they did not look like created by a 5 year old.

So finally, what remains is the mediocre representations that sometimes show clearly that the artist made serious attempt to draw realistically, but when he/she couldn’t, tried to hide under the garb of modern art.

This concept is somewhat similar to the explaination about ‘fashion’ in ‘How the Mind Works‘. The fashion is an attempt by a class (ususally upper class) to redefine itself so that it stands out and is recognizable as ‘elite’. When the high quality fabrices with high quality designs become available at cheap stores for cheap prices, there is no way that the higher class can differentiate itself. So they try out an approach that would not be normally immitated by the following classes for some years to come. Thus they would design ugly and torn, ragged clothes that become elite and expensive. They also seem to look like ‘meaningless’ (just like art) in its peak season.
The modern artists of early times were similar to this high class elites in their art domain. It was no more possible to differentiate oneself with high quality realistic art because of some reasons. There were ample amount of draftsman who could draw or copy high quality work, the world was getting smaller and art from other places would become easily available and would naturally be more attractive because of its novelty. And finally because of invention of photography & printing techniques and the speed with which they were progressing it was easier to produce realistic pictures in short time. it was thus necessary for high skilled artists to differentiate themselves. So they may have resorted to ‘abstract’, as it was difficult to understand and copy a concept than a human form.

However, in due coarse of time, the less elites would learn how to copy the concepts too and how to use the ‘abstract’ medium to sell their art without having good skills in realistic drawing.

This is the only kind in abstract art that irritates me. The poor attempts from unskilled artists to pass on their art as being high quality just because it does not represent reality.

** Note here that I say 12 yr old instead of 5 yr old. What I mean is the forms lack the totally abstract quality of stick figures of 5 year old, and also do not come close to quality realistic drawing. They look like an attempt by a non-artist trying to draw a portrait or human figure.