I'm guessing many of you know where I’m coming from when I say that modern art isn’t exactly easy to grasp, in fact it often doesn’t make much sense at all. We’ve all been there, being at a well conditioned art gallery in some bigger city and you decide to check out the modern section because modern sounds like a good change from all the churchy paintings you’ve been staring at from a pre-renaissance age and when you get to the actual modern exhibit you end up starting at a bunch of dots or single color canvases and feel more alienated than you did anywhere else in the museum. If art was modern, why is it often the most difficult to relate to and often the least popular with a larger audience?

This is not going to make you get modern art. I honestly can’t really say that you will ever “get” modern art and I don’t know that I will either. In many ways, art is supposed to transcend written word, since if I could say everything that the piece is supposed to mean, would there be any need to have the actual painting or sculpture?

I think the biggest questions you need to ask yourself before you completely disregard all modern art is this: Do you understand art? Have you really taken the time to understand any art history? How many paintings or sculptures could you instantly recognize and the artist who created them? Do you know why artists like Monet, Van Gogh, Michelangelo and Picasso are regarded so highly in art history?

My point here is not to try to blame you but to say that art isn’t supposed to be something you get right away. The accessibility of a piece should be towards everyone, but it shouldn’t always be easy. Often, especially with modern art, a larger base of previous knowledge might be the key to understanding another piece, since art often builds upon itself in a continuous discourse of expression.

A great example I always think of regarding this topic was the rise of impressionism in contrast to the traditionally accepted realists. Artists like Monet and Van Gogh weren’t instantly recognized as geniuses. Contemporary art communities at the time regarded their lack of realism as a lack of talent and effort, rather than a completely new way of viewing and creating art and how art expressed certain moments or ideas.

Take this example of Claude Monet’s Impression Sunrise. Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd? Are the details a bit strange, fuzzy or blurred? Why is the sun such a different color than the rest of the painting?

These are all questions which are key to understanding why a piece like this was so important to art history and why Monet was such a revolutionary figure. The realists liked to depict reality, in this case a harbor at sunrise, in a way which was instantly recognizable, like a photograph. Clearly this painting looks nothing like a photograph of the same harbor at sunrise. That’s not really the point. A photograph of this harbor at sunrise doesn't really capture how the moment feels the same way a painting like this does.

The contrast of the bright orange sun with the homogeneity of the blue of the shadows creates a image which evokes warmth, not from the entire canvas, but from a single point on the canvas. A realist painter would have to of used some brighter colors to depict the rest of the harbor, and this would've lessened the juxtaposition which is so raw in Monet’s piece. By limiting the specificity and sharpness of color and detail with the harbor below the sun, and then making the sun sharp and bright, a feeling of warmth spurs from the orange, creating a surrogate of experience which matches that of actually sitting at a harbor at sunrise, feeling the warmth from the sun start as a small dot in the distance before slowly permeating to the surrounding atmosphere.

Impressionists like Monet were concerned about how an image feels and how it is seen rather than how it actually might be. Without this focus and understanding of what impressionist painters were trying to achieve, wouldn’t it be easy to disregard Impression Sunrise as a poor painting?

I know what you’re thinking, just because the impressionists weren’t accepted right away doesn’t mean that contemporary artists are in the same boat. Maybe contemporary artists are bad simply because they’re bad, right?

I bring up impressionism because it highlights a good point in that for an image to convey a message, like it should do with art, it requires a viewer who is willing to expand their perception of the piece beyond the obvious. It is with this attitude which we should approach modern art: there is meaning in the image which can only be found if you are willing to dwell on it and use your expanded imagination.

Also, comparing contemporary art to art of the past can be problematic, simply because the past is a much longer period of time than the post 1970’s era art which might be considered the contemporary period, and if your beef is with the most contemporary of art out there today, it might only be a period in human history of the past decade or so. Think about all the artists who lived, had careers, died, and were forgotten about simply because their work didn’t carry with it the same merit as the notable names of the past. The only art you ever even see of the past is the best, because nobody cared enough to keep anything else around.

Today art is far more prevalent than it was long ago, so the likeliness for you to encounter great art is slim simply because there is so much being created at this moment and time hasn’t come around to sort out the artist with lesser skill because it is too new. That piece of art you see which looks like a third grader had a tantrum while in an art studio may be bad simply because it is, and many years from now nobody will know it existed because it wasn’t good enough to keep around.

This being said, that doesn’t mean you should disregard all modern art simply because there's so much of it. Art serves a very specific function in society to express and convey the human condition, which serves to keep societal consciousness healthy. We should train ourselves to be better at viewing art so we can understand what makes a piece of art “good” and “bad”, or how this dichotomy might be already too arbitrary and narrow-minded.

My main point is this, if you think a piece of art is bad, can you prove it? What does it mean to prove “art” to be poor? There isn’t an exact answer to this other than saying “it’s shit” or “it looks like a third grader drew it” really isn’t saying anything at all. Can you understand where the artist was trying to go but see how they ultimately failed? Is a painting poor just because it is or because the abstract medium the artist used failed to really portray their subject in a nuanced and compelling way?

I’m not a expert on the subject but that’s maybe why you can relate. There is so much about art that I don’t understand, and that’s something I should be excited about rather than alienated by. I hope that I can come to understand contemporary art better, and you should too.The point is not always to push art away but to reach out and try to be a better listener, a better viewer and a better reader. Viewing art should be a purist of great importance done with the utmost effort.

I don’t think every piece of art I encounter is great, or changes my outlook on things at all, but there will be times, maybe in a museum, maybe sitting on my laptop, where I will come across something which changes my outlook on things and that’s what we should be striving to glimpse everyday.