Fake it til you make it: A philistine’s self-guided journey to loving art
Visual art is an interesting field. On one hand, it should be simple and accessible by everyone with eyes, but on the other hand, it’s perceived as enormously pretentious and requiring a substantial background to engage with. Recently, contemporary art has often come under attack as the modern art market is deemed corrupt, then becoming conflated with the art itself. Absurd price tags, works that require the technical proficiency of a five-year old, esoteric explanations of its meaning, and larger-than-life celebrity artists all contribute to the perception of art as a plaything for an out-of-touch pretentious elite. That’s what I had thought nearly a decade ago now, when I first started looking at art with intent.
My journey has its origins, as most of my romantic endeavours do, in Paris where I studied for a semester. Though I did not know it at the time, I was also studying art. It is not necessary to be in Paris (or New York, or London, or Milan, for that matter) to appreciate art in the Western tradition, but it is infinitely helpful to have free access to a collection of museums displaying a broad range of art. Not negligible was the constant stream of friends from out of town that I would ferry to the Louvre, the D’Orsay, and the Pompidou, and my willingness to visit the museums as a free activity, and a great place for a stroll. Over my lifetime thus far, I have probably been to the Louvre some thirty times, and twenty each for the other two grand museums in Paris. Despite not knowing anything about art, the one thing I did have for it was worship for it; strictly speaking, this is also unnecessary, but it helps in achieving the requisite exposure.
Throughout my time in Paris then, I picked up much about art. I learned to tell the difference between a Renoir and a Cezanne, Saint Sebastian and Saint Jerome. Paris had seen the most important art movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its museums stocked art from much before and thereafter. The contrast of Classical and Neoclassical sculptures in the Louvre, the progression of Impressionism in the D’Orsay, and the birth of Modernism in the Pompidou. My education was further buttressed by a couple of weeks in Italy and a weekend in London where I learned to tell the Botticelli from Caravaggio, and the Virgin from Magdelene. I read the plaques, watched a few video essays, and borrowed the audio tours. More than that, however, it was the art itself that taught me everything I needed to know. But honestly, I still didn’t really understand art, much less like it at this point. I just felt like I was supposed to.
After a semester of idolatrous appreciation of art, it turned out that I had learned a thing or two. More than telling a Modigliani from a Mondrian, I could identify either artist hanging on a gallery wall. I could identify the artwork of many prominent artists from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as point out themes and mythologies from earlier pieces. This made visiting museums more interesting, a little game for myself, and an opportunity to show off in front of my friends. My proudest moment was when I accurately differentiated a Picasso from a Braque, with a bit of luck, certainly. At this point, I genuinely enjoyed going to museums, but not necessarily for the right reasons, and was still a bit off from loving art.
It was only earlier this year, when I was in Copenhagen, that I realized I enjoyed art for art’s sake. I visited the national museum of Denmark, and discovered that I liked looking at all the art in there, classical and contemporary. More than recognizing works, I liked interacting with them: noticing parts of them, wondering why things were the way they were, and realizing what they made me think of. There weren’t that many world-renowned pieces nor could I name many of the artists, since the museum focused on Danish and Scandinavian art. Yet I enjoyed myself all the same: I can’t explain why I liked the museum so much except that I had a really good time looking at the art. This time in particular, I found myself drawn to contemporary work.
Whenever I think of contemporary art, two memories come to mind. The first is when my sister had told me that she liked twentieth century and contemporary art more because she was able to understand it better. Yeah right, I had thought at the time. Rotting shark carcasses? Streaks of colour on unprimed canvas? Rearranged everyday objects? But now I have begun to agree with my sister. Newer stuff just has more to say. The second is a scene from The French Dispatch, where the character played by Adrien Brody is trying to convince his uncles to invest in modern art.
“One way to tell if a modern artist actually knows what he’s doing is to get him to paint you a horse or a flower or a sinking battleship or something that’s actually supposed to look like the thing it’s actually supposed to look like. Can he do it? … … The point is: he could paint this beautifully if he wanted to, but he thinks this is better. And I think I agree with him.”
By no means do I agree with this satirical description of modern art, but at the same time, there is a kernel of truth to it. There is much conversation about the meaning of modern art, how technical skill is secondary to artistic message, how accurate representation is no longer important with the advent of the camera. But like Adrien Brody’s character, even though I don’t profess to understand all, most, or even a handful of contemporary art, it’s often more fun. In art, everything is tied to a place and a time, and removed from their milieu, is meaningless; without knowing what constraints, norms, and antecedents an artist is working from or against, it is hard to appreciate an artwork. As someone living in the present, but armed with a basic working knowledge of art history, contemporary art is much more appreciable.
And so, I’ve become a pretentious art snob, worshipping at the shrine of obscene sculptures with equally obscene price tags, keeping the bubble afloat. From what I’ve written, getting to this position seems like a significant undertaking: difficult if one isn’t surrounded by great art, and choses not to worship these bourgeoise modes of expression that require trivial knowledge. But neither is really important to art after all, they just happened to be the way that I learned to love it. If one connects with art without being bludgeoned over the head with great historical artwork, all the better for it. But give art a chance, even if it’s for the wrong reasons: keep your eyes focused and your mind open. You might accidentally fall in love.
