An interpretation of art for the analytical mind
web.mit.edu
web.mit.edu
It's worth mentioning that refreshing the page loads another image and description in a random combination.
Or have I been misreading Caillebotte's "Paris Street; Rainy Day" (1876-1877)[1] as "High Impressionism" when all along it's really been "An Abstraction of Classicism" ;)
[1] http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/citi/images/standard/We...
Or, as someone once eloquently described modern physics, "It looks like ancient Greek to anyone but another physicist or an ancient Greek".
The interesting part, to me, isn't the "gibberish", but rather the hostile, arrogant reaction to its existence. Rather than saying "Huh, I really don't understand the inner language of this sophisticated subject with a deep history", people react with "Wow, those jerks with their inner language are just faking it to act better than us". And it's not just fine art - it's true of just about any complex ideas with deep communities. You'll see outsiders say the same about startups, rap, poetry, whatever.
On the other hand, I can't help feeling that art language is deliberately obscure and elitist and its purpose is not designed to communicate objective truth because there is no objective truth to communicate. Perhaps the emperor does have clothes and I'm just too ignorant to see them.
The purpose of the language of art theory and criticism isn't to communicate objective truth, because it's subjective truth. But just because a truth is subjective does not make it less real, or less meaningful. Generally, we are limited to the subjective reality of our perceptions. Art theory is the study of perceptions, and a great deal of modern art is more or less experimenting with perception itself. Knocking it as "bollocks" because it's not expressed in formal logic or mathematics is both subjective and non-rigorous. Or, as the Dude would say, "That's just, like, your opinion, man." If you don't understand the language, that's fine, and if you don't care to understand it, that's fine too, but calling it bollocks without understanding or caring to understand it is itself bollocks.
If you start digging around in philosophy, there's a strong argument within phenomenology that physics itself is subjective. Rigorous language doesn't mean the subject of the language is objective. Godel demonstrated the limits of language against objective nature in his incompleteness theorem as well (basically, Godel proved that, within any system, there are statements that are true that cannot be proven). But I digress.
When I read a story, hear a song or watch a movie and I might _feel_ something or my world-view may have been moved. But I look at a painting or sculpture and I feel nothing. It doesn’t feel right that a critic has to explain to me that my perception is being experimented with.
Art is also cultural, in the sense that only members of the culture really grok a piece of art. If you're an American, you naturally understand cowboy movies. But samurai films, which are in many ways the same thing, may feel strange to you. Most art is made only for people culturally similar to the artist. This includes fine art and modern art. If you aren't part of the modern art culture, you'll never get it, any more than if you're not Japanese you'll never understand eating natto (ugh, disgusting stuff, to even my openminded and educated American palate).
Ultimately, though, we're all moved by things that feel personal to us. I've spent probably several hours in total just staring at a particular Jackson Pollock painting (Mural, University of Iowa collection). It's a profoundly emotional experience for me. You'd probably see a bunch of green, yellow, and black stripes and blobs. That's okay. That's how most people feel about it. That doesn't mean you're dumb, and it doesn't mean I'm pretentious. It just means we're different people, with different motivations.
Universal art is usually dull art.
Do you spend much time studying art, or reading art criticism? If not: well then, there's your answer.
http://www.eyemagazine.com/opinion/article/agenda-artspeak
http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/international_art...