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I feel like I’m looking at a magic eye ( I also haven’t yet been able to ‘’see’’ one of those ) when I see art like that linked here. Is there a trick to apprec

I feel like I’m looking at a magic eye ( I also haven’t yet been able to ‘’see’’ one of those ) when I see art like that linked here. Is there a trick to appreciating it beyond what I can see?

bcraven 6y ago
Read the associated text, the art is specifically and purposefully not meant to be "easy".
jahnu 6y ago
The best way to appreciate it is to learn the history and immerse yourself in the culture. Contemporary art is not typically created for instant gratification or understanding but rather for an audience familiar with the world within which it sits. Like Free Jazz or heavily peated whiskies there is a path into appreciation that isn't necessarily short. Also it just isn't for everyone. I love much of those things but struggle to get anything from contemporary dance. Precisely because I haven't invested much time or effort into it. Finding a local contemporary artist scene and socialising with these people can be extremely rewarding, especially if you yourself are not a full time artist.
- bitexploder 6y ago
  Art to me is basically history in picture form. I think that is why it continues to have intrinsic value year after year. Art on its own can be really boring, but in context it can be quite interesting.
acjohnson55 6y ago
I can relate. I actually used to work at Artsy (the company who published this article), and before I worked there, I felt much the same way. What I learned after being immersed in the art world is that occasionally, art will "speak" to me immediately. But more often, it grows on me as I understand the context of the art and who made it. This is definitely the case for me with Basquiat, whose work can look like childish scribbles at first glance. In my farewell email to my Artsy coworkers, I wrote that as I really began to engage with the art world in my time there, I realized I had gained a whole new layer of perception. I was seeing new references and callbacks everywhere in the world around me. So what I would say is that if you feel like it's going over your head and want to invest the time, it can be extremely rewarding to go down the rabbit hole. You can do this by reading articles, watching documentaries, visiting exhibitions, and finding spaces inhabited by enthusiasts. Some things to check out: - The book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark - The film Exit Through The Gift Shop
- phnofive 6y ago
  Thanks, I appreciate your guidance. I’m admittedly self-conditioned to snap judgements on aesthetics, and despite reading the article, that’s probably what blocks me from getting it. Glad to know there may be a cure!
  - nwienert 6y ago
    Keep in mind you’re living in a post-Basquiat world, he’s been ingested by the culture, his novelty is hard to feel now. Not that novelty is everything, there’s still obviously a lot of really interesting latent talent. But he also was making statements and refuting trends of his time, and all great artists innovate. It’s like seeing Rothko now, harder to appreciate because there’s been so much after Rothko, and a lot of that style was successful because of him since. In a way a lot of artists reveal new paths, unique ways of seeing the world, so you need the full historical context to appreciate them. Kanye was revolutionary in hip hop, but today it’s easy to hear him and say so what? But he invented many of the popular sounds now.
    - devilduck 6y ago
      I agree with this, except the part about Kanye inventing anything. I'd like to know what exactly you hear in "popular sounds" that you think he invented? There's almost certainly someone else who did it first.
secondcoming 6y ago
I felt the same about reading poetry when in school. None of it ever clicked with me and for exams ("Explain why this poem is great") I would just regurgitate various points teachers and books had told me about the poems. I didn't typically agree with any of it, and didn't care about it either. Regarding art, I never studied it but I have two books. One is a collection of photos taken by Francesca Woodman, and another is on about Art Brut. I quite like the philosophy behind Art Brut and had never heard of it before buying the book. Something clicked.
op03 6y ago
First step involves asking yourself what is Beauty? To You. Most people are unconscious of what they themselves find beautiful. What are those things that have made something inexplicably stir in your head? If things on that list (which varies massively from person to person) doesn't overlap with something in front of you, it doesn't matter what tricks of appreciation anyone presents.
keiferski 6y ago
Basquiat in particular requires knowledge of 1970s-80s New York, the birth of hip-hop culture and graffiti, the art world, and a whole lot of other things. In short, Basquiat is appreciated because he was a visceral, anti-establishment, extremely young guy whose work was raw and real, in comparison to the somewhat corporatized minimal aesthetic [1] that was popular at the time. He was also a really good storyteller (most famous artists are) and crafted a great narrative around his life. Basquiat's work is basically "80s NYC" in high art form. There was so much creativity coming out of the city at that time, it was really magical, especially compared to Lower Manhattan today. If I had to make a tech world comparison, it might be something like early Apple Computer against IBM. Hippies in garages vs. the suits. The film Basquiat is pretty good dramatization of his life. So is Downtown 81, which is a creative film starring Basquiat himself. Both are on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn1Q44H2QyE&list=PL411118_g6AQsUKSzdBF0pJGyuN49iaXL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn1Q44H2QyE&list=PL411118_g6... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ibOFlSM6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ibOFlSM6o [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_(visual_arts) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_(visual_arts)
- TigeriusKirk 6y ago
  I came of age in the 1980s. While I didn't live in NYC, there was a lot of crossover between the New York crowd and the artsy people in my city so I got a lot of exposure to it. The strange thing is that while I was aware of Basquiat and numerous other NYC artists of the era, I didn't think much of them. They didn't seem special to me because they were just what was going on at the time. I have a specific memory of when the biopic came out and wondering why they made a movie about Basquiat. I had no real frame of reference. Same thing with music, which was even more of a crossover locally for me than art. It's only been in recent years I've been able to look back and see what was going on and why it was special. It's mostly a matter of exposure to a lot of other art and music, gaining a lot of context and perspective. Makes me wonder what I'm not appreciating enough today.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    > Makes me wonder what I'm not appreciating enough today. There is a lot of creativity going on with video. Especially in the budding genre of "fashion film", which is kind of reinventing the art of film to have less narrative and more visuals. To me, it feels like (what I imagine) the early days of film felt like. Stuff like this seems totally new and fresh to me: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54BZcQOlhx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54BZcQOlhx0 - https://vimeo.com/channels/fashionfilms https://vimeo.com/channels/fashionfilms - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaDs4bekfOXTOQpYpptWowZeyVj0H2-Oy https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaDs4bekfOXTOQpYpptWo... Nick Knight and his site ShowStudio are at the forefront of this: https://www.showstudio.com https://www.showstudio.com
devilduck 6y ago
It's ok to just not like something that is widely seen as beautiful art. I enjoy Basquiat but his work certainly hasn't moved me as much as someone like Beksinski. It doesn't make you a dullard or anything for not appreciating Basquiat. Can you believe there are people who think Pollack is trash too?
itronitron 6y ago
There is no trick to appreciating it, just that people that own work by a particular artist have a vested interest in talking that artist up and getting others to 'appreciate it.' The best advice I can give is to spend time with a particular work of art. Go to a museum or gallery, pick a specific painting or sculpture, and then come back to visit the same work of art multiple times, preferably on different days of the week, at different times and under different lighting conditions. A good work of art will show you something different every time you visit.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- acjohnson55 6y ago
  Respectfully, I think you're missing an important piece here. Much modern and contemporary art is not going to speak to most people on its own. Art serves as a physical token of something bigger -- a shared experience of culture, time, place, narrative, or whatever. Sometimes, the technical craftsmanship of the piece is self-evident. Sometimes, it's not. Sometimes, the craftsmanship, or lack thereof, is completely beside the point. One of the things that really changed my experience of art was doing guided tours at museums. Invariably, I come away with insights that would not have come to me, no matter how long or how many occasions I might have visited a piece.
mtalantikite 6y ago
As some others have noted, having context for the art will deepen your understanding of it, which might make you appreciate it more or maybe even appreciate it less. Either way it'll help lead you into the work. For an artist like Jean-Michel Basquiat it's especially important to understand it in the context of what it meant for a young black man to create art in an art world that was (and is still) predominately white. Keeping that in mind, take a look at the "Untitled (Rinso)" work that is shown in the article. Rinso was a brand of soap that introduced a blue powder in the 1950s and had advertisements that would say things like "Whiter Washing" with smiling blonde women. You have his infamous crown icon, with "No Suh No Suh" under it. All of these elements can help lead you to see the commentary he's making. There was a documentary a number of years ago about him called "The Radiant Child", which might be a good place to start.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nicbou 6y ago
I'm not an artist, but I have grown to appreciate art more and more. I think you learn to appreciate art the same way you learn to appreciate any other product. The first step is to accept that some things just aren't your cup of tea, even if all the true fans love it. I don't like Holy Motors, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, and IPAs. Popularity is a signal, not an obligation. The second and most important step is to learn how the sausage is made. It gives you a much greater appreciation for the final product. My recent interest in gardening completely changed my forest walks. It quite literally made me see the forest for the trees. Likewise, I learned to appreciate film by paying more attention to the camera work, the sound design, and the many other things that make great movies great. YouTube has many great video essays that will show you a lot more than meets the eye [0]. The third step is to understand the context behind a work of art. My favourite example is Guernica by Picasso [1]. Look at it, then listen to this [2] from 1:12:54 to 1:16:00, then look at it again. You will get a far different impression of that painting. If you grew up in the 90s, the sound of a computer modem probably elicits some sort of emotional response to you. It would seem weird if you robbed the phenomenon from its context. That's also true for art. That, or date an art student for a few years. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-woNlmVcdjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-woNlmVcdjc [1] https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernic... [2] https://soundcloud.com/james-hewston/blitz-logical-insanity https://soundcloud.com/james-hewston/blitz-logical-insanity

bcraven 6y ago

Read the associated text, the art is specifically and purposefully not meant to be "easy".

jahnu 6y ago

The best way to appreciate it is to learn the history and immerse yourself in the culture. Contemporary art is not typically created for instant gratification or understanding but rather for an audience familiar with the world within which it sits. Like Free Jazz or heavily peated whiskies there is a path into appreciation that isn't necessarily short. Also it just isn't for everyone. I love much of those things but struggle to get anything from contemporary dance. Precisely because I haven't invested much time or effort into it. Finding a local contemporary artist scene and socialising with these people can be extremely rewarding, especially if you yourself are not a full time artist.

bitexploder 6y ago
Art to me is basically history in picture form. I think that is why it continues to have intrinsic value year after year. Art on its own can be really boring, but in context it can be quite interesting.

acjohnson55 6y ago

I can relate. I actually used to work at Artsy (the company who published this article), and before I worked there, I felt much the same way. What I learned after being immersed in the art world is that occasionally, art will "speak" to me immediately. But more often, it grows on me as I understand the context of the art and who made it. This is definitely the case for me with Basquiat, whose work can look like childish scribbles at first glance. In my farewell email to my Artsy coworkers, I wrote that as I really began to engage with the art world in my time there, I realized I had gained a whole new layer of perception. I was seeing new references and callbacks everywhere in the world around me. So what I would say is that if you feel like it's going over your head and want to invest the time, it can be extremely rewarding to go down the rabbit hole. You can do this by reading articles, watching documentaries, visiting exhibitions, and finding spaces inhabited by enthusiasts. Some things to check out: - The book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark - The film Exit Through The Gift Shop

phnofive 6y ago
Thanks, I appreciate your guidance. I’m admittedly self-conditioned to snap judgements on aesthetics, and despite reading the article, that’s probably what blocks me from getting it. Glad to know there may be a cure!
- nwienert 6y ago
  Keep in mind you’re living in a post-Basquiat world, he’s been ingested by the culture, his novelty is hard to feel now. Not that novelty is everything, there’s still obviously a lot of really interesting latent talent. But he also was making statements and refuting trends of his time, and all great artists innovate. It’s like seeing Rothko now, harder to appreciate because there’s been so much after Rothko, and a lot of that style was successful because of him since. In a way a lot of artists reveal new paths, unique ways of seeing the world, so you need the full historical context to appreciate them. Kanye was revolutionary in hip hop, but today it’s easy to hear him and say so what? But he invented many of the popular sounds now.
  - devilduck 6y ago
    I agree with this, except the part about Kanye inventing anything. I'd like to know what exactly you hear in "popular sounds" that you think he invented? There's almost certainly someone else who did it first.

secondcoming 6y ago

I felt the same about reading poetry when in school. None of it ever clicked with me and for exams ("Explain why this poem is great") I would just regurgitate various points teachers and books had told me about the poems. I didn't typically agree with any of it, and didn't care about it either. Regarding art, I never studied it but I have two books. One is a collection of photos taken by Francesca Woodman, and another is on about Art Brut. I quite like the philosophy behind Art Brut and had never heard of it before buying the book. Something clicked.

op03 6y ago

First step involves asking yourself what is Beauty? To You. Most people are unconscious of what they themselves find beautiful. What are those things that have made something inexplicably stir in your head? If things on that list (which varies massively from person to person) doesn't overlap with something in front of you, it doesn't matter what tricks of appreciation anyone presents.

keiferski 6y ago

Basquiat in particular requires knowledge of 1970s-80s New York, the birth of hip-hop culture and graffiti, the art world, and a whole lot of other things. In short, Basquiat is appreciated because he was a visceral, anti-establishment, extremely young guy whose work was raw and real, in comparison to the somewhat corporatized minimal aesthetic [1] that was popular at the time. He was also a really good storyteller (most famous artists are) and crafted a great narrative around his life. Basquiat's work is basically "80s NYC" in high art form. There was so much creativity coming out of the city at that time, it was really magical, especially compared to Lower Manhattan today. If I had to make a tech world comparison, it might be something like early Apple Computer against IBM. Hippies in garages vs. the suits. The film Basquiat is pretty good dramatization of his life. So is Downtown 81, which is a creative film starring Basquiat himself. Both are on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn1Q44H2QyE&list=PL411118_g6AQsUKSzdBF0pJGyuN49iaXL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn1Q44H2QyE&list=PL411118_g6... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ibOFlSM6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ibOFlSM6o [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_(visual_arts) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_(visual_arts)

TigeriusKirk 6y ago
I came of age in the 1980s. While I didn't live in NYC, there was a lot of crossover between the New York crowd and the artsy people in my city so I got a lot of exposure to it. The strange thing is that while I was aware of Basquiat and numerous other NYC artists of the era, I didn't think much of them. They didn't seem special to me because they were just what was going on at the time. I have a specific memory of when the biopic came out and wondering why they made a movie about Basquiat. I had no real frame of reference. Same thing with music, which was even more of a crossover locally for me than art. It's only been in recent years I've been able to look back and see what was going on and why it was special. It's mostly a matter of exposure to a lot of other art and music, gaining a lot of context and perspective. Makes me wonder what I'm not appreciating enough today.
- keiferski 6y ago
  > Makes me wonder what I'm not appreciating enough today. There is a lot of creativity going on with video. Especially in the budding genre of "fashion film", which is kind of reinventing the art of film to have less narrative and more visuals. To me, it feels like (what I imagine) the early days of film felt like. Stuff like this seems totally new and fresh to me: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54BZcQOlhx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54BZcQOlhx0 - https://vimeo.com/channels/fashionfilms https://vimeo.com/channels/fashionfilms - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaDs4bekfOXTOQpYpptWowZeyVj0H2-Oy https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaDs4bekfOXTOQpYpptWo... Nick Knight and his site ShowStudio are at the forefront of this: https://www.showstudio.com https://www.showstudio.com

devilduck 6y ago

It's ok to just not like something that is widely seen as beautiful art. I enjoy Basquiat but his work certainly hasn't moved me as much as someone like Beksinski. It doesn't make you a dullard or anything for not appreciating Basquiat. Can you believe there are people who think Pollack is trash too?

itronitron 6y ago

There is no trick to appreciating it, just that people that own work by a particular artist have a vested interest in talking that artist up and getting others to 'appreciate it.' The best advice I can give is to spend time with a particular work of art. Go to a museum or gallery, pick a specific painting or sculpture, and then come back to visit the same work of art multiple times, preferably on different days of the week, at different times and under different lighting conditions. A good work of art will show you something different every time you visit.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
acjohnson55 6y ago
Respectfully, I think you're missing an important piece here. Much modern and contemporary art is not going to speak to most people on its own. Art serves as a physical token of something bigger -- a shared experience of culture, time, place, narrative, or whatever. Sometimes, the technical craftsmanship of the piece is self-evident. Sometimes, it's not. Sometimes, the craftsmanship, or lack thereof, is completely beside the point. One of the things that really changed my experience of art was doing guided tours at museums. Invariably, I come away with insights that would not have come to me, no matter how long or how many occasions I might have visited a piece.

mtalantikite 6y ago

As some others have noted, having context for the art will deepen your understanding of it, which might make you appreciate it more or maybe even appreciate it less. Either way it'll help lead you into the work. For an artist like Jean-Michel Basquiat it's especially important to understand it in the context of what it meant for a young black man to create art in an art world that was (and is still) predominately white. Keeping that in mind, take a look at the "Untitled (Rinso)" work that is shown in the article. Rinso was a brand of soap that introduced a blue powder in the 1950s and had advertisements that would say things like "Whiter Washing" with smiling blonde women. You have his infamous crown icon, with "No Suh No Suh" under it. All of these elements can help lead you to see the commentary he's making. There was a documentary a number of years ago about him called "The Radiant Child", which might be a good place to start.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nicbou 6y ago

I'm not an artist, but I have grown to appreciate art more and more. I think you learn to appreciate art the same way you learn to appreciate any other product. The first step is to accept that some things just aren't your cup of tea, even if all the true fans love it. I don't like Holy Motors, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, and IPAs. Popularity is a signal, not an obligation. The second and most important step is to learn how the sausage is made. It gives you a much greater appreciation for the final product. My recent interest in gardening completely changed my forest walks. It quite literally made me see the forest for the trees. Likewise, I learned to appreciate film by paying more attention to the camera work, the sound design, and the many other things that make great movies great. YouTube has many great video essays that will show you a lot more than meets the eye [0]. The third step is to understand the context behind a work of art. My favourite example is Guernica by Picasso [1]. Look at it, then listen to this [2] from 1:12:54 to 1:16:00, then look at it again. You will get a far different impression of that painting. If you grew up in the 90s, the sound of a computer modem probably elicits some sort of emotional response to you. It would seem weird if you robbed the phenomenon from its context. That's also true for art. That, or date an art student for a few years. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-woNlmVcdjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-woNlmVcdjc [1] https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernic... [2] https://soundcloud.com/james-hewston/blitz-logical-insanity https://soundcloud.com/james-hewston/blitz-logical-insanity