How can I develop an appreciation for contemporary art?

How can I develop an appreciation for contemporary art?

Janson's History of Art is a pretty common and respected introductionary textbook in the field of art history.

Libgen has it.

Brain damage would help.

Thank you.

Cut off your testicles

consume a lot of soy

Study the Talmud.

Stop looking at photographs and go to an actual museum.

The sistine chapel may look very beautiful from a photo in a book, that doesn't mean it's as pretty in real life. The painting is faded, using unsaturated colours and quite an ugly palette. Most "realist" artworks only work in pictures, when you see the actual object it is not so impressive

Le modern art is so baaad meme stems mainly from philistines trying to pose as art literates, people raised by "contemplating art" as in "looking at pictures on the internet or artbooks", but who never actually saw most of the things they hate so bad.

Also, there is contemporary art which does not amount to blobs on canvas. There is all sort of stuff going on on the scene.

>The sistine chapel
>quite an ugly palette

There is nothing remotely valuable or noteworthy artwise in a museum. The best pieces are in private collection or cathedrals.

>The sistine chapel may look very beautiful from a photo in a book, that doesn't mean it's as pretty in real life.
> when you see the actual object it is not so impressive

Holy fucking shit how can somebody be this fucking retarded? Do the world a favor and jump off a bridge.

How can you? How stupid or deluded you have to ask yourself "What is valuable about something so plainly shitty..."?

You might as well ask yourself "How can I develop an appreciation for baby diaper ads?". Your fatal error is that you're not even wise enough to figure out what's worth developing an appreciation for. What is going to be your return on appreciating contemporary art? Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. If you look at an empty field, at least you see patterns of life and patterns of behavior modulate day by day and season by season. If you look at a boring piece of contemporary art, you're seeing a blank slate so worthless people can project their own fantasies of megalomania and social status.

"What? You just don't understand how emotional these blobs are you fucking plebian!"

>go to actual museum
>contemporary art still looks like shit
CONCEPTUALIZE MY AWE

Have you ever even gone there?

Yes

CONT

See, this is the sort of jackass you have to avoid in life. Some brainlet who bowed to social evaluation. "Surely it means a lot if a lot of people say it means a lot!"

> There is all sort of stuff going on on the scene.

There is all sorts of stuff going on ANYWHERE. It doesn't mean I have to debase myself so rich people can store even more capital into art! A museum with contemporary art has less meaningful content than a visit to a slaughterhouse!

> "Surely it means a lot if a lot of people say it means a lot!"
but sistine chapel received the hails of joy from the masses, whereas avant garde art is considered elitist and niche?

Because avant garde art speaks to nothing in the imagination and experience of people. Unless "blobs of shit color" are supposed to correlate with the "vibrant" sights of urban centers.

You also have to realize that the CIA literally funded a number of abstract artists (including Pollock) as a counter to Soviet Social Realism. Avant garde was, and still is, pushed by elitists. The Sistine Chapel might have been commissioned by an elite but it feeds the mind and eye far more than what our "elites" peddle before us.

it's one of my dreams to go to a modern art museum with a really upset stomach and walk around until I feel the need to vomit on something
looks like someone beat me to the punch with this one

Learn about modern art movements, identify what elements contemporary artists are commenting / deconstructing, and why.

Learn to appreciate the basic structures of art (line, form, color, light); altogether the content and the context.

t. le salon

>squirts paint out of asshole onto canvas

Firstly, contemporary art covers a very large range of works. Not all of them are random colours on the wall. There are interesting things that have been done with sculptures, photography, spaces, lights, sounds, paint and combinations of all of them.

Secondly, you need to stop trying to "get the message" 95% of the time there is no message or the message requires extensive knowledge of the artist and the context of their work which is really pretentious bullshit. Just go take a look at a piece, take it in and your first feelings are probably the best ones to interpret.

Make up your own opinion on what you see

>go to an actual museum
I did, and 80% of the modern art is fucking trash
Shit like OPs image I find okay, but when its just a white canvas with a black stripe and people are holding it up like it's fucking visionary then I just scratch my head.
I swear half of modern art is just the artists wondering how far they can go while still getting chumps to buy their shit. Like that Italian guy who sold his own shit in a can and it's now worth several hundred thousand dollars

>wow
>much art!

In the case of that specific painting: instead of looking for some ultra deep meaning and symbolism, look at how the colours are intertwined, the kind of patterns & shapes they form etc, how they contrast one another etc. For example, I really like the top right part, but the rest of it is pretty meh.

It's a bit difficult to explain this to someone else.

Art died in 1910

Art never died, the art establishment did.

pretty much, the old gatekeepers of what was "art" were toppled, leading to the ever further pushing of boundaries of today

Very good reply, thanks.

Probably the dumbest post on Veeky Forums this month, and merely a fetishism of private ownership itself, for its own sake.

Start eating lots of soy.