A pair of glasses left in a corner, a pile of rubbish, and a solid blue painting: place these in a museum and they tend to be carelessly, and, more often than not, disparagingly labelled as ‘modern art’.
One of the complaints that is often rallied against modern art is that it’s pretentious – that it feels unexplained or confusing. Sometimes its simplicity makes the viewer feel that there is little to see, and thus little to understand. This can make you feel as if there is some big joke or secret hidden answer that is deliberately flying miles over your head and laughing at you as it goes.
Luckily, art is not hiding any answer; it is simply what you perceive it to be. There may be hidden meanings lurking within, but meanings do not mean answers, and viewing art isn’t a test. Art expresses an idea, a feeling, or a thought – engaging in art is engaging in conversation.
There is a tendency to use ‘modern’ as a term to describe art, culture, or society that is happening now – or in very recent history – and is therefore often confused with ‘modernism‘. In reality, the modernist art movement is considered to have started as early as the late 1860s, existing in many different forms and interpretations, eventually concluding in the abstract movement. Modernism included artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Claude Monet, artists whose works were mocked in their own time, but are now beloved by the general public.
The end of modernism gave rise to postmodernism, a wonderfully ambiguous term that covers various styles of art that are often disparaged today. In many ways, modernism and postmodernism share elements, and seem especially similar when considering them in comparison to classical art, but postmodernist art was not only a reaction, but a rejection of modernist art, and thus differs from it in many ways.
For the purpose of clarity in this article I will be largely discussing art from the postmodern era and the end of the modern era, and will be using ‘modern art’ as a kind of way to refer to what many people are vaguely gesturing at when they mean to complain about certain art, and perhaps its simplicity, ambiguity, or what they perceive as a lack of technical skill.
Understandably, it can be scary being confronted with the unknown – standing in front of a piece of art, not knowing what to do with it, but all you really have to do is see how you feel when encountering it.
Take Yves Klein, for example, a figure from the notable Nouveau Réalisme movement, most famous for his International Klein Blue series. Klein developed this particular shade, and displayed many versions of monochrome blue paintings. If you stand in front of this massive, looming piece and see how you feel, you can’t get over just how blue it is. Though it’s the kind of painting that might be heckled for its lack of meaning, derided as too simple and showing no technical skill, Klein developed the shade himself, and that is no easy feat.
Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? is a series of abstract paintings created by Barnett Newman. Famously, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? III was slashed with a knife by attacker Gerard Jan van Bladeren in 1986, proving, perhaps, that some people were very afraid of red, yellow, and blue. For all that some might say that postmodern art is empty, it seems to me that Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? induced such strong feelings in Bladeren that he was moved to physical action.
Alternatively, Tracey Emin’s My Bed is a provocative postmodern favourite that displays an unmade bed surrounded by various trappings of life. Empty bottles, medicine packets, dirty clothes, and newspapers are among some of the items accumulated around the bed of someone perhaps not able to look after themselves. This can be understood and felt as you react to it; perhaps it disgusts you; perhaps you relate to it. You might revere the confidence of showing a vulnerable and intimate look into one of the most personal spaces of our lives. It might tell you a story of the comings and goings of that person, an organically crafted constellation accidentally made by someone just living their life.
It is these strong reactions to modern art and these kinds of artists that make them so interesting to engage with. Whilst classical paintings with their beautiful aesthetics may be seen as ‘real’ art that we feel we understand better, there is a difference between aesthetics and art, and art doesn’t need to be beautiful. Equally, many of us are not trained in classical knowledge, and nor do any of us live within the context that it was created, meaning that we often understand classical artwork much less than we think we do. Modern art, however, is made for you, so take a big gulp and dive in.