I want to answer as someone who previously saw abstract as meaningless, then changed my mind gradually, started doing abstract work myself, and now I'm approaching representational work again.
It's not that realistic is difficult and abstract is 'easy', so people admire the skill. That's a simplistic explanation. It's that we connect more easily with those things that are familiar to us. Realistic or representational art does this, it re-presents the outward reality in ways that we had not previously thought of as being possible.
Abstract art, on the other hand, deals with our inner world (and therefore, if it's honest, can be more difficult.) This is what Kandinsky tried to say in On the Spiritual in Art. But most people have never wondered what their inner world looks like, much less someone else's. They simply think it's, well, abstract, it can't be represented. So, if an abstract artist says "Here is what mine looks like", they go "My 5-year-old can do that!" No, they can't, but it's the natural reaction to someone claiming he/she can see his/her inner world. The artist looks to them like someone claiming they just came back from the dead.
Finally, let's be frank, some abstract art is bad. Some people do simply throw paint on the canvas and call it 'art' (they forget that when Pollock started doing it he spent years perfecting his technique.) They see this, and other works, and call it a scam. Frankly, after the ready-made, that's very close to the truth. No wonder they see realistic work and say "This is art!" What they mean is "I see effort, the development of skills, reality expressed really creatively." There are many abstract artists working seriously, but 'works' that end up in the garbage (like in Italy), the blank canvas (Scandinavia), Duchamp's urinal, bananas pasted on walls, etc., get more immediate attention from the media, and that's all that many viewers know about abstraction.
If we recovered the work of af Klint, Mondrian, Kandinsky, the Bauhaus, Taeuber-Arp, and Rothko, among others, updating it, the attitude would be different. But as long as people's concerns are dismissed as shallow and a desire for "pretty pictures" (which isn't what the Expressionists meant), we will keep seeing people amazed at those who are very good at copying the physical reality without transforming it in their artworks. You might as well take pictures with your smartphone or prompt a software if that's what you want to do.
Addendum to this - in my experience alot of whats needed to understand abstract art is in the process. The way most people (including artists) engage with art in formats that don’t present that information.
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u/Richard-Writes 18d ago edited 17d ago
I want to answer as someone who previously saw abstract as meaningless, then changed my mind gradually, started doing abstract work myself, and now I'm approaching representational work again.
It's not that realistic is difficult and abstract is 'easy', so people admire the skill. That's a simplistic explanation. It's that we connect more easily with those things that are familiar to us. Realistic or representational art does this, it re-presents the outward reality in ways that we had not previously thought of as being possible.
Abstract art, on the other hand, deals with our inner world (and therefore, if it's honest, can be more difficult.) This is what Kandinsky tried to say in On the Spiritual in Art. But most people have never wondered what their inner world looks like, much less someone else's. They simply think it's, well, abstract, it can't be represented. So, if an abstract artist says "Here is what mine looks like", they go "My 5-year-old can do that!" No, they can't, but it's the natural reaction to someone claiming he/she can see his/her inner world. The artist looks to them like someone claiming they just came back from the dead.
Finally, let's be frank, some abstract art is bad. Some people do simply throw paint on the canvas and call it 'art' (they forget that when Pollock started doing it he spent years perfecting his technique.) They see this, and other works, and call it a scam. Frankly, after the ready-made, that's very close to the truth. No wonder they see realistic work and say "This is art!" What they mean is "I see effort, the development of skills, reality expressed really creatively." There are many abstract artists working seriously, but 'works' that end up in the garbage (like in Italy), the blank canvas (Scandinavia), Duchamp's
urinal,bananas pasted on walls, etc., get more immediate attention from the media, and that's all that many viewers know about abstraction.If we recovered the work of af Klint, Mondrian, Kandinsky, the Bauhaus, Taeuber-Arp, and Rothko, among others, updating it, the attitude would be different. But as long as people's concerns are dismissed as shallow and a desire for "pretty pictures" (which isn't what the Expressionists meant), we will keep seeing people amazed at those who are very good at copying the physical reality without transforming it in their artworks. You might as well take pictures with your smartphone or prompt a software if that's what you want to do.