When I went to school abstract art was smart and representational art was dumb. ‘I have better things to do with my time than to go around copying nature’ was a group chant taught to incoming classes in every art school for several decades. Text books, popular magazines, and foundation-sponsored periodicals all derided representational art for a lack of creativity, a deficit of imagination, and simply being unworthy of serious consideration. Representational painters were to be shunned as closed-minded reactionaries unable to accept modernity, unwilling to sit in the ‘intelligence and awareness’ section of the bleachers. Even though it makes no sense to us individually based on grade school art classes we all took, the peculiar notion that abstract painting is much more difficult and inherently more profound than producing recognizable images has been boilerplate academic dogma for several generations.
From different quarters a cabal of self-interests converged to bend and fold art into something that couldn’t be recognized, literally, and reduced it to a blind, manipulated, indexed commodity -- we’ve been calling it modern art. The academics feel conceptually safe and comfortably secure behind abstract art’s ambiguity, and commercial interests can monetize a hyped reputation and iffy investment potential but can’t really grasp, let alone deal in aesthetic value. Behind them all, like a mountain range in the sky, are the financial overlords who suffered discomfort at the social awareness and class-consciousness art had been suggesting just before the massively subsidized ascendency of non-objective abstraction. As odd as it all sounds evidence of this cultural hl-jacking can be found everywhere.
Art, it turns out, is itself the cure. It offers each individual the possibility of seeing past the rigged consensus and directly perceiving the mind of the artist, but this insight won’t be found in text books, classes at the U, or lectures by experts. They’re all in on it. Forget them. Find yourself in art -- that’s the honest way to go about it. If thatched cottages with chimney smoke and glowing windows touches your heart it’s nobody’s business, although you might try looking at more art. Possibly in all the art produced in your area there’s an artist whose work somehow reminds you of something very personal. You can even imagine that were you to meet the artist you might become friends. Short of that it’s quite reasonable to expect that people you like and who like you will probably like the art as well. If in the end it turns out you like dumb art maybe you’ll meet a dumb artist. They’re out there.