A common expectation associated with our consumer attitude is that art should be beautiful, should teach us something, should disappoint or entertain us. We are used to the fact that the reality around us is set up in such a way that they are always trying to sell us something, to impress us. Art, on the other hand, develops a kind of antibodies and resistance to the opinion of the majority in relation to everything consumerist. And even when everyone offers things that are simple and uncomplicated, artists will do the opposite, demanding effort and an active engagement of the intellect.
If everyone offers speed as a core value, artists will, on the contrary, create long and drawn-out videos that have no beginning and no end, with the sole purpose of making it impossible to consume art. Art as an embodiment of the idea of beauty emerged in the 18th century (the science of aesthetics also emerged then), but that soon came to an end. Because the only thing that remained constant for art until the twentieth century was the ideal, but, as we understand it, the ideal of the Middle Ages is different from our modern conceptions.
Study the “visual” language
Understanding art is like understanding a foreign language. You can go abroad and gradually learn words that are new to you. Or you can buy a textbook or study with a teacher. However, the best option is a combination of these methods. In understanding contemporary art, you have to rely on your senses, and then cross-check them by reading summaries of exhibitions, critical articles, texts on the history of art. Having acquired a kind of “vocabulary,” it is worth beginning to discuss and debate. Good art is always a proposal for discussion and debate.
Not everything created in our century is modern
We can call contemporary artists people who are trying to understand how the world works today, and what challenges art, society and the individual are facing today. But next to them, there are authors who adhere to the tradition of, say, academic painting, which appeared in the 17th century. All Ukrainian art education is academic; it has nothing to do with modernity; it comes from the 17th century.
Despite the fact that we didn’t live in the 19th century either, realism (as the main creative method of the time) seems absolutely clear to us. But this is a superficial feeling, because we only look at the form we recognize; we don’t really understand the cultural context in which the work was created. Which means that we are just mindlessly consuming it. If we want to really understand nineteenth-century art, we have to be serious about studying the characteristics of that era: what people thought about themselves and their time, how they felt, what was valuable to them, for whom artists created their works, how the art system functioned, how society was organized, etc. It is much easier for today’s person to perceive contemporary art because he or she is the one who lives, acts, and feels in our time.
Listen to the artists
The word of an artist must outweigh the authority of any art critic. It is necessary first of all to communicate with the primary sources: to go to meetings, listen to dialogues, read their texts, follow them on Facebook. From books you should pay attention to “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and vice versa)”, read Grayson Perry’s “Don’t Be Afraid of Galleries”, pick up a collection of texts by the artist “Tiberius Silvashi. Essays. Texts. Dialogues.”
Keep an eye on the contemporary artistic process
Young artists emerge not because of, but in spite of. The main place for the creative development of young people today are alternative art spaces. The market always catches up and tries to appropriate those works that hit the nerve of the times. It’s like with fashion: “You can’t escape from fashion, because it turns even the refusal to be fashionable into a fashionable trait,” wrote Baudrillard.
Now the most interesting thing is happening in performance art. It is the most independent art that has opposed the market since the late 60s. Because it requires the viewer’s personal presence, it is also the most authentic, since one’s own experience is the only thing that cannot be falsified nowadays.
Understand and accept “Black Square”
To understand the picture, you need to know what place in the work of Malevich has this work. He had a very slender theory of art development, which in the painter’s opinion should have reached its highest form – suprematism. The artist himself also went this way – from impressionism to suprematism. This painting is the main point in his theory of the evolution of art, which simultaneously closes the previous stage and opens a new one. Looking at any work created before Black Square you can easily answer the question what is depicted in the picture: either a naked girl in the open air, or a table with peaches on it and a girl sitting at the table, or a Ukrainian girl in a folk costume.
But really, it’s a canvas on which paints are applied in such a way that you see something that isn’t there. But if you ask a similar question about a painting by Malevich, the answer is simple: it shows a black square on a white background. This is the discovery in which the exact coincidence between the image and the depicted, between the sign and the denotative, showed where art is heading. The artist stops selling illusions in the most truthful package possible and helps to get rid of them.