Too Many Folk Assume That Art Isn’t For Folk Like Them, But If You Take Time To Look At Things Through Your Own Two Eyes As Opposed To Always Being Dictated To By The Experts, There Is Plenty To Enjoy

What is your response if a friend informs you that they enjoy ‘Art’? From my experience, that statement often gets a shrug of the shoulders and a remark about not really liking paintings and so having little interest in looking at them. I guess there’s also an ingrained attitude that art is for intellectual people, or very well off people who can afford to collect it. I have to say that I passionately disagree with this opinion. Art is universal, and a visit to an art gallery can be just as much fun as a ramble in the countryside, a trip to the theatre or time spent at a music concert.

I can recollect telling a friend, a college educated and intelligent woman, how much I had liked looking round the Matisse Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern a while ago, and was very shocked by her reaction which was that she wouldn’t want to go to something like that because she can’t see what she is meant to see in the paintings. For whatever reason, she firmly believed that if she wasn’t able to understand or agree with the ’proper’ meaning of the pictures then there was little point in her looking at it.

This really shocked me me! In my opinion, art is totally subjective. A lot of the time, the artists themselves have deliberately not detailed what the image is intended to illustrate, and the description of the image will have been made up by an art expert or critic, who thinks that their understanding of the artist gives them a more valid opinion than anyone else’s. How foolish! And think about it, no two people will even see the painting in exactly the same way – in a scientific sense. You could be colour blind, or have a vision problem which needs assessing. You could go and see the same painting with a new pair of glasses or having been for Laser eye surgery and would see something different to what you had seen before – even if you are only seeing it more more crisply.

Sadly, because a large number of people still seem to treat art as something a bit stuffy and boring and nobody properly disputes this way of viewing art, then individuals like my friend will miss out on some fantastic visual masterpieces. I like to stroll round art galleries and I’m quite sure that my enjoyment of many paintings in no way agrees with those of the ‘experts’, but that does not at all decrease my enjoyment of the paintings I am viewing. I don’t usually read the description next to the picture telling me what I’m supposed to see, but instead I leave my own imagination to decide what what I’m seeing. And if I love of a painting then it’s because I actually do like it, and not because someone I’ve never met is telling me that it’s allegedly the artist’s finest work and that I have to like it.

I can’t say that there is a specific style of art that I favour – my favourite paintings are all quite different, although I’m not particularly keen on the late medieval era when most artwork was religious by necessity and was generally displayed in a religious setting. And of course paintings featuring biblical themes leave little room for individual interpretation in the first place.

A visit to Tate Modern gives a very different perspective from a visit to the National Gallery or Tate Britain, but there are some truly incredible pieces of modern art located there. Certain pieces of modern art do now and then prompt the question as to what actually defines something as a piece of art. (That notorious pile of bricks always comes to mind, and really I do think that was taking things a step too far – references to the curators needing to have their eyes tested or for them to sign up for Laser eye surgery were probably quite acceptable!) I’m sure there are many opinions about exactly what defines an object as a piece of art, but my own opinion is that a piece of art is an image or shape designed by someone, which other folk find it a pleasure to look at. And that applies just as much to abstract modern pieces as to the works of the recognised great painters of centuries past.

I believe that is a simple definition, but it is relevant to paintings and sculptures in exactly the same way as it would be to a piece of music, a play, a Laser eye visual display accompanying a musical performance or a book – one person (or a group of people) devise the piece and hope that others will enjoy it. So to return to the issue my friend was having with the notion of not understanding art, she wouldn’t expect anyone to tell her how to enjoy a gig, a night out at the theatre, having fun at an outdoor music extravaganza with those Laser eye beams shooting across the sky or a quiet evening reading a book, so why can’t she enjoy art in the same manner – in her own way.