36
White Painting
(cmoa-collection-images.s3.amazonaws.com)
Jirō Yoshihara, Japanese 1905–1972
1958
Oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art
The video is in a style I don't really like and I'd rather wished I read a lengthy article instead but I watched it fully and first things first, I don't hate modern art : collage, surrealism and cubism are my favorite art styles. Second, throughout the video he basically say " yeah , I don't like this painting either" and it's what I am saying too. I don't feel anything toward the piece and similar ones. I don't consider a blotch of paint art but it's personal and you may find a deep meaning in it. Maybe as you pointed out, these pieces are meant to be experienced in 3d and enjoy their texture and unless I see them in person I can't understand it but this remove the universal nature of art by being inaccessible. Hopefully, I am not talking nonsense. It's hard to find the right words since English is my third language.
Totally! Also, I get it, not everyone likes long video essays.
I mostly posted this because of the generally dismissive attitude of some people on the internet towards modern art. It is only logical that while there is good abstract paintings, there are also not so good ones. In the end it is also quite subjective.
In the end, I think art museums and other places that display art could and should do a better job at giving the context for a given piece to understand it. There is this perception that good art is understood regardless of its context, but I don't think that's true. No art is made in a vacuum, and knowing the historical and maybe even personal context to a piece can truly enrich it (as it has done for me with the works of Pollock).
I can understand a piece made by cavemen thousands of years ago without needing any context. Context should make you enjoy the piece even more, or to contrary flip the emotions it made you feel and make you despise it. Art that is only understood via it's context, while a nice gimmick at first, ultimately doom it to become meaningless if that context is ever lost. If the apocalypse come and humanity is destroyed. Hundreds years later, a survivor find the fan given as an exemple in the video above. It is now an ordinary fan among millions of others.