Compare that with my pet example of Jackson Pollock. Even the titles of many of Pollock's paintings give us no clue as to what they are suppose to be about. From wikipedia:
He encourages me to "look passively" and not bring a preconceived idea to the painting. He wants me to look at a picture as just a pure painting. He doesn't even give me a title to work with, just a number. Maybe we could say that Pollock wanted his paintings to bring something out of me rather than me taking something out of it? At this point, though, it feels like we're just reading tea leaves. He splashed a bunch of chaos onto a canvas and is now basically telling us, "you figure it out." Perhaps some people like that--being able to read any meaning they want into a painting. But, at that point, his paintings are really no different than an ink blot test. He hasn't really put anything of himself into the painting.
A couple issues with Pollock, since he always comes up in this type of discussion.
1) Like many painters, his works aren't images but objects. (does that make sense?) looking at an image in a book or online does not do them justice. His best works are quite large, physically textured and pack a visceral impact. To me, looking at an image online is like looking at a picture of soup and judging how well it tastes.
2) I think he's a little harder to access, not because there is nothing there, and not because the meaning is dense or esoteric, but because it is so simple. We've been trained that meaningful art is a clever way of encoding metaphors, but that isn't a useful approach for a lot of work.
I'm not saying that every artist who's well known and rewarded has been good. Or even that everyone
should be able to appreciate Pollock's stuff. Just like not everyone likes beets or calamari or sports.
But I do think there is real value in his paintings.
If you really want to try to see what's interesting about Pollock, I recommend these steps.
1) Again- Really see them in person.
2) Don't look for metaphors. The red isn't about anger or infidelity or childhood. It's paint that a guy flung around in the air. It's colors and shapes on a canvas. You can appreciate a piece of clothing with interesting colors or textures without looking for great meaning. One window into Pollock is to think of his work as a more complex example of that.
3) Go home and play with paint. Get a feel for how it moves. If you can, find a space where you can go crazy with it. Action painting is about the forensic evidence left by a physical process. We're seeing what was left over from doing something, like the footprints on a stage after a dance troupe has left. Think about the dance.
3) Jazz. In case you haven't guessed, music plays an important role, listen to the music that
Pollock did. Bring your ipod or whatever into the gallery.
Finally, if you still don't enjoy his stuff... that fine. I think a lot of people have a notion that "The art world" thinks they're stupid if they don't appreciate what the art world celebrates. They may feel judged and reply with a "No, you're stupid!"
But in the end, not finding joy in a particular artist is just like not finding joy in a particular band or food. It could be that you might enjoy it with the right background info and approach, but there's nothing wrong with you if you don't instinctively have those or even if you still don't like something after a serious effort.
People pay huge money for truffle fungus too, or concerts for musicians I think are terrible. I think many people might be able to relax and enjoy paintings much more if they viewed them the way we view music and food and the other arts that we partake in daily instead of something that needs to be on some higher plane.
