5 Easy Ways to Stay Calm Around Modern Art.

Take a trip to the modern art museum in New York and you might hear a few skeptics proclaiming “my son could make that!” Well, could he have? Not exactly, and that’s partially the point of modern art — even if a kid could do it, they didn’t.

Here are 5 other reasons why that argument can often be pretty simplistic.

#5: Most Modernists Are Expert Draftsmen, Too.

One of the most common critiques of difficult modern or contemporary painting is the notion that the art is being created only because the artist is unable to wield enough skill to create more ‘traditional’ looking paintings. This was a charge often leveled against Picasso, for example, who critics said couldn’t hope to match the greatness of Velasquez, so chose simply to ‘destroy’ it through deconstruction.

But that’s just not the case — most of the famous modern and contemporary painters were and are excellent painters in the traditional sense, too. They just don’t bother to show that work because it doesn’t say anything new or interesting, and would just be out there to ‘prove a point’ to skeptics.

#4: Modern Artists Are Consistent.

When you’re saying that your kid could do a painting just like, say, Mark Rothko, you’re likely not taking into account that Rothko was able to do dozens of these paintings, and to respond to the demands of his art and his time with aplomb.

An artist like Barnett Newman didn’t just paint a few stripes over and over again and call it a day — he grew and developed and held the public’s attention with an artist’s mind. It’s not all just straight draftsmanship.

#3: Sometimes We Forget That Art is Experience.

I’d be overjoyed if my kid could paint a Pollock. But the whole point of moving past some of the boundaries imposed by the classic method in painting was to start exploring — across all genres of art and culture — what those classic models actually meant.

If you aren’t really concerned with the context or inherent meaning of a painting, that’s no problem — if you’d rather give time to briliant brushwork or color usage or whatever, you can have a great time in the many museums devoted to the masters. But that’s not for everyone.

#2: Prices Aren’t Set By the Artists.

Usually these arguments get really intense when some public money goes towards something that has a bit of controversy about it (let’s say anything after 1900 that could be considered modern).

When chunks of public money go towards, say, a Newman painting, people tend to lose their minds, and the typical letters to the editor come out. But remember — the artist didn’t set his market price and isn’t really responsible for it.

#1: It’s All Been Done.

Why should anyone bother competing with the Sistine Chapel? When you can throw paint splotches at a canvas until it finally starts making sense, shouldn’t you be doing that, instead of trying to reach a level of renaissance craftsmanship that is best left to its era?

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