Looking at art

I sometimes get the impression that people feel as if they need to be acting intelligent around art. Acting as if they understand what a work is about and saying they like it because it is a ‘big name’. I never like to feel that I need to act or behave a certain way to be accepted. If I do, I probably do the opposite.

To do my little share in braking down this culture, I’ll explain how I look at art. I was just like anybody else, still am, when it comes to my art knowledge.

When I walk into a gallery, I don’t care about anybody’s opinion and I generally read less than 50% of the art statements of the works I see. I walk around and browse from a distance to see if I like something. I don’t walk past every artwork with great intensity to pay my respect to the vast amount of work the artist has put in. When I see something interesting, I take a better look and might read the statement.

A lot of artists think they need to have art statements that are complicated, because it might make them look intelligent and therefor the viewer might think the work is very intelligent. It is actually a lot more difficult to summarize a work in a short understandable bit of text.

More important; you have only a limited amount of focus during a day, so intensely looking at art will only last for about 2 hours, probably less. So exhibitions are for me a sort of market place of images; I pick and choose.

There is no harm in viewing my art in the same way. If I tried to express a message and nobody gets it, it means I made a mistake. But it might be that this mistake is totally irrelevant because you just like what you see. This might be something unintentional. Abstract art often works like that; it let’s the viewer discover something in it. I don’t know whether I’ll make abstract art in the future, all I know is that it doesn’t feel like the natural thing to do right now.