Yesterday my boys were drawing and my youngest brought me his latest work (shown below). I looked at it with his random scribbles and color spots created by smashing his markers into the paper and I thought to myself,
"Hey, this is pretty cool looking!"
This got me thinking about abstract art and whether or not it is art.
On the NO side people say abstract art is easy and requires little technical skill, thus it cannot be art. I think that there is some validity to this claim. Afterall, if my son (a toddler of only 24 months) can create something I find visually appealing then technical skill clearly is not a prerequisite for creating abstract art. I even created the cover image for this post in 3 minutes using Photoshop by randomly selecting colors and paint splatter brushes. If abstract art is so easy to create... Maybe it is not art?
Unfortunately, a rebuttal to the question is difficult to form because appreciating art often requires that the viewer abandon logic and reason.
Additionally, most viewers of art do not have a very close relationship to the visual arts, thus it is simpler to discuss the question using music - a form of art most individuals are quite familiar with.
Regardless of the technical abilities of the musician, I think most people would agree that music is a form of art and this is why we refer to them as artists. Heck! If I wait another 3 months I bet my 2 year old son could acquire enough knowledge of the guitar to play every Ramones song ever written. Does this mean the Ramones and other simplistic styles of music are not art? Not in my opinion.
Technical skill, while a valuable tool for creating art, is only a part of the equation. We often like to think of artists as having some special technical abilities that us non-artists do not possess, but sometimes it is just being original or doing the right thing at the right moment in time.
Setting my ramblings aside, I wrote this post because I am really interested to hear what the Steemit community thinks about abstract art.
I leave you with some peices created by Aelita Andre, an Australian artist who is only...
