Can you understand modern art?

 I will answer provocatively and without unnecessary introductions: understanding modern art is impossible. I would say  it is inadvisable.

So what are these crazy artists all about? They invent strange things to bother the average viewer of art. And he/she feels more and more insecure. He often turns his back and says: it's not for me. On the other hand, those who want to be considered skilful art viewers and cannot cope with "understanding" say that the artists themselves do not know what they mean. There are others  more impatient who would ignore this. Finally, politicians who want to censor some works of art. The latter, however, is a topic for a separate entry.

Now I will write something that can calm down, I hope, all these lost viewers of art. Understanding cannot be the only and main explanation of works. Science is a field which is guided by reason, for which the sense of being is understanding. Art, however, goes deeper, to the human psyche, which is guided by its own rules, to the sense of existence and everything that science cannot answer because that is not its purpose. Art tries to reach what is most beautiful in man. What exists in each of us regardless of knowledge and education. It is a kind of philosophy that is not based on evidence, theses or assumptions. It comes from premonitions, experiences, emotions and intuitions. Far from a philosophy based on one or another philosophical concepts, he strives to describe the matters that are most important to man: good and evil, love and hate, life and death.

Paul Gauguin „Where do we come from? Who  are we ? Where are we going?”

These problems have always occurred in the history of art: in painting, sculpture, later also in photography and film. An excellent example is  one of the most famous paintings by Paul Gauguin "Where do we come from? Who  are we ? Where are we going? "- allegorical post-impressionist painting painted in 1897-1898, in Tahiti. This French artist became famous only after his death. In 1906, the prices of his works began to rise quickly. Rising popularity meant that studies on Gauguin's work began to appear. When his art was not appreciated, he gave one of his paintings to a maid. She did not like the work, so she threw it away. So let's not say things   we don't understand  or we don't like  are  worthless.

As to main  question: can you understand contemporary art? I think the problem of understanding modern art does not exist. There is only a problem of misunderstanding. The discrepancy between art aspirations and the viewers of art expectations. Let's not expect from the artists  only nice pictures on the wall with a brief  anecdote.

Roman Opałka - 1965,1 to infinity (1977)

And one more thing. There is no such continuity in art as, for example, in science that we can attribute to what we call development. In art, we can only talk about changing the form. So let's not be offended by the artists that they paint, sculpt, compose, make films in a different way than a few decades ago. Every age has its artists and its form of creative expression. But as always there is good and evil, love and hate, life and death  in it. And so it will be until the end of our world.