In my experience most people who hate modern art hate it because it’s more-or-less uniformly absolutely awful.
Ah no but you see, modern art is good. Your move.
Seriously though, would I be right in saying you come from a background where most people can be expected to have an educated opinion on art? Because that’s the only way I can imagine you’ve never met someone who claimed to hate modern art but folded completely after waiting to meet someone inside the Tate Modern, or catching a documentary one day. It’s just too common in my experience, and yet I’ve never seen or heard of anyone doing the same thing with modern academic music or painting. I’m left to assume that they are genuinely lacking in the qualities which make naive audiences enjoy them and their reputation is reliable for everyone.
That just won’t fly though for modern art, which was frequently very popular. Rather I think that what’s happened is that the Young British Artists were not even trying to be good, especially as the bubble went on, and their output was as much confirmation as people needed to assume that they are also part of the down to earth sensible people who only like “representative art”, when frequently they aren’t.
Ah no but you see, modern art is good. Your move.
Seriously though, would I be right in saying you come from a background where most people can be expected to have an educated opinion on art? Because that’s the only way I can imagine you’ve never met someone who claimed to hate modern art but folded completely after waiting to meet someone inside the Tate Modern, or catching a documentary one day. It’s just too common in my experience, and yet I’ve never seen or heard of anyone doing the same thing with modern academic music or painting. I’m left to assume that they are genuinely lacking in the qualities which make naive audiences enjoy them and their reputation is reliable for everyone.
That just won’t fly though for modern art, which was frequently very popular. Rather I think that what’s happened is that the Young British Artists were not even trying to be good, especially as the bubble went on, and their output was as much confirmation as people needed to assume that they are also part of the down to earth sensible people who only like “representative art”, when frequently they aren’t.