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While I can’t provide a very thorough answer, I can share some thoughts that were once shared with me when I was trying to understand modern art. I’ll caveat this by saying pieces such as the ones you posted are still lost on me, but I have at least learned to just accept it as “this type of art isn’t for me” rather than my previous mindset of “this is just low-effort garbage”.
For starters, try to see modern minimalist/abstract art as something born out of *generations* of other pieces slowly chipping away at the idea that everything needed to be painted/portrayed out in precise, incredible, vibrant detail. It’s easy for us to look at Renaissance paintings with their ultra dense imagery and think “this is truly peak art”, but there’s nothing really set in stone saying art has to be detailed to be good. In ways, taking away details can enhance the piece – think of black and white photography. By taking away the bright vivid colors, your mind is able to focus on other aspects that the color may have otherwise outshined.
So if you can take away color to enhance a piece of art, in the sense that the gap left behind is filled by the beholder’s eye, what else can you take away? Shape, definition, clarity, realism, all things that artists throughout the years have experimented with. Most revolutionary pieces in the art world are held so high because they were the first to try it. It’s easy to go “well that’s stupid, I could do that”. But did you? Would the idea have even crossed your mind to try it? No. That’s the quality that gives these kinds of pieces their significance to those in the art world.
So, going back to the pieces in the OP – again, the charm is lost on me. But try to keep in mind that art being highly regarded isn’t always about people being entranced by it, or having some breakthrough emotional experience. Sometimes it’s just that one piece made enough people stop and go “huh… interesting” that it becomes famous for it. What helped me understand it best was comparing it to the science behind evolution. We didn’t become humans because one day an ape gave birth to a human. Years and years passed with small, but important, influential changes working at random to get us here. So too did art.
Real modern art is *the art of getting important people to care about, talk about, and pay for something like that*.
It’s the art of sociology, psychology, and economics – not the art of painting/sculpting/whatever.
In simple terms, art reflects current tastes. The examples you show are minimalist, which is a style that lots of people connect to. It is vastly different than the complexity and richness of Renaissance art styles.
Think about clothes as an example. 300 years ago, aristocrats used to wear elaborate outfits, but now everyone is wearing more or less the same type of clothes (the cost and quality are reflected through brands). No one today would want to wear those huge dresses, puffy collars, and tights. For a Renaissance person, today’s outfits would seem unimaginative and plain.
Also, while some modern art seems simple, it builds up on other works within the genre. So people, who are unfamiliar with modern art, miss out on important milestones within the movement. It’s like skipping chapters in a book and then saying that the book is not good. Sometimes you need deeper understanding of the art style to appreciate it in its entirety.
One of my favourite abstract artists is [Wassily Kandinsky](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky). I like his use of colours and shapes to create interesting compositions. Im assuming that people who appreciate the beauty in black roller streaks appreciate the composition and contrast.
So… it’s gotta depend on the modern art curator in the museum. I’ve seen shows of post-2000 art in museums all over the US that were incredible— interactive sculpture, mixed media, even things that used AI. They changed your sense of the world you’re in, made you see things differently, helped you better understand societal issues and feel empathy for vulnerable groups. Or were just absolutely beautiful and fascinating in ways you’d never considered before. Miami, New York, DC, Chicago, Columbus (the Wexner center is awesome), Indianapolis (their art gardens). Plenty of modern art is amazing… but I don’t know if those pieces are in the Louvre.
Few people make art in old days.
Today, easy to make art.
Complex art is everywhere.
Simple art is a comment on the complexity of our lives today.
Older than 5: Art is sometimes meta and meant to fly in the face of the majority. This is because something is simply Art when it makes you feel. And when bombarded with similar, you become numb and anything opposite initiates a response.
I think the museums themselves are part of the cause. None of the art from the Renaissance was made for a museum; it was made for a church, a palace, or a wealthy home. Now I might hang a big blue panel on my wall, but I’m likely to get something more decorative- and their is plenty of highly decorative, highly representative art available for purchase. Maybe future museums will hold more of those market pieces and fewer of the pieces that are considered a big deal today. Second big reason is technology. You can get an accurate portrait of someone with the phone in your pocket, you can get a beautiful portrait with some more expensive camera equipment and a little training. You can even get an impressionist filter for your portrait. But technology would have a hard time reproducing a few scant paint roller marks. Artist have to be innovative to a fault if they want to stay ahead of the teenager with photoshop. So you have to make stuff unique enough to be exhibited in a museum in a world where art is easier than ever to produce: this produces strange results.
The joy of anything is best understood by the one enjoying it. Art, like life, is less about the perceived details as it is about the intent. To know that what was produced was intentional gives anything – no matter how mundane – a sense of relevancy. Russian formalists used to say the purpose of art or writing was to “make the stones stoney again.” That is why pieces like this can be relevant because of the intent behind them and the novelty of their depiction.
It’s like memes. You have individuals who are so entrenched into art that they’ve seen it all, studied it all, done it all, and share this with others who done the same. Eventually the smallest details become the over arching themes.
But the real answer is because you’re wealthy, you know an appraiser who will play ball and value it at some ridiculous sum, and you get to keep more of your already massively inflated wealth shored up cuz you got the best memes of the decade hanging on your wall.
It’s Pepe wiping his ass with the American flag with visible Cheeto dust covering his fingers up to his MAGA tattooed knuckles, but it’s worth a trillion dollars cuz someone said so.
Modern art is very similar to internet memes: Sometimes a meme is funny because of all the other memes it builds upon/satirizes. A person unfamiliar with all the “history” of that meme and the references just won’t get it.
One good (early) example for an “artistic shitpost” is [Fountain, by Marcel Duchamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)).
I think a better example would be the solid color blocks of Ellsworth Kelly. Art does not have to complex to trigger emotions. I think that Gerald Murnane put it best when he said:
“How might a man reorder his conduct if he could be assured that the worth of a perception, a memory, a supposition, was enhanced rather than diminished by its being inexplicable to others?”
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