On relating to art

[kaberett]

I have very clear memories of my ten-year-old self being immensely, deeply unimpressed by Rothko and Mondrian. I was very angry about why this constituted "art"; my definition of art explicitly excluded square canvases painted a single colour.

My ten-year-old self is gently unimpressed every time I stop dead in front of a six-foot-square matte black canvas in an art gallery, wonderstruck, and go "hmm, yes, isn't it fascinating what's being done here, isn't this good."

I am nursing a theory that the main differences between me-then and me-now are:

1. I'm no longer in a situation where my autism is actively decried, and have internalised that it's okay for particular colours or shapes to make me happy, just because, and (as a superset, really)
   
2. I've started believing that it's okay for me to have and experience emotions full stop (and am sufficiently well medicated that I can and do).

Which means that, over the past few years, I've stopped interpreting modern and especially abstract art as, fundamentally, threats: I've stopped responding automatically with defensive suspicion and fury to forms of art that (crudely!) exist to make me feel things.

There is nuance to this, of course. Seeing the Barbara Hepworth exhibit at the Tate Britain, the (possible? probable?) reasons for my emotional response clicked into place when I read that a lot of her more abstract work was in response to or in dialogue with her feelings of being cradled by landscape, and particularly by the Lake District and by Cornwall; all of a sudden it was obvious to me that the sense of home-and-safety-and-familiarity I get off those sculptures is, in fact, the same sense of awe and belonging and recognition I get staring out to sea or feeling dwarfed on valley floors or what-have-you.

That was followed up by another visit to the Tate Britain, one day I wound up in the right area of London with some time to kill, where what I'd intended to do was poke my nose into some of the public galleries. I saw War Damaged Musical Instruments advertised on the website and ignored it -- and then stopped dead in the middle of the hall it occupied, the moment I got there, and spent twenty minutes sat there crying.


One of the things I've been gently sad about for quite a long time is that I'm a classically-trained musician who is mostly very, very bad at listening to classical music unless it's something I've played or am preparing to play, such that I'm listening as a technical study. (I think I've talked before about mostly relating to music as either a technical study or a vehicle for lyrics, but if not I can give it a go.) I'm starting to think it might be time to have another go.

Comments

[redbird]

Yes, it's okay for certain shapes or colours to make you happy.

It also seems anomalous that you were taught otherwise as a child, because that sort of response is often encouraged in neurotypical people. "What is your favourite colour?" is a very standard question that even young children are supposed to have an answer to.

[kaberett]

It wasn't taught directly, as such -- it was that I was told I mustn't flap or rock, because what would people think, and so it was policing-expressions-of-happiness (along with, fundamentally, being chronically severely depressed and very badly traumatised so not actually being very good at being happy) that appears, in retrospect, to have translated to that one small as "that is an incorrect emotion".

[davidgillon]

I was told I mustn't flap or rock, because what would people think

{Seethe}, but unfortunately probably true for generations of autistics.

[buttonsbeadslace]

Yeah, it's not that people object to kids having opinions or feelings about colors/art, it's when you express those feelings in a "weird" way, or just in a way that inconveniences the adults around you.

For me, the way it played out a lot of the time was that I would get really engrossed in something I thought looked cool, in a store or some other public place, and that was bad because I was Wasting Time and/or Getting In People's Way. Plus the "what will people think" implications of being fascinated by stuff that isn't supposed to be interesting.

Having a favorite color = practically required. Wanting to spend half an hour just staring at something because it's your favorite color = not such a positive thing, and neither is flapping/ making noise/ generally "making a scene" because you're excited about colors.

[kareila]

One of the things I've been gently sad about for quite a long time is that I'm a classically-trained musician who is mostly very, very bad at listening to classical music unless it's something I've played or am preparing to play, such that I'm listening as a technical study.

You know, I am guilty of this too, but... I don't feel guilty about it. Maybe it's because I'm such a pan-enthusiast that I've gotten to the point where I've settled into having contexts for everything? I listen to power pop songs when exercising, I listen to podcasts in the car, I listen to electronica and soundtracks when I'm working, I listen to piano or violin music when I need to relax, I listen to choral works when I'm practicing to sing them. Lyrics are generally a secondary consideration for me, though.

[rydra_wong]

I was very angry about why this constituted "art"; my definition of art explicitly excluded square canvases painted a single colour.

Based on memories of my 10-year-old self, there was often a factor of autistic outrage: there are rules, there's a definition of Art, I have learned what it is, this is breaking the rules, why is no-one stopping this, it is very unfair and wrong if some people break the rules and other people let them.

I did not feel this way about Art, but did about a number of other topics.

Seeing the Barbara Hepworth exhibit at the Tate Britain, the (possible? probable?) reasons for my emotional response clicked into place when I read that a lot of her more abstract work was in response to or in dialogue with her feelings of being cradled by landscape, and particularly by the Lake District and by Cornwall; all of a sudden it was obvious to me that the sense of home-and-safety-and-familiarity I get off those sculptures is, in fact, the same sense of awe and belonging and recognition I get staring out to sea or feeling dwarfed on valley floors or what-have-you.

I may have said this before, but if you ever get a chance, go and see the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives. It's her house, with her workshop preserved exactly as it was, and the garden filled with sculptures, in the edge-of-the-sea landscape that inspired them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Hepworth_Museum

[flippac]

Some Is Breaking The Rules...

...and If I Don't Follow The Rules I Get Hurt
...and People Break Rules And Hurt Me

[davidgillon]

I suspect there might be something common in the way a lot of us react to modern art as kids (not a big enough sample set to say if it's everyone, or mostly neurodiverse). School art tends to start with 'draw a picture', and then we get art that isn't a drawing of anything, and we need new rules. I remember being distinctly unimpresssed with modern art until onee day I looked at a JPG of a Jackson Pollock and just lost myself in the complexity.

[staranise]

Me too. I positively loathed modern art until my 20s, when I took a course in Psychology of Aesthetics and someone finally explained modern art in a way that made sense to me.