How to Appreciate An Art
A step-by-step process, interspersed with a handful of The Big Secrets of Art
As someone with an art school background in a tech world, I'm occasionally put on the spot to Explain This Art. Usually this requested by a very smart but very formal person who spent their life convinced that art was a secret dark magic, requiring arcane rituals and a vocabulary of words like "postmodernism" or "nondiagetic".
And I can play along with that secret magic and specialized lingo. But it’s more fun to share the secret and let others in on the magic.
Because the truth is, appreciating art is for everyone, for any type of artifact, and for any reason. Whether you're an aspiring illustrator looking at masterpieces in a museum or just listening to a favorite song on your commute, developing your appreciation skills will allow you to get a deeper experience out of the pieces you like, understand why a piece does or doesn't connect with you, and help you find other pieces of art that you do enjoy.
Learning how to appreciate art flexes a lot of very human skills, like creativity, introspection, context-sensitivity, empathy, and communication. You know, all those “soft social skills” that we only realize are vital in the professional world when they’re lacking.
[ART SECRET NUMBER 0: Because art is intrinsically personal, a lot of artists disagree on different aspects of it. There are as many different theories about How To Art as there about How To Religion, and they tend to be just as personal, sacred, and malleable over time. If you have a different interpretation of some of these steps or secrets, I welcome you to share it in the comments.]
So you have something you want to appreciate - a book, a song, a game, whatever artifact you want to appreciate more fully. Sometimes these are referred to as an “artifact” or as a “text”. No matter what we call the subject, the steps for appreciation are similar: read, research, reread, reflect, remix.
[ART SECRET NUMBER 1: Art is not passive - it is a participatory experience. Even in cases where a passive medium like movies brings you to tears or laughter, it takes conscious thought to understand why and exactly what parts of it elicited those emotions in you. There are questions you should be ready to ask yourself at each step of appreciation. But the payoff of that work is worth the effort.]
STEP 1: READ - the First Impression
This is the easy part. Just experience the artifact - watch the show, listen to the song, bite into the food. Try to experience it with an open mind and no pre-expectations, but don't worry too much if that's not possible. If there are things you don't understand, or something curious, or something that speaks to you (or pisses you off), make a mental note to revisit them later, but don't let it derail your first read. You're getting the big picture sense of the piece here - you can return to those details later.
Questions to ask yourself here: How did this make you feel? Did it feel like it had a coherent idea behind it? If you had to describe it in one sentence, what would you say? Does it, for any reason, make you want to examine it more closely?
[ART SECRET NUMBER 2: for narrative pieces, don't worry about spoilers. Knowing what's going to happen ahead of time only impacts the first reading of a piece, which is arguably the least important step. If you feel it's worth going past step one in appreciating a piece, then you're going to be experiencing the piece again while knowing those spoilers anyway, which allows you to recognize any dramatic foreshadowing and tension leading up to them. If a piece is only interesting because of its unexpected twist, you're probably not dealing with a very interesting text in the first place.]
STEP 2: RESEARCH - the Creator's Context
Learn about where the piece came from. Maybe that's as easy as reading the artist's statement or turning on a commentary track, maybe it's more complex like learning the difference between Baroque painting and how Rococo painting was a response to it. You might even need to consider multiple uncertain theories about the context, like the anthropological theories behind the intent of the Venus of Willendorf.
When a piece is the work of more than one creator, try to get accounts from more than one source. You don't have to know the full details of the history of the art form, but the more details you know about what led to it, the more you can appreciate the thoughts that went into making it - and possibly how it inspired other creators in the field. The more you understand the trends and history of an artistic medium, the more context you’ll understand of where a piece exists in the historical conversation between artists about their field.
Questions: Did the creator(s)' stated intent match what you thought the coherent idea was? What parts of their specific background influenced how it was made? What parts of the piece are commonplace for the medium at its time, and what parts are new or radical? Were parts of this piece meant as specific responses to other artwork of its time? Now that you know a little more about its origins and goals, does that change what you think about parts of the piece?
[ART SECRET NUMBER 3: Don’t worry about “removing the mystique” around a piece of art. Knowing a magic trick doesn't ruin the magic - it just lets you appreciate the craft behind it.]
STEP 3: REREAD - the Close Reading
Now that you know the big picture of the piece and its background, go back and give it a closer examination. Revisit the curious parts you marked in your first read. Notice the different meanings you see now that you know where the piece came from and where it's going. Look for the little details the creator(s) snuck in and learn to recognize their style. Identify which parts speak to you and revisit them as much as you like.
This is a step you can repeat as often as you like, especially since very complex artwork can work on multiple levels and support different types of reads. Doing multiple rereads, using a different set of critical lenses, can reveal depths to a piece that you had never considered. This is also a great time to consider the readings of the work that come from other critics, especially those who have very different experiences from your own, as they provide insight you may not be aware of.
Questions: How did your second (third, fourth, etc) experience of the piece differ from previous times? What common themes did you see repeated, and how do they fit with the creator(s)' intent? Did other critics find possible readings that you completely missed? Are there parts that make you think about something personal and not directly related to the piece?
[ART SECRET NUMBER 4: The artifact is not the art! The artifact is the picture you're looking at, or the story you're reading, or the sunset you're seeing, but the reaction and provocation that we commonly recognize as the hallmark of art is a result of the artifact's interaction with the audience. That's affected not just by the context that went into the artifact, but all the context that you bring to your interaction with the artifact. People can have radically different reactions to different artifacts, or no reaction at all, and those reactions are all valid. That's why different people have radically different responses to the same pieces, or even why the same artifact can have a very different impact on the same person one day and not another. The artifact prompts the art from its audience.]
STEP 4: REFLECT — Your Personal Context
This is where things start getting personal. Think about what parts of the piece connect with you personally - personal experiences you see reflected in it, associations it brings to mind, ways that it makes you reconsider similar parts of your own life.
Traditional artists put more weight on what the creator(s) intends for a piece to convey, but more (post)modern thinking says that the artist's intent is only part of the whole piece, and that an audience's reaction is always valid to some degree, regardless of whether or not it matches the artist's intent. This could be radically different from other people's interpretation - it might even be different from your own interpretations at different points in your life. Great art can support many different interpretations from different audiences and offer something for each of them.
Questions: What parts of the piece evoke personal associations in you? How is your personal perspective different from that of the piece's creator(s) and how do you think that changes your interpretation of the piece? Does it remind you of anything else in the world or your life, or make you think differently about them? If you were having a conversation with the creator(s) and they used this piece as an example, how would you respond to them?
[ART SECRET NUMBER 5: Art is always political, because it is always a reflection of the context in which it was made and the context in which it is experienced. If you think a piece isn’t political, that’s probably because it’s just reinforcing the status quo.]
STEP 5: REMIX — Your New Inspiration
Take those personal interpretations and revelations and use them as inspiration in your own life and work. Maybe that's a piece of artwork, or maybe it's just how you go about doing what you do in your life. Bring up the ideas you get from the art you like in conversation with friends. Use it as a guide to finding more artwork to appreciate or to recommend to others. Let that art influence who you become.
Questions: What do you want to say? What do you want to make? What do you want to inspire in your audience? What would you like them to appreciate in your own art?
[ART SECRET NUMBER 6: Anyone can art! You don't need to have a degree or know a secret handshake to make art. You don't even have to have practiced the craft of the medium, although it may help you refine your work if you discover you want to do so. But make the art for yourself, not with the expectation of making it your day job. You don’t have to be a professional to get something out of the process.]
STEP 6: REPEAT — Build on What You’ve Learned
Now that you’ve flexed your creative and analytical muscles, you’re ready to repeat the process with another piece of art. Maybe you’ve got a particular piece in mind that you discovered along the way of appreciating the previous piece. It could be that you want to see more work by the same artist, now that you’re familiar with their context. Or it could go in the other direction, and you find yourself seeking something very different, either because you didn’t like the first piece, or just for a sense of variety and contrast.
Either way, you’re ready to find another work and get the most out of it. And maybe even to share the process with someone else.
[FINAL ART SECRET: Art is what you make of it. The more you develop your skills at appreciating art, the more things you'll start appreciating as art.
By asking yourself these questions and considering multiple perspectives on the same piece, you’ll develop introspection, empathy, communication, and creativity. And frankly, you’ll grow as a human being.]