The mere recreation of reality in art is idiotic. A camera does a far better job. Anyone can paint a naturalistic scene or still life or portrait, it’s a matter of training, so what’s the challenge there, same old same old.
Artists are explorers. Look at the Florentine Renaissance- they discovered the optical laws of perspective and from that came architectural and industrial blueprints and machine tool reproduction, ie., the Industrial Revolution. Discovery.
Works of art should be experiments in finding a new technique, a new way of seeing or hearing, a new way of communicating, a new way of understanding. Otherwise what’s the point- therapy for boredom, a hobby?
I don’t understand why conservatives have a hard time with contemporary art. They’d certainly applaud the R & D work of industry, the inventiveness of human genius, a more efficient manner of getting from point A to point B or from idea A to idea B. The problem for conservatives is that they have ALLOWED art to become hijacked by political hacks and flunkies because they lost the R & D edge in that realm. They forgot how to experiment and, by default, the commies took it over lock, stock and trigger- movies, music, poetry, painting, prose, sculpture, you name it, it’s a leftist playground.
My take is that conservatives fell into the trap of assuming that culture was “high culture”, something that the wealthy patronized to grace their self-exaulted status while the proletariat had to settle for country and western laments about hard living. They allowed culture to become brahminized, remote, rare instead of understanding that culture is the glue that gives a society its cohesiveness and pride as well as its means of disseminating ideas; it’s communication apparat.
So either continue to sing a cowboy’s lament over the loss of control of the cultural matrix or learn how to strip politics and ideology from contemporary art ideas and experiment American society into a new aesthetic paradigm.
Ball’s in your court.
The recreation of reality is the beginning of art. It's a matter of understanding the basics so one can then bend them to one's own aspirations. Do not discount the talent that it takes to see and to transfer an image to canvas or stone or clay. I suspect from your statement that you've probably mastered it, but some of us will never know that joy.
Explorers, yes. Discoverers, yes. Innovators, absolutely. But the idea of exploring, discovering, and innovating ways of dragging down the human spirit and imposing a decrepit, painful, and bleak world view is the goal of many of the modern artists, and it is their work I find hideous and without any redeeming value.
I have no problem with abstract works, and I find many of them fascinating and even beautiful. But as I have stated before, I reject any efforts to undermine the value of what has come before simply by painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa (as Dada proclaims) or by spreading animal parts on a canvas just because it has not been done before.
Understand: it is a stated goal of Marxist and "revolutionary" proponents to undermine concepts of art so they can clear the way for their own ideas. It is part of their effort to "capture the culture". We see it being played out every day in all aspects of the art world.
There may, in fact, be an unreasoned, knee-jerk aspect to it for some, perhaps many, conservatives.
However, I think that it would be accurate to say that conservatives aren't opposed to contemporary are per se; indeed, many of us appreciate a good deal of it.
Speaking for myself, however, I part ways with contemporary art when it primarily evokes an awareness of the artist's narcissism, or the main point is destruction (in fact, the two seem often to appear together).
Art should to a large degree be meant for other people. It needn't be beautiful, but it should have some aspect of on person communicating with others.
When it devolves to the point of an artist doing little more than stridently demanding that I pay attention to him.... At that point, IMO, it ceases to be "art."