A Laywoman’s Guide to Appreciating Modern Art.

ISSUE 7 / CULTURE & SOCIETY

I absolutely love wandering around the art gallery. Partly, because I love the idea of wandering around the art gallery—how metropolitan, how very New Woman, how terribly glamorous. Mostly, though, I’m there for the art itself. I love soaking in the colours, textures, and angles, examining brushwork, building my cultural knowledge. I love the reverent silence in those buildings, the way the stillness prompts you to look closer at works and form your reflections slowly and deliberately.

I was in Christchurch Art Gallery the other day, watching a tour guide shepherd a gaggle of white-haired art fanciers around an exhibit, when I began to reflect on how few university students I see in galleries. I think your early twenties is the time to make an effort to develop your cultural taste, not just visual art, but literature, music, and so on. I’m writing this to you, dear reader, because I want to see you in the gallery soon. We can make awkward eye contact from either side of a horse sculpture, and I’ll see in your face a new spark of appreciation for modern art. I hope.

I’m also writing this because I have absolutely no expertise in art, save a strong personal taste and a well-annotated copy of Ways of Seeing by John Berger. I want to show that you don’t need reams of experience and knowledge to still get meaningful experiences from viewing art. I’m focusing on modern, abstract art, because that’s what most frightens the youths. Any old fool can look at a nice oil painting of a forest and go, wow, those are some decent trees. It takes a braver soul to gaze at a melting sculpture entitled “Butter #7”, and say, I am open to engaging with this work on its own terms.

I'll tell you why we should engage with abstract art, and recommendations on how to do that, soon. But first, two arguments from modern-art aficionados that I don’t think hit home for most people: “Fascists hate it so it must be good”, and “It’s good because it takes loads of technical skill”.

It’s true that modern and abstract art has long been vilified by fascists and authoritarians. ‘Degenerate art” was the term weaponised by the Nazi regime to confiscate and ban modern art that outraged conservative aesthetic tastes or critiqued authority. Later, Dread Scott’s 1989 work What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?, where viewers were encouraged to tread on the Stars and Stripes, outraged George Bush so much that Republicans criminalised displaying the flag on the ground. In Aotearoa, public art funding is under attack, with the coalition orchestrating millions in cuts to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, Creative NZ, the NZ Film Commission and Music Commission. 

So as the argument goes, the powerful conservative minority wants the people to be culturally impoverished, so, let’s rebel! By revelling in modern art. But this fails to make a positive case for why we should enjoy modern art, beyond spiting people we don’t like. 

When people say, “I could have made thaaaat” (nasal tone implied), proponents of modern art also respond that, abstract works actually take a lot of technical skill. They point to paintings like those by Mark Rothko. When his 1958 work Black on Maroon was vandalised, it took conservationists over 80 different tries to recreate the complex mix of oils, pigments, egg yolks, and glues that Rothko used to create the rich, expansive shades on the canvas. And while it’s true that many abstract works are created with great skill and expertise, directing people to research the artists’ method and the techniques used in creating the work doesn’t help us actually appreciate or connect with a painting or a sculpture when we are staring at it blankly in the gallery. 

So, if not exclusively to stick it to the fascists, or because we ought to appreciate finely-made egg yolk glosses, why should we be at the gallery looking at this stuff? Because it enriches our lives and our brains, and makes us think in new ways we don’t experience elsewhere. When it’s not immediately visually clear what a work conveys, it forces us to think about symbolism, about the deliberate use of colour and shape, about mood and atmosphere, to make connections to our own experiences, ideas, worries, dreams. It gives us a platform on which to sit and think about our lives. It takes practice, and getting over some fears, to reach that state, but I believe in you, dear reader!

The main things holding us back from engaging with abstract art are insecurity about not “getting it”, and fear of the sincerity of trying to “get it”. If we can avoid these traps, we can get to the fun part.

The insecurity goes like so: I think I’m supposed to be getting some sort of profound revelation by staring at this painting, but I feel nothing. Actually, I feel a bit inadequate, like everyone else knows what’s going on, and I don’t. The way to get over this fear is to realise that the octogenarian standing next to you in the gallery rubbing his whiskered chin thoughtfully is probably thinking about what he’s having for tea. He doesn’t care what’s going on inside your head. He’s rotating a plate of bangers and mash in his mind. You aren’t going to be pelted with objets d’art by gallery employees if you don’t connect with a particular art piece. Nobody cares! 

Now, the tricky part. The courage to be sincere. The culture we young’uns inhabit is one of constant surveillance, and the unending stream of social media posts blasted into our retinas everyday has damaged our relationship with sincerity. Every day we watch as people present their content for online critique, and we also view the endless dissection and dogpiling of those who fail to grasp these unspoken rules. They were too sincere when they should have been self-deprecating, too passionate when they should have cloaked their words in irony. They were cringe, when to be cool is to be nonchalant. The greatest sin is a lack of self-awareness. To be accepted, you need to have foreseen people’s perception of you and adjusted accordingly, to filter your experiences through others' eyes in real time. But it also has to appear completely natural. Lest, god forbid, you are labelled performative. 

This phenomenon is pretty terrible for our sense of self, our sanity, and our political future. But I am writing this article about abstract art, so I’ll leave the hard stuff to Foucault, and tell you straight—it’s bad for our ability to engage with art too. 

If we dare to say, or even think, a sincere idea about what an abstract work reminds us of, that it looks a bit like… the rings of a tree, maybe it’s saying something about time, how nature operates on timescales humans can’t comprehend… we may experience a visceral ick as we suddenly perceive ourselves. What a sincere little wanker! Quick, finish the sentence in a weird voice so your gallerymate knows you’re actually sooooo self-aware.

How to get over the surveilling self-critic? I dunno. I try to remember that all the best bits of life happen when we give in to sincerity: love, sex, dancing, great conversations, achieving goals we’ve strived for, friendships, a sense of purpose… Accept that you are trying something new. Accept that some people might actually think you are a sincere little wanker. Accept that humanity is a blip in earth’s geological timescale and that makes the previous issue seem a bit less important. Resist the urge to post a photo of the painting you’ve just enjoyed on your story. You are allowed to have a totally internal experience.

Looking at modern art can be an arena to battle the fear of sincerity and to practice engaging in ideas outside your comfort zone. It can strengthen your enjoyment of interior experiences and help you resist the urge to perform your engagement.

And so, here you are, in the gallery, ready to feel sincere, ready to have a holy experience of communication with an artwork. (I’m in the corner of the room, furiously scribbling a bad sketch of the butter sculpture, but don’t worry, I’m not looking at you). What’s next?

There isn’t a single correct way to experience art, and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something (probably their Expanded and Revised Guide To Experiencing Art). This guide is free, shout out to the glorious Memo, so take or leave my advice as you like. 

On my trip to the Christchurch Art Gallery, I picked out two interesting modern art pieces to reflect on—Ngahere Behind a Pile of Metal (2026) and The Hill Inside (2023). I’ve done my own sketches of the works for The Memo for your benefit, (anything for you, dear reader!) but I suggest you go and see them yourself. Here’s what I got out of the works. Maybe you’ll get something different. 

Ngahere Behind a Pile of Metal is a walk-in exhibition. In a big, stark-white room, these massive metal chain loops are hanging from the ceiling so you can step between them. There’s a big zigzagging charcoal line drawn continuously across the walls. 

I thought the greyscale colours and chains make this feel industrial, washed out, even sinister. For a piece about trees, where’s the trees, the soft organic shapes of greenery? The absence of the kauri in the room echoes its absence in the forest. The loops of the chains seem designed to carry a massive trunk, we get a sense of the scale of the tree now missing.  Or perhaps, I thought, as I walked between chains, I am the kauri in the piece, the only living thing in this exhibit, staring into the machinery that will dismantle me. I started thinking on how I’d read about the ways trees communicate, share resources, experience damage to their bodies. How different, really, are humans from plants? We’re all just organisms… The charcoal shapes twisting across the walls looked smeared up close, reminiscent of marks left on the walls in jails by prisoners, those machines of cruelty we subject humans to. We are all just organisms... From further away, I was reminded of a declining statistical line - we forget that the downwards trend in biodiversity is made up, when we look closer, by thousands of individual tragedies, the line literally drawn by the incinerated bark of the killed tree. I left the exhibit sombrely, thinking about the Fast Track Act. How much more ancient forest will we dismember, and when can we leave these implements of ecological harm to rust?

The Hill Inside is displayed as two screens, playing quiet looped footage. Shots are of rocks, clay, symbols in the mud, the slow dispersal of sediment in water or onto fabric. The subject rubs clay across her nude body, places pebbles into her mouth, lets them fall out again. 

I initially found this piece difficult to engage with sincerely—I think I made some inane comment to my friends like, “that’s not very hygienic is it now?”, as mud flowed out of the woman’s parted lips. But I came back to the piece later, sat still and watched with less self-surveillance. I began noticing the way the clay on her body dried in a texture that echoed skin, the way the shades of brown in her hair and face were reflected in the rocks and pigments of the stream. What a contrast to the sights in Mecca, the cosmetic shop I’d visited earlier to swipe some free eyebrow spoolies. Neon plastic containers, shiny glosses promising to eliminate all dryness, texture, dark circles, unevenness, and any other signs of a body inhabited. My initial “hygiene” comment rung in my ears unpleasantly now. What is more natural than elements of the earth, the clear wai running across the rocks? What is more natural than the nude woman in motion, skin and fat shifting as she reaches her arms up? 

I thought about the endless digitised women I see, with filler and botox that suspend their expressions in a rictus of mild surprise. And how research demonstrates that when you paralyse your facial muscles used to express anger or disgust, your brain becomes less skilled at processing those feelings. The woman on the screen stared forwards blankly. I stared back, and frowned as deeply as I could.

That’s what I saw. What will you see? Go forth to the gallery with an open mind and a switched-off cellphone. Let out the sincerity you’ve caged up within yourself. Art is for everyone. 

What I do when I look at art:
a field guide for the gallery.

• Look at the piece, notice the size of it, the colours, the textures, the shape. Would I describe it as neat, or minimalist, or messy, or bright, or symmetrical, or organic...?

• Read the plaque next to it, which provides a good starting point. Sometimes it gives me a specific topic the artist is conveying, like, “my feelings when my mother died”. Sometimes it says some nonsense like “the spaces bodies inhabit and the way we move through time”, in which case I tend to roll my eyes and build my own interpretation. Some things are too sincere.

• I think about what I’m reminded of by the physical form or the ideas I think it’s trying to convey. Does it look like other pieces of art I know, or does it tackle a similar topic in a very different way? I think about artists with similar styles, books and poems, things I’ve seen in nature or on the street, people I think might like the work. Sometimes this looks like, wow, the colour of this butter sculpture is a bit like the curtains in my sister’s childhood room. Let your mind wander. 

• I try to experience an emotion being conveyed to me by the creative decisions, I picture the artist making the piece, how do they move?

• If it’s a large, three dimensional piece, I consider myself as part of it. Am I a neutral viewer? Do I feel trapped, exploratory, or like I have power over it?

• Close the camera app and take out a notebook. Write a sentence about the artwork, or make a sketch of it. Actually try. Tear out the page and put it in the bin as you leave the gallery. Nobody will ever know if the sketch was shit. The experience was just for you. 

• It’s ok to not like a piece! It doesn’t mean that you are stupid if you don’t “get” it. Some art, including stuff in major galleries, can be shit—unoriginal, poorly executed, heavyhanded and unsophisticated in symbolism. Disliking, or even hating a piece, is part of the enjoyment of art.