I’ve never understood the worship of van Gogh. I think his contemporaries were right in thinking he had very little talent. The excuse people use—”I love the colors!”—could just as easily be applied to the finger-painting of a three-year-old. No, a night sky does not look like that, unless you’re having a psychotic break. Loving van Gogh seems to be obligatory in middle-class society, something to which one has to pay lip service lest one be thought uncultured and ignorant. It seems like the same fraud which requires everyone to say that 20th-century modernist and postmodernist artists are so brilliant and have something to say that’s worthy of respect.
I’m not quite sure what creates a person’s reaction to art or music. Some of it is trained, of course, but some of it is body instinctive. As an art history/physics major, I’m trained from prehistoric art to modern, but I have my own instincts toward what makes my spirit cry with beauty. There’s the intellectually beautiful - like Giotto or Georgoni - that moves me. And then there’s just pure reaction. Some of the French impressionists, some of the post-impressionists, some of the moderns. So I suppose I’m gravitating to color. The least interesting is reality-based design. Of the artists that make me instantly turn away - Corot!!! Of the ones that I stand in front of and forget time passes - Turner!!!
The video I made is that of an art historian. In six minutes a viewer goes out with an understanding of Van Gogh that they didn’t have before. But if I were doing a favorites video of the post-impressionist period, then there’s only a few of Van Gogh’s pieces that would be included.
As for modern art, there are many that draw me in so much I have trouble pulling back out, and others that I walk right past. My taste is like the SC’s decision on pornography - I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it. The video that I did on Daily Mail images that I labeled art is my purest view of what I consider beauty to be.
But all those are MY body and trained mind reactions. Yours come from your body and what you’ve been taught. And neither of us define ART for another single person.