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Actually there is a big difference between non-representational painting i.e. abstract art and what is currently chic in high cultural circles. The abstract painters of old were trained in classical art and excelled at it but they learned from experience that there is beauty in simple color and shape relationships and beauty in the medium itself and in some cases applied paint to the canvas in a manner which allowed the qualities of the paint to be appreciated in their own right.

Today however there is a strong movement of anti-art. This grew from the communist/leftist desire to politicize every aspect of life in order to undermine the culture. Today the political statement is everything. In short there is a focus not on inspiration drawn from beauty but dwelling on the ugly for political purposes, the more outrageous the better as long as it undermines traditional values. Also egalitarianism run amuck has led to the relaxing of certain levels of standards to throwing them out all together.

I am always kind of amazed at the peristent leftism of the art community. For a segment of society that should prize free expression, they rarely fail to embrace a political philosophy that demands authoritarianism and regulation.

I much prefer representational stuff, but agree that all art, or all nature for that matter, can be broken down to abstract shapes and forms. So purely abstract art, IMO, cannot necessarily be dismissed out of hand, it is very capable of being beautiful in its own right.

You can't blame the collapse of art on the commies. Their officially acceptable art was very traditional. Stale, lifeless but traditional. The great artists who lived under Soviet rule: Malevich, Kandinsky, and the Suprematists either wound up in the gulag, officially disappoved or fled. Proletarian Realism may be crappy but much better than Rothko, Pollack, or the other charletans we are cursed with.
The Nazis also hated modern art.

All modern art is not ridiculous even when abstract or non-objective.

True, look at early Picasso, then his Blue Period, then his Cubism. His early paintings were done in detail, like portraits. But his abstracts were excellent, too. Matisse was great too. The new stuff today just STINKS.